Essay | Course Aides

AUDIENCE and PURPOSE

Who is your audience? Write your essay for a reader who is an educated adult who is not familiar with the issue and its opposing views.
What is your purpose? To analyze a key difference between two opposing views on a single issue.

LENGHT and FORMAT

How long should Essay 5 be? Essay 5 is made up of three paragraphs: two summaries and a thoroughly developed analysis paragraph that follows the MEAL plan and other closed-form prose conventions. Each of the summary paragraphs will be 100-150 words in length, considering the brevity of the source texts you are analyzing. Generally, an effective MEAL plan analysis paragraph will be 400-500 words long.
How should you format your essay?
- Your essay must apply MLA paper formatting guidelines, but you
  don't need a works cited page:

CONTENT

What is required in your two summary paragraphs?
- Use attributive tags to attribute the ideas to the author:
  - use the author's last name or he/she
  - use precise signal verbs (see Step 4 in Lesson 1 for a list of signal verbs),
- Use transitions and other signposts to show the relationship between the ideas, capturing the structure and flow of the source's ideas,
- Represent the source's ideas accurately, fairly, objectively, and comprehensively yet concisely,
- And use quotations sparingly, if at all.
What is required in the body paragraph?
- Apply the MEAL Plan paragraphing strategy for effective development and structure
  - It must present one main idea that...
    - Presents one significant or key difference between the opposing views
    - Announces the importance of this difference
  - It must present evidence from both sources that difference exists (this could be one or more quotations)
  - It must sufficiently analyze the examples to make the case for your main idea: that difference is important and how it is important to the discussion
- Apply the the Old/New Contract strategy for effective organization
- Properly quote examples as covered in Lesson 7