Definition

English 1101

DIRECTIONS

• Through adhering to the rules of this essay, present an extended personal definition of the term of your choice. Your essay must have a strong personal take on the definition. Consider these possibilities:

  a)      choose a document or ritual that is a significant part of your religious or cultural heritage

  b)      define through a personal lens an abstract term, for example, stubbornness, security, courage, fear, anger

  c)      define a medical condition through a personal lens: Down syndrome, autism, Alzheimer's disease, schizophrenia, ADHD

  d)      choose a term that is central to one of your courses, for instance, behaviorism, authority, naturalism

  e)      assume your audience might be from a culture that is not familiar with modern American pastimes; write a definition essay for this audience in which you describe the form and function of a Frisbee, a Barbie doll, an action figure, a video game, etc.

  f)       in your opinion, what qualifies someone other than yourself as a hero (a real person you personally know)?

• Ask yourself the following questions: Why am I defining this term? Why is this term important to me? What is my connection to this term? What does this term mean to me?
• Make sure that your thesis is underlined, in italics or in bold print.
• Flesh out three characteristics of the defined term, one per argument paragraph.
• This assignment is to be 500-600 words (5 ¶s in a mature font).
• The paper cannot earn more than 60% without the required organization and thesis.
• The opening paragraph will have two sentences, one of which is the thesis statement.
• The concluding paragraph will have one or two sentences.
• No title page is necessary, but title your essay in an original manner and put your name on the paper as well in the upper left corner.
• This is to be your own, original work, without referring to any outside sources or commentaries.
• You must submit your rough draft by the date posted in the syllabus (and in assignments) in D2L to earn a grade for this assignment.
• Feedback on the rough draft will be available online.
• Submit your final draft through the D2L Brightspace assignments dropbox under Definition by the due date.
• Detailed feedback about the submitted paper will be provided in turnitin.com via D2L.
• The content of the paper will be graded based on its organization, thesis, paragraph structure, quality of arguments, analysis strength and lack of summary. Each type (not each occurrence) of major grammatical errors (e.g., run-on, pronoun-antecedent agreement, fragment, misplaced modifier, parallelism, verb form, subject-verb agreement, 3 x spelling errors) will equal a deduction of 10 points.
• As always, if you have any questions, please email me at cperkowski@gordonstate.edu.