Evaluation Essay

Basic guidelines

Your paper must be in MLA format

It should be at least four pages long plus a Works Cited page.

The writing should be in Standard American English, well-structured, easy to follow, free from personal references and unnecessary wordiness.

You choose a person, place, thing, event, or phenomenon and then argue that it is a good or bad instantiation of the category in which you place it.

Your introduction should

· Present the subject of your evaluation: “the person, place, thing, event, or phenomenon that you are evaluating” (Ramage et al. 371).

· Show why evaluating X is problematic or controversial

· Present your evaluation claim and your criteria

Your audience

· Intelligent readers

Your purpose

· Persuade your audience to see the value (or lack of value) of X.

Each body paragraph should

· State a criterion and defend it if necessary

· Show that X meets or does not meet the criterion

Treatment of alternative or opposing views

· Summarize objections to your criteria or your match

· Respond to these objections

Each reference to a source should

· Introduce the source using an attributive tag (Ramage et al. 555)

· Quote or summarize the important information from that source

· Explain the significance of the information from the source

· Include a correct MLA in-text citation which is also referenced in the final Works Cited page

Your conclusion should

· Sum up your evaluation.

A final note

This paper is not about you. It is about the issue. Therefore, the following words and phrases do not belong in your essay: I me, myself, we, us, in my opinion, I think, I believe. Your paper is also not about your reader, and you do not know your reader personally; therefore, the following words do not belong in your essay either: you, your, you’re, yourself.

*Figure 14.3 which illustrates the framework for an evaluation argument is on page 374 of your text.