Course: ENGL 1020
Semester: Spring 2020
Instructor: Field
Unit 4: Evaluation Essay
Rough Draft Due: Submit Evaluation Essay to the dropbox labeled Evaluation Essay Rough Draft by Wednesday, April 15th at 9:35 a.m. (Central Time)
Final Draft Due: Evaluation Essay due in dropbox marked “ENGL 1020 Critical Assessment” by Wednesday, April 22nd at 11:59 p.m. (Central Time); No late Evaluation Essays will be accepted
Purpose: In an evaluation essay, your goal is to evaluate the effectiveness of something by developing criteria, or standards to judge the thing, ranking those criteria in order to focus on the most important criteria, and then applying the criteria to evaluate how effectively the thing meets the criteria.
Think, for instance, of a movie. If you were evaluating a movie, then you would have to create criteria to evaluate the movie. So, two of your criteria might be the number of awards that the movie won and how many times the characters said the word “the.” If you were evaluating whether or not this was a great movie, then you would have to rank the criteria by which criteria were the most important in determining if the film was great or not. In this case, the number of awards the film won would probably be more important in determining its greatness, so you would probably focus on that criterion rather than the amount of times the characters used the word “the.”
Tasks (How to write this essay):
Write a minimum of 4-5 pages (Must be a minimum of halfway down on the last page for it to count as a page). The essay must also include a correctly-formatted works cited page that does not count toward the 4-5 page minimum page count.
Write for an academic audience (no contractions, first- or second-person perspective, slang, or clichés).
The writer should start by reviewing the following campaign websites: Donald Trump (https://www.donaldjtrump.com/), Joe Biden (https://joebiden.com/), Elizabeth Warren (https://elizabethwarren.com/), Bernie Sanders (https://berniesanders.com/?nosplash), Cory Booker (https://corybooker.com/), and Pete Buttigieg (https://peteforamerica.com/). These are all websites for candidates who either were running for president but have now dropped out of the race (Warren, Booker, and Buttigieg) or for candidates who are still running for president (Trump, Biden, and Sanders).
The writer should then come up with a list of aesthetic and process criteria to evaluate these websites. Explanations of what aesthetic and process criteria are can be found in Chapter 10 of your textbook. Then, the writer will rank these criteria from most important to least important in determining the effectiveness of a political candidate’s website. Please note that you will not use all of these criteria, so this part of the process, where you eliminate some criteria in favor of focusing on the most important criteria, is a very important step that you will not even explicitly mention in your paper. This is work that you must do before you even start writing the paper.
The essay’s argument (thesis) should focus on arguing that one presidential candidate’s website is more effective than two of these other candidates’ websites and providing a minimum of 3-5 aesthetic and process criteria that should be used to evaluate presidential websites. You must have at least one aesthetic criterion and one process criterion.
Each body paragraph should utilize a topic sentence that argues that the presidential candidate’s website that is most successful better addresses one specific criterion than the other two websites. Please note that the paper is arranged according to criteria and not according to the websites.
The author should then use at least one example from each of the three websites in order to support the argument in each topic sentence.
Citation: The writer should provide correctly-formatted signal phrases/attributive tags for all summaries, paraphrases, and quotations that reference material from sources, and correctly-formatted in-text citations must be provided for all paraphrases and quotations. Furthermore, the author should provide full introductions to sources the first time they are mentioned in the paper (author’s full name, the full title of the source, and a one-sentence summary of the main idea of the source), and a works cited page must document all sources and be formatted according to MLA guidelines.
Format: The essay should be formatted according to MLA guidelines, which are accessible in your textbook or through the Purdue Online Writing Lab.
Grammar and mechanics: Has ability to write using edited American English. Proofread and edit for issues that include, but are not limited to, those regarding spelling and word usage. Subject-verb agreement, pronoun-antecedent agreement, run-on sentences, sentence fragments, fused sentences, absence or misuse of apostrophes, and absence or misuse of commas exemplify other problematic issues.
Skills (Learning Outcomes Achieved): Demonstrate understanding of and ability to read and respond to
the demands of the rhetorical situation (author, audience, and
subject) in both oral and written communication.
Read critically and analyze various types of assigned readings on
the basis of structure, pattern, and meaning in order to produce
original papers that show development of topic through
organization (such as topic sentence, support of the central idea
through details, and rhetorical patterns).
Invent, write, revise, edit, and rewrite formal essays in response
to readings which develop appropriate rhetorical patterns (i.e.,
narration, example, process, comparison/contrast, classification,
cause/effect, definition, argumentation) and other special
function(s) (i.e., literary analysis or research) while
demonstrating writing skills from process to product.
Produce final papers that show growth in principles of good
writing, such as organization (e.g., introduction/body/conclusion
or outlining), development (clarifying transitions between
sentences and paragraphs), unity (connected ideas), and which
demonstrate an understanding of the substance of the topic.
Complete at least one writing assignment that demonstrates a
limited use of MLA documentation form and basic research
ability.
Participate in collaborative work with other students via small
group discussions and presentations, workshop-style classes
devoted to particular issues (such as paragraph structure or voice
and tone), and produce, accept, and use constructively feedback
from writing instructors, other students, and other university
writers/instructors to take control of your own writing.
Create mechanically sound papers relatively free of errors in
grammar and mechanics.
Criteria for success: Please consult with the rubric for this assignment.
