3-4 pages paper

HW due on friday

HW due on monday

CriticalResponse
Hong/English 122

Essay #1: Critical Review Essay

15% of your final grade

Due dates: Consult your course schedule

For this short paper, I would like for you to write a 3-4 page critical review of an essay we have read for class. What is a critical review? It’s a paper that demonstrates your comprehension of the essay’s main points and provides an opinion about how effective you think the essay is (summary + evaluation). So, keep in mind that this is not asking you for a long summary; rather, you should begin with an accurate summary that leads into your evaluation about whether the author is successful with his/her argument. A successful critical response should provide the reader with your opinion about the essay’s effectiveness, and offer an analysis of different aspects of the essay.

Some starting points:

Keep these elements in mind. These are not questions you need to answer, but you might consider focusing on some of them.
· Rhetorical triangle: audience, purpose, author – how does the author address each side of the rhetorical triangle? How effectively does he/she do this?
· Voice: What type of voice (formal, casual, humorous, etc) does the author employ, and how effective is this in relaying his/her message?
· Style: Does the author employ particular stylistic devices, such as figurative language, storytelling, or analogies to communicate his/her point?
· Evidence: What kind of evidence does the author use to build up his/her argument? Is there anything deficient about any of them?

· Assumptions: What assumptions does the author make about the audience’s values and beliefs?

Your short essay should contain a thesis – an opinion about how effective you find the essay you’re evaluating to be. Your body paragraphs should address a specific strategy that the author employs in the original essay, and offer your viewpoint about how effective this is.

Form

· Your essay should demonstrate your knowledge of MLA in-text parenthetical citation knowledge for this essay, and include a proper works cited page
· Your essay should make use of the semicolon

Essays you may use for this assignment:

· Just Walk On By

· Sixty-Nine Cents

· Commencement Speech by David Foster Wallace
· The Second Shift
*All essays can be found in The Blair Reader

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