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Essay Two--An Informative, but Surprising, Essay

Specific Assignment: Write an informative essay about something of interest to you and which you think might be interesting to others. The goal of this essay is to surprise your reader either by informing them about something they probably didn't know before or by clarifying commonly accepted understandings.

Readings Related to This Assignment:

 

MM pp. 52-81 Essay described

Chapter 9 in AB Essay described

pp. 551-571 in AB MLA style and tagging

pp. 650 ff in AB on Sentence Structure

pp. in MM 122-33 Punctuation Made Simple

Examples of this type of essay:

Tarantulas AB 198 ff

Behind Stone Walls AB 201 ff

Face of a Spider AB 204 ff

Wildlife MM 54-5

Sunday Afternoon Blues MM 57-8

Myth of Violence AB 547-8

Brown Recluse MM 70-74

Artificial Intelligence MM 75-6

Mononucleosis MM 77-8

 

Reading to Emphasize for this essay:

AB 196 Essay project defined

AB 209 Surprise defined

AB 211-2 Exploring your response

AB 552 and MM 136-7 Tagging

MM 122-33 Punctuation Made Simple

AB 650 ff Sentence Sense

We have you write an informative essay because we want you to demonstrate mastery of several important skills: a) the ability to find and understand information, b) the ability to evaluate the reliability of sources of information (this skill becomes more important every day as the number of possible sources escalates as the information storage and retrieval systems available through the WorldWideWeb, c) the ability to convey clearly, in writing, factual information. This essay will expect you to properly incorporate information you find from sources outside your personal experience and to properly cite those sources in MLA style.

Activities Related to This Assignment:

1) Practice in Punctuation

2) Practice in Editing/Proofreading

3) Practice in Citing Sources

4) Practice in Using MLA Style

5) Audience Analysis

6) Non-narrative essay Organization