Friday, February 21, 2020

Proofreading Checklist (Staple to the front of your essay.)


Copy and paste the following into a Word document. Staple to the front of your essay.

Your Name: ______________________________________

Proofreading Checklist for Essay

Thursday, February 20, 2020

Understanding Plagiarism Handout

Honesty in a Vase, Vincent van Gogh (1885)
Understanding Plagiarism
© 2013 James Mulhern

“Plagiarize,” according to The American Heritage Dictionary, means

1. To use and pass off as one’s own (the ideas or writings of another).

2. To appropriate for use as one’s own passages or ideas from another.  To put forth as original to oneself the ideas or words of another.

Monday, February 17, 2020

How to Write an Evaluative Essay about Fiction


"Evaluation is the act of considering or examining something in order to judge its value, quality, or importance" (Encarta World English Dictionary). In an Evaluative Essay on Literature you choose to compare and contrast the qualities of a few texts based on certain criteria and then make a judgment/evaluation about which text you feel was most successful.

ENC1101: How to Analyze an Argument


As you read the passage, consider how [the author] uses


  • evidence, such as facts or examples, to support claims
  • reasoning to develop ideas and to connect claims and evidence
  • stylistic or persuasive elements, such as word choice or appeals to emotion, to add power to the ideas expressed

         (The prompt above is from the College Board.)

Wednesday, February 12, 2020

ENC1102: "Saboteur"



Print out and annotate the following story by Ha Jin. Highlight important sentences. If there is not enough room for annotations on the printout, write notes in your binder. Focus on how different types of literary rhetoric (organization of plot, details, characterization, dialogue, imagery, mood/tone, shifts, setting, figurative language, connotations of diction, etc.) support a theme. Indicate page numbers, paragraph numbers, line numbers, as appropriate. Also do "Shorter Analysis Activity" https://scholarmulhern.blogspot.com/2019/11/analysis-of-text-shorter-version.html: