Review of Literature
What is this assignment?
For this penultimate assignment, you will compose an essay that describes and evaluates the “conversation” surrounding your topic, guiding readers through the sides that your sources take on the issue and the ways they tend to frame it. In your essay, you will summarize and compare three different approaches, viewpoints, or proposed solutions/action plans related to your topic. Your aim is to identify three distinct ways that previous sources have looked at the issue and compare them evaluatively, setting yourself up to enter the conversation in your final paper.
This project will require you to study your sources carefully so that you can accurately determine how they relate to each other and what positions they take on the issue. Remember that your purpose is to give readers an accurate idea of what the conversation surrounding your chosen topic is, not to argue your own position.
You are required to use 5 of your sources at minimum.
As you decide how to characterize the conversation surrounding the topic, consider a variety of questions:
• What are the dominant approaches/positions that people tend to take on the topic, and which of your sources contribute to each?
• How does each source contribute to or explain its “side”?
• How do these approaches (and the sources that communicate them) compare and contrast with each other?
• What strengths and weaknesses can you identify in these sides, or what strengths and weakness do they expose in each other?
Peer Review
This essay will be due Friday, 4/5, but we will be peer-reviewing it in class on Wednesday, 4/3. You will need to bring a completed version to class that day and come prepared to read and discuss peers’ essays.
How will I be graded?
This essay will be worth 200 points, or 20% of your course grade. Your completed submission should be at least 3 full pages, double spaced, and should adhere to the requirements above.
• Save your assignment in Word format (.doc or .docx)
• Use 12-point Times New Roman font, double-spaced, and 1” margins
• Submit your assignment on Canvas.
You will also be graded on these elements of your essay:
• Audience and Purpose—is the purpose of your essay clear, and does it consider how to convey that purpose to its audience through appropriate tone and voice? 25%
• Structure and Coherence—is the essay readable and organized? 25%
• Synthesis and Interpretation—does the paper clearly and thoroughly articulate the positions of individual sources and relate them to each other? 35%
• Editing and Presentation—is the essay relatively free of mistakes, evidencing a good level of proofreading and revision? 15% pts
