Short essay

This essay will be submitted in two steps. The first submission is due in class on September 24. It does not have to be submitted through SafeAssign. We will work on revising the graded first essays in class on October 1. The second, revised version is due in class on October 8. This final version must be submitted through SafeAssign on Blackboard. The final version of the essay will be graded only after the essay has been submitted both in paper and through SafeAssign.

Write a short, argumentative essay of two pages. Essays shorter than one and a half pages or longer than three pages will be returned unread and ungraded.

Your essay must use the Times New Roman font, 12-point in size. There must be one inch (2.5 cm) margins on all four sides of the essay. The essay must have double-spaced lineation. The essay must include a separate page for a Works Cited list (which is not included in the page count). The essay should not have a title page. The essay should be justified on the left margin only: no full justification.

Your essay must follow the Modern Language Association (MLA) bibliographic, citation, and presentation guidelines. You can consult the Purdue Online Writing Lab for information about using MLA format. See especially the example essay and the sample Works Cited page they have on their site.

Choose one book, poem, story, song, symphony, concerto, opera, movie, television show, or computer game that you like. Pretend that many people in our (Canadian) society disapprove of the work. For example, pretend that Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off” is generally thought to be a poor song that people should not bother listening to; or, pretend that many people think Minecraft is a waste of time that is void of anything valuable for our youth. Write an essay that defends the work you have chosen against a general negative sentiment. (Don’t make up charges against the work, and don’t use actual charges either: just defend it against a general disapproval.)

For this assignment, you must use one secondary source and you should not use more than three. The secondary source should be directly or indirectly about the work you have chosen to defend (it should not be the work itself). You may use Wikipedia or another web resource if you wish. You may also quote from and/or refer directly to the work you are discussing in your essay.