help

Essay 2 Requirements & Guidelines

Topic: Analysis of Your Stylistic Challenges

Basic Approach: Categorize your writing errors or weaknesses, especially as indicated in Essay 1 but also in your blog posts.

Format: Use section headings and divisions within the section headings as is done in “How to be a Successful Language Learner.” Also, other aspects of format in focus in the first essay (title, name, spacing, file format).

Organization: have a clear organizing principle for your categories such as from easiest problems to recognize and correct to hardest or from least frequently occurring problems to most frequent.  The categories should be in keeping with those considered in class and be the basis of your section headings and sub-headings. For example:

§  Verb forms

o    appropriate tense

o    agreement with subject

§  Prepositions

§  Articles (the, a/an)

§  Spelling

§  Punctuation

o    Run-ons

o    Comma splices

o    Fragments

o    Capitalization

§  Word choice

§  Combining ideas

§  Format

o    File format

o    Paragraphing

§  Other?

Content: Your introduction should briefly explain what your paper is about and indicate how it is organized.

Each section and sub-section should begin with a brief explanation of the problem—using the textbook or a website if necessary—and then list up to three examples of the errors from your work and how the sentence, or part of a sentence, will look when the error is corrected.  If you use any sources to help you in this, be sure to identify them in the introduction or in a footnote.

The brief conclusion will be a reflection on the writing of this paper, especially with regard to analyzing your own writing and your thoughts about how this might contribute to your development as a writer in English. Importantly, the conclusion should also indicate how help from others contributed to the work on this paper. Hopefully, one of your helps will have been a tutor from the Writing Center.

Word length: 600-1000 words.