academic writing assignment
Choose one of the essays below. Write a four-page argumentative essay that both summarizes the essay you have chosen and responds to it. Essays shorter than three full pages or longer than five pages will be returned unread and ungraded. You must follow one of the following presentation and documentation styles: MLA, APA, or CMS (Chicago). Bibliographies and title pages do not count towards the page count of your essay.
Your essay is an argumentative essay with a summary component. Your summary of the essay must be substantial and accurate. You must clearly identify the main argument and the secondary points of the argument of the essay you have chosen. You should identify the ways the various components of the argument fit together. You should identify the main ways the argument supports its claims. Your summary should be a two-paragraph summary. Your summary cannot use more than two short quotations from the essay.
The response component needs to respond to the essay directly. Your thesis for the entire essay will represent the main component of your response. You are not writing your own essay on a similar topic as the essay you have chosen, but instead you are interacting with the essay. Is there something said in the essay with which you want to take issue? Ultimately, you are making clear whether you agree or disagree with the argument of the essay (and its various components) and explaining why.
Your personal opinions about the topic the essay treats should be kept out of your essay. You are welcome to write a paragraph about your personal opinions, if you want, and include it as one of the final paragraphs. Your personal opinions about the argument of the essay form the basis for your response.
- Your introductory paragraph clearly explains what your essay will talk about. It includes a thesis: what your essay will ultimately be arguing.
- The next two paragraphs are devoted to a summary of the essay you have chosen. The first of the paragraphs provides an overview of the essay, stating the essay’s main argument and touching on the main secondary arguments. The second paragraph of the summary will summarize in more detail one or two of the secondary arguments of the essay, especially those that your essay will then address.
- The next two or three paragraphs are devoted to your response to the essay. You will talk about the arguments you have outlined and explain your own attitude towards them (as they are expressed by the writer). You can agree and/or disagree. You can talk about elements of the essay’s arguments that are strong or weak. You can point to problems with the essay and things the essay should have taken into account for a better argument.
- You can, in no more than one paragraph, outline your own stance on the topic raised by the essay. This paragraph is optional.
- Your final paragraph is a conclusion. The conclusion does not just restate what your essay has already said: it should conclude something. This is a good place to reflect on what your essay has said and how strongly you were able to make your own points. This is also a good place to explain your own attitudes towards the topic of the essay to which you are responding. (Avoid too personal a tone in doing so.)
- The Gazette Editorial Board. “Students Shouldn’t Have to Turn Their Zoom Cameras On.”
- Globe and Mail Editorial Board. “More Indigenous People in Canada Are Graduating from High School Than Ever: It’s Still Not Nearly Enough.”
- Hinsliff, Gaby. “The White Supremacist Student Sentenced to Read Austen and Dickens Fits a Grim Pattern.”
- Jones, Owen. “Workers Sacrificed Plenty Due to Covid, So Let’s Reward Them with New Rights.”
- Littman, Michael. “‘Rise of the Machines’ Is Not a Likely Future.”
- Marceau, Richard. “Let’s Make 2021 the Year We Eliminate Online Hate in Canada .”
- Moloney, Kieran. “We Need to Rethink Student Loans across This Country.”
- Monbiot, George. “Lab-grown Food Will Soon Destroy Farming – and Save the Planet.”
- Pierson, Emma. “Hey, Computer Scientists! Stop Hating on the Humanities.”