EDIT ESSAY

Your second essay will be about the particular sub-culture to which you belong. Every community, whether it is a family, neighborhood, church, or town, has its own particular culture, which you can describe by exploring its peculiarities, values, traditions, etc.

1. Find at least three readings that deal with your topic in some way. You may not want to find anything specific topics such as your family or neighborhood, you will be able to find readings that deal with families or neighborhoods like yours. My family, for example, is Irish-Catholic, so I could look for readings on Irish-Catholic, Irish-American, and Catholic families; although the readings would not be about my particular family, they will contain characteristics that I might recognize, and which I could use in the paper. Work from specific to general. Read and annotate those texts, using KWL+ or any other strategy if necessary.

2. Prewrite extensively on your topic. I will show you some techniques and graphic organizers that you can use for this stage.

3. Read through your prewriting and the three texts, and mine them for interesting ideas. Watch for ideas that are related, and for specific ideas that support broader ones. You can mark up your prewriting or rewrite the interesting ideas on a clean sheet of paper.

4. Mine your good ideas for a potential thesis statement. If no thesis exists, reread your material and craft a thesis statement that captures as many of your good ideas as possible.

5. Outline your essay on the form provided. You will have to invent some new ideas to complete the outline, so return to the prewriting stage if you need and free write, list, or cluster until you have each paragraph fully fleshed-out.

6. Write a rough draft. You may handwrite this or type it. Focus on organization and completeness, and do not yet worry about how things are worded or whether or not the grammar is correct. That comes later.

7. Write another draft, but do not delete the rough draft, as I will collect both. In this draft, you can begin to tinker with how you word things, whether or not words are spelled correctly, etc. Format it according to MLA specifications, which can be found online at Purdue OWL and numerous other sites. Cite any facts that you use from your readings.

8. Submit the paper. Please enclose your prewriting, the annotated readings, the outline, rough draft and second draft in a paper notebook. The second draft should be stapled and should not include any handwriting or irregularities.