An outline is a valuable tool for structuring your essay. It helps you organize your thoughts and guides you towards completing your paper successfully. Think of it as a roadmap to your final essay. In this assignment, you will create an outline for your first research paper, which will involve applying a literary criticism approach to analyze a fictional story.
Please choose one of the following short stories:
“The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe
“The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
“Recitatif” by Toni Morrison
The following are the key elements to include in your outline:
Title: Provide a title for your paper that reflects your thesis statement.
Thesis Statement: Clearly state your thesis, which defines the argument you will make in your paper.
Topic Sentence: Begin with a topic sentence that introduces the main point of your essay. This sentence should ideally be the first in your paper.
Supporting Evidence/Arguments: After the topic sentence, list the supporting evidence or arguments that back up your main point. These can take the form of examples, statistics, facts, quotations, or anecdotes. Ensure that each piece of evidence directly relates to your topic sentence.
Body Outline: Following the presentation of evidence, provide analysis or explanations that help your reader understand the significance of the evidence in relation to your main point. Explain how the evidence supports your argument and what conclusions can be drawn from it.
Concluding Sentence: End your essay with a concluding sentence that summarizes your thesis statement and highlights how your arguments have proven it.
Works Cited Page: Include the story you are analyzing, along with any research sources you plan to use in your paper. This page should adhere to proper citation formats.
Remember that your research paper must focus on a piece of literature from Modules 1-4, and you should apply one of the literary schools of criticism to build and support your argument. Please take a moment to review the grading rubric to understand the specific criteria by which your work will be evaluated.
This outline will serve as the foundation for your research paper, which you will develop and refine over the upcoming modules (Modules 2-4). It will help you stay organized and ensure that your paper has a clear and logical structure
