The purpose of this assignment is to help you practice the following skills that are essential to your success in this course: Identifying a focused topic for a specific audience. Producing an informative thesis based on research and credible information. Outlining paragraphs to support theses. Using appropriate MLA documentation. Implementing the standards of American English. Task: Write a report about a person or event.
This means you will need to learn about your person or event and then decide what is the interesting information to share with your reader. You do NOT just want to write a biography or history of the person. Rather, you should consider what the average person on the street might not know about the topic and write your report to interest them. An example of this would be writing about Kim Kardashian but focusing on her philanthropic efforts in prison reform (Links to an external site.).
To come up with an interesting angle for your profile, it might help to identify the audience you want to reach: what angle would likely interest them? Choose a celebrity or historical figure, or a cultural or historical event. Ex. Elvis Presley (Links to an external site.) or The Mirabal Sisters (Links to an external site.) Ex. Mardi Gras (Links to an external site.) or The Haitian Revolution (Links to an external site.) Use Biography.com (Links to an external site.), History.com (Links to an external site.), or an article from a credible encyclopedia (Links to an external site.)– or all three– to find information about your person or event. You should have found and read two articles before writing your outline. Note: You cannot use Wikipedia as research for any essay requiring credible sources.
(You can, however, look at the sources listed in a Wikipedia entry.) Based on your research, compose an informative thesis with a clear purpose. Consider what you want your reader to know about the person or event and why you want them to know it. Outline your report around this thesis. Follow the Outline Activity Instructions to write your outline. Refer to the Student Example downloadfor a successful example. Submit your outline to the assignment to receive instructor feedback. Develop a rough draft based on your outline and instructor notes. Submit your rough draft for peer review. Based on your peer review, revise your rough draft.
Complete the Checklist download. Refer to the Student Example downloadfor a successful example. Submit a Revised Reporting Information Essay. Requirements: 500-750 words Follow a basic essay format: Intro with Thesis, Body Paragraphs, and Conclusion. Use at least two articles from the approved sources as reference for your report. How to use sources in your writing. (Links to an external site.) Any direct quotes- i.e. information taken word for word from the article- should be inside quotation marks and followed by an in-text citation. Example: “Before the auction, Borland had told his son that he planned to sleep until noon the day afterwards” (Estabrook 322).
Paraphrases- i.e. information take from the article but translated into your own words- should also be followed by an in-text citation. (Summaries should receive the same documentation.) Cite ALL articles found from the above sources by following MLA formatting. The MLA Crash Course covers this as well. If you’d like additional help, Purdue OWL has a fantastic vidcast series. (Links to an external site.) Follow MLA formatting for the essay itself. Follow the standards of American English. (This means that grammar and spelling count.)
