evaluation essay

Evaluation Essay

English 1020

Your next graded essay is going to be an evaluation of one of your sources. This means that you will summarize the source, analyze its rhetorical situation, and evaluate if it is a useful source for your research paper.

This paper should be about 750-1000 words and include a "Works Cited" page with your source in MLA Works Cited style. It will also include at least one direct quotation and one paraphrase from your source.

In a way, you are reviewing the source, just like the movie or book reviews you might read in Writing Today, but you are doing this for a more serious reasons and a different audience. A movie or book review targets a popular audience and its purpose is to let people know if the movie or book is worth seeing or reading. You're writing a review that lets your audience (me) know if your source is going to help you answer your research question. So your audience, purpose, and tone will be different for this essay than a review of a film. It will be more objective and serious.

Resources in Writing Today:

· Chapter 2, "Title, Angle, Purpose" pp. 14-24. The questions about "my angle", "my topic," "my purpose" are what you will ask about your source. "What is the source's topic?" "What is the source's thesis?" "What is the source's angle?" and "What is the source's purpose?"

· Chapter 3, "Readers, Contexts, and Rhetorical Situations" pp. 27-36. Focus on the questions about the reader and the context. You will be analyzing whom your source's target audience is, and what is the context (background) of your source.

· Chapter 6, "Reviews" pp. 84-95. Remember, you are reviewing a source for a serious, academic purpose: to decide if it will be useful in answering your research question. So your audience, purpose, and tone will be different for this essay than a review of a film. It will be more objective and serious.

· pp. 470-71 in Writing Today. There are a list of questions and a checklist that can help you decide how to evaluate your source. Use those questions to develop the evaluation part of your essay.