Major Paper
English 1102 

• Select one of the texts from the syllabus.

• Having read and annotated it, focus on a specific theme in the text and explore it in mandatory 500-600 words (5 ¶s in a mature font).

• To support your thesis, choose a concept directly discussed or mentioned in the text.

• Make sure that your thesis adheres to one of the three options from the thesis handout (link). The first part of the thesis will be specific to the text (something explicitly mentioned in the text) and the second part will go beyond the text itself to show something more about concrete examples from life nowadays (do not present a generic social/societal commentary), while broadening our understanding of the text itself. Therefore, this paper is to analyze the text while relating it to specific examples from life nowadays. MANDATORY ESSAY ORGANIZATION (link).

• Italicize, bold or underline the thesis statement.

• The first part of each of the argument paragraphs will analyze the text, and the second part will relate that analysis to precise examples from life nowadays (link).

• The introductory ¶ should have only two sentences, one of which will be 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 (not the title of the text).

• This is to be your own, original work, without referring to any outside sources or resources, but this is not an "I" paper.

• Consulting any outside sources or resources might result in forfeiting credit for this assignment.

• Use present tense.

• Do not use "you."

• Please do not organize your paper based on the original organization of the text.

• Do not focus on the literary devices used by the author (e.g., diction, tone, irony, symbolism, metaphor) but rather on the actual content.

• Include a brief heading with your name, assignment, date, course and word count in the upper left corner.

• To be eligible for credit, the completed assignment MUST meet all of the above conditions. If any requirement from the prompt is not met, the assignment will be ineligible for credit. 

• The mandatory rough draft must be submitted through the D2L Brightspace assignments dropbox under Rough Major Paper by the deadline for the final draft to earn credit.

• Submit your final version through the D2L Brightspace assignments dropbox under Major Paper by the due date.

• Detailed feedback about the submitted paper will be provided in 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 utilize the D2L forum.
  
  Texts from our textbook posted in D2L to choose from:
  The Grimm Brothers, Godfather Death
  Updike, A&P
  Faulkner, A Rose for Emily
  Poe, The Tell-Tale Heart
  Le Guin, The Ones Who Walk away from Omelas
  Lawrence, The Rocking-Horse Winner
  Chopin, The Storm
  Chopin, The Story of an Hour
  Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper
  Walker, Everyday Use
  Kincaid, Girl
  O'Connor, A Good Man Is Hard to Find
  Carver, Cathedral
  Hemingway, A Clean Well-Lighted Place
  Vonnegut, Harrison Bergeron
  Steinbeck, The Chrysanthemums
  Jackson, The Lottery
  Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper

  Sophocles, Oedipus Rex
  Glaspell, Trifles
  Ibsen, A Doll's House