What should the essay have:
The essay shows evidence of thoughtfulness. The essay is of strong academic quality.
A clear purpose and specific focus and is visibly driven by questions.
Essay provides thoughtful and thorough insight into the multiple perspectives surrounding the essay’s topic or inquiry question.
Essay is purposefully organized and structured in a way that guides the reader.
Essay integrates the voices of others in thoughtful, ethical ways and works to balance the use of summarizing, paraphrasing and quoting.
Essay does more than simply report information (think encyclopedia) but rather explores the information through analysis and moves both the author and reader to new insights. Most often these insights emerge from your personal response to the material and how this material complicates or changes your understanding of the topic.
Essay answers the “So what” question. At some point in the essay the author makes it clear why readers should care about what he or she has to say.
Essay uses credible and reliable sources and correctly cites these sources in MLA format in both the in-text and works cited page.
Essay is grammatically correct.
Incorporates at least six thoughtfully compiled resources (observation, interview, survey, scholarly article, book) 3 being of scholarly work.
Requirements/Formatting
Your essay will be 7-8 double-spaced pages, not including Works Cited page. Your essay should include a minimum of six outside sources (from the six sources you used for your annotated bibliography). Three of these sources must be academic sources (academic journal articles, government documents, book-length studies, etc), and one of them must be a book source. All of your sources should be reliable. Unless you and I arrange for an alternative formatting, your essay should adhere to the MLA guidelines: proper in-text citation, Times New Roman size 12 font, 1” margins, MLA heading, and headers on each page. Your Works Cited page should likewise adhere to MLA standards.