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Short Writing Assignment Guidelines

Review Assignment Guidelines

• Know your assignment guidelines before starting! Make sure you understand the assignment by reading it carefully.
• Be sure to turn in all SAs. They are preparation and therefore very important to the entire writing process. 
• Turn in all responses on time and follow the length and format guidelines. Most responses will be in MLA format.
• Fully respond to the assignment requirements. Many SAs have more than one part.

Getting Started

• I often use questions as a way to start the critical thinking process. If there are direct questions, do not recopy the questions, as if you were answering end-of-the-chapter questions from a history, biology, or psychology course. Use the questions as a guide to organizing and then composing your ideas.

• If there is a reading/video included in the assignment, give the creator/author’s full name the first time you mention him or her. After this first mention, throughout the rest of your response, use last name only. In academic writing, you should not refer to authors by their first names only. It is considered too informal.

Developing Your Response

• It is generally a good idea to start your response with an interesting title and an attention-grabbing opening. 
• Give the creator/author and the title (if applicable) and a brief preview of the ideas in the subject you are responding to, and then you can begin responding to the prompt.
• Throughout your response, make sure you provide enough explanation and discussion so that your answers make sense even if the reader doesn’t have the reading or the questions sitting in front of him or her. Part of each assignment includes demonstrating understanding and specific details and depth are standard ways of showing both.
  • For example, avoid writing sentences like:
    • No, because there are many other good African-American role models around.
  • Instead, write sentences like: 
    • I don’t believe LeBron James is the best role model for young men and women because I prefer children to follow the example of people like Colin Powell or Barack Obama instead of always dreaming about sports. 
• You may need to quote or paraphrase statistics, ideas, examples, or other relevant material from the sources to support your answers, explanations, and discussion. This also demonstrates you have examined and understood the material.

Reminders About Using Outside Sources

Use active verbs to describe what the author is doing. Authors don’t just “write” or “say”; they “describe,” “illustrate,” “provide examples,” “suggest,” “criticize,” “contrast,” or “compare,” and more. Choose your words carefully.

Make sure that you quote and paraphrase accurately so that you don’t misrepresent or seem to misunderstand the author’s ideas. 

• Make sure that you use the proper guidelines for indicating when you are using the ideas or words provided by another source. 

Direct Quote:  When you use the author’s exact words in a direct quote, you must put quotation marks around them and include the source as part of the Works Cited page.

• Example: Adler states, “The learner has to question himself and question the teacher” (142).  

Paraphrase: If you paraphrase the author by putting his/her ideas from a particular passage in your own words, you must also identify the author and give him/her clear credit for those ideas. Note: Do not put paraphrased ideas in quotation marks.

• Example: For example, he uses the name of a famous artist, Rembrandt (Adler 140) to help the reader get a picture of the difference between the first time someone colors, and the results of someone great, like Rembrandt. 

Proper Citation: Put the author’s last name and page number (if available) that the quotation or paraphrase comes from at the end of the sentence in parentheses, as in (Mathabane 42). If the author’s name appears in the sentence, this is not necessary, as in (42).

• Example: The author explains how she put these types of friends into categories: “There are medium friends, and pretty good friends, and very good friends indeed, and these friendships are defined by their level of intimacy” (Viorst 317). 
• Example: Viorst explains how she put these types of friends into categories: “There are medium friends, and pretty good friends, and very good friends indeed, and these friendships are defined by their level of intimacy” (317). 

Citation Review: Purdue Owl MLA Style Formatting Quotations

Formatting

In order to show respect for the academic culture within your English courses, you must use the formatting guidelines required by your instructor.

• Generally, these requirements are those endorsed by the Modern Language Association (or MLA), the professional organization that provides guidelines followed by those writing for academic audiences in English and many other Humanities courses.

MLA formatting requires that the first page include the following information in the top left corner:

1. your name
2. instructor’s name
3. course and section
4. date (day month year) EX: 1 April 2024

Reminder: All pages should be numbered with your last name in the upper-right-hand corner. 

Note: Other professions or disciplines have their own professional organizations and guidelines that are different from those of the MLA. You may hear of these in other courses - the APA (American Psychological Association) and the CBE (Council of Biology Editors) are just two examples.

Grading

Most SAs are worth 50 points. The grading criteria are generally based on the following:

• Academic writing quality and thorough answers (20 points)
• Analysis of readings and/or thoughtful support of observations  (20 points)
• Proper formatting and mechanical writing (10 points)

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