This essay should be a 600-900 word essay focusing on the assigned readings from the course.
This should be a close reading essay, and should use as evidence primarily passages from the work or works that you discuss. You may not use ANY outside sources without the instructor’s approval.
• The essay should be in MLA essay format (see the attached sample essay below) and should have a self-assessment (which should answer these questions) as the first page. A works cited entry and in-text citations for each text discussed are required.
• Analytical essays should be focused on making a debatable claim about the work in question; creative essays should be focused on presenting a work or kind of work from a different angle. Informational essays or essays consisting of summary are not appropriate for either type of essay. Both types of essay should be supported with discussion of specific passages from the text(s) on which the essay is focused. The essay grading rubric can be found here for the analytical choices, and here for the creative choices.
DISCLAIMER: Originality of attachments will be verified by Turnitin. Both you and your instructor will receive the results.
Final Draft Checklist
All essays for LITR 201 should:
• Have, instead of a title page, a self assessment that answers the questions specified below
• Be in MLA manuscript format
• Contain correctly formatted MLA-style in-text citations in the form of both signal phrases and parenthetical citations
• Contain an MLA-style Works Cited list of all works cited in the essay
• Be saved as a .doc or .docx file (NO .wps files, please!) with a file name formatted in the following style: YourlastnameFirstinitial_Week#Essay.doc
Essays missing one or more of these elements will lose points.
Self Assessment Questions
Please answer all of the following questions in paragraph form; give as much detail as possible to help me understand how you went about writing the essay. This will allow me to better tailor my feedback to help you.
1 What topic did you decide to respond to and why?
2 If the topic allowed you to choose what works to write on, which work or works did you choose and why?
3 What do you feel are the strengths of your essay?
4 What parts of the essay do you feel are weaknesses or areas that could use more work?
5 Are there any particular parts of the essay on which you would like more feedback?
Remember that these questions should be answered in the form of a letter. See the Sample MLA Essay for an example of what the self assessment should look like.
