Comparative Research Essay Assignment

ENGL 108: Comparative Essay with Research

Assignment: Comparative Essay, Library Research

Topic: Any TWO essays from essay text OR any TWO stories from anthology

Overview: This assignment gives you the opportunity to compare any two essays or stories from your course text. You will need to find to essays that share similarities as a base for your comparison. You might find similar topics, writing styles or points of view. Additionally, remember to include some contrasting ideas. Comparative essays ask you to compare AND contrast.

For the research portion of the essay assignment, I would like you to find TWO sources that help support your essay. You might have sources that support a view point or a critique you might make.

Part 1: Choose 2 “academic” resources that are highly relevant to your topic. These sources can be online but they must be peer reviewed (not simply self-published or unvetted).  Give full MLA reference information for each source and thoroughly explain why each resource is appropriate and relevant to your topic.  Additionally, include how each resource was found (include keywords used in any Google searching).

Part 2: Once you have your two academic resources and you’ve written your annotations (see above), craft a 3 page essay.  In the essay you should make clear what your basis for comparison is.

Purpose: Learn basic methodologies of research, learn how to locate and evaluate information, learn how to find appropriate resources, evaluate and synthesise arguments, critique thinking, and employ critical reasoning and writing strategies. Additionally put into practise comparative arguments and refine academic writing.

Length: Each annotation should consist of at least one fully-formed paragraph with complete reference information in MLA style. The essay itself should consist of 3 pages. The total length should be 4 pages.

DUE: 30^th March 2010

EXAMPLE ANNOTATION

Lamott, Anne. Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. New York:

Anchor Books, 1995.

Lamott's book offers honest advice on the nature of a writing life, complete with its insecurities and failures. Taking a humorous approach to the realities of being a writer, the chapters in Lamott's book are wry and anecdotal and offer advice on everything from plot development to jealousy, from perfectionism to struggling with one's own internal critic. In the process, Lamott includes writing exercises designed to be both productive and fun.

Lamott offers sane advice for those struggling with the anxieties of writing, but her main project seems to be offering the reader a reality check regarding writing, publishing, and struggling with one's own imperfect humanity in the process. Rather than a practical handbook to producing and/or publishing, this text is indispensable because of its honest perspective, its down-to-earth humor, and its encouraging approach.

Chapters in this text could easily be included in the curriculum for a writing class. Several of the chapters in Part 1 address the writing process and would serve to generate discussion on students' own drafting and revising processes. Some of the writing exercises would also be appropriate for generating classroom writing exercises. Students should find Lamott's style both engaging and enjoyable.

Note the indentation of all the text except for the first line of the reference.

For more information and style guidelines, visit the Online Writing Centre: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/614/01/

Note: Top image from Into the Book.