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Critical Thinking Essay #2

Learning Outcomes

Students will improve their ability to develop an effective argument and support that argument

with sound reasoning based on information found in scholarly sources.

Assignment Instructions

Your Critical Thinking Essay #2 will develop a three to five-page* argument that makes a value

statement about George Washington. (*Quality is more important than quantity.)

Start by reading the two assigned documents:

1) George Washington: The Reluctant President

2) His Excellency – George Washington

As you read, take notes about topics that seem interesting to you (noteworthy, impressive,

exceptional, unusual, weird, strange, et cetera). Pay attention to the similarities and

differences in the two documents. As you read, you will begin to develop a point of view about

George Washington, as a person, as a leader, as a politician, and so on… Eventually, you will

need to develop that point of view into a statement* about Washington that you can support

with information from these sources.

*This statement must be more than just a statement of facts. It needs to “take a position.” It

must be an argument that you can use as the thesis for this writing assignment. And you must

use information from both documents to support your argument. Be sure to include citations

in order to give the appropriate credit to the work of the authors.

If you need more detailed help in understanding what a Critical Thinking Essay is and how to

write one, this website is an excellent source of information: “How to Write a Critical Thinking

Essay: A Complete Guide.”

Citations

Because I am providing you with the documents that you will use for this assignment, you do

not need to create a separate Works Cited page at the end of your essay. But you absolutely

do need to include citations in the text of your essay. For detailed information about how to

properly include citations in your essay, read through this resource provided by the Purdue

Online Writing Lab (OWL) on MLA In-Text Citations.

Optional - Vocabulary List for George Washington: The Reluctant President

Below is a list of words from the article with which you may not be familiar. You might find it

helpful to define the words that are new to you prior to reading this article. This is an optional

exercise intended to help you better understand the required reading.

adieu

adulation

approbation

arduous

astride

auspicious

austere

avaricious

burnish

censure

cherubic

congenial

coronation

coup d’état

culprit

cupola

disabused

disavowed

dormant

dubious

emblazoned

emissary

epochal

feigned

felicity

fervent

flotilla

garlanded

havoc

heaping

herculean

hoopla

inexorably

innocuous

intoned

intuited

iota

jibed

laurel

minuet

moored

obliquely

ode

omnipresent

pecuniary

phalanx

plebiscite

pomp

portico

quirks

quorum

relished

renege

reprieve

reticence

sanguine

sartorial

sated

self-effacing

serried

servile

snippets

succinctly

tantalizing

tempore

tics

unobtrusively

venerated

wharf

willy-nilly

zeal