Swamped with your writing assignments? Take the weight off your shoulder!
Submit your assignment instructions
Write an essay in which you argue that one essay’s approach to education is more effective than another essay’s approach to education.
Important things to keep in mind:
It’s important that your thesis is an argument, meaning that you have an arguable thesis. If you are answering the assignment question in your thesis, your thesis is automatically an argument because someone could oppose it.
Your reader has read the two essays you are discussing, but your reader has not analyzed them in the depth that you have. Therefore, you do not need to provide too much summary.
You may weave in personal experience if you feel that it would strengthen your argument. However, make sure your essay focuses on analyzing the assigned reading.
Make sure you are bringing in quotes from the essays and analyzing those quotes in depth.
Use proper MLA style for in-text citation and your Works Cited page. In-text citation requires that every time you quote from the book, put the author’s last name and page number in parentheses. For example: Kevin Carey explains, “Unfortunately, a large and growing number of graduates of for-profit colleges are having trouble paying those loans back” (Carey 216). Note the formatting of the in-text citation.
Organization
Organization of this essay is very important. In general, it is most effective to be able to go back and forth between your two authors. If you spend the first half of your paper discussing one author and the second half discussing the other, it makes it difficult for your reader to follow your argument, and it makes it harder for you to connect the two texts together. Therefore, I recommend that you discuss one point of comparison at a time, going back and forth between each author. When you talk about the second author for each point of comparison, I recommend that you make some connections back to your first author in order to maintain your argument. For example, let’s say your first point of comparison focuses on the issue of college affordability. You think Author A talks about that issue more effectively than Author B. Your first support paragraph would explain why you think Author A’s discussion of affordability is so helpful, effective, etc. Your second support paragraph would explain why you think Author B’s discussion of affordability is not very helpful, effective, etc. In that paragraph, I recommend that you make a direct connection back to Author A and explain what it is that Author B is not doing that Author A did do that made you find Author A more effective.
Creating an outline after you have a thesis:
When your thesis includes everything it needs (your 2 authors, your argument, and your 3 points of comparison), then I would recommend you experiment with what I call a “Topic Sentence Outline.” Instead of creating an outline with just a list of topics, I find it much more helpful to create an outline with the actual topic sentences that will begin each support paragraph. Once you have written your thesis, you have all of the information you need to create your topic sentence outline.
Your topic sentences should introduce your point of comparison and link to your argument. If your topic sentence states a fact, then it is easy to fall into the trap of summarizing throughout the whole paragraph, rather than analyzing.
For this assignment, I recommend a total of 8 paragraphs: Introduction, 6 Support Paragraphs, and a Conclusion. For your Topic Sentence Outline, focus just on the 6 Support Paragraphs.