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Argument Paper Assignments

Contents:
Length | Due Dates | Content | Format | Plagiarism
Appendix: Argument Paper Questions | Good Questions

GUIDELINES FOR WRITING ARGUMENT PAPERS
You are responsible for writing two Argument Papers in this class.  These writing exercises are designed to complement one another and build skills which will help you to analyze and interpret literary texts in a more careful and thoughtful manner.  If, at any point, you have questions about your papers or would like to talk, please feel free to contact your discussion leader.  You may also seek help from the course's undergraduate intern or the Writing Tutorial Services located at Ballantine Hall 206.  (If you go to the Writing Tutorial Services, an advance appointment is usually necessary.)
 

A) Length:

4-5 pages (no more, no less)

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B) First Drafts required for First Argument Papers

You need to complete a first draft of your first argument paper.  You are not required to turn in a first draft of your second argument paper.  No student is allowed to turn in their second argument paper before they receive comments back on the first draft of their first paper.  For example, if you wish to write on the first two texts we study in this class, you must receive comments back on your draft of The Life of Washington before you turn in your paper on Charlotte Temple.  The point of the drafting process is to help you refine your understanding of the text you are interpreting and the writing assignment itself

A possible 20 points are assigned for the completion of your first draft. The draft should be a completed paper from beginning to end.   Points are assigned in proportion to the level of effort evident in executing the draft.  If it is clear that the draft was not proofread or thoughtfully constructed, points will be deducted.

The copy which is returned to you by your AI with his or her comments then needs to be attached to the final copy of the paper you turn in later.  10 points will be automatically deducted if you do not attach your first draft to your final draft.
 

C) Due Dates:
These argument papers are due at clearly defined intervals during the semester.  The due dates are as follows:

Text	First Drafts Due	Due Dates
Life of Washington	Sept. 14	Sept. 28 or before
Charlotte Temple	Sept. 14	Sept. 28 or before
Quaker City	Sept. 21	Oct. 5 or before
Ten Nights in a Bar-Room	Sept. 26	Oct. 5 or before
"Miggles"	no first drafts required	Oct. 12 or before
The Secret of the Old Clock	no first drafts required	Oct. 12 or before
Peyton Place	no first drafts required	Oct. 26 or before
The Godfather	no first drafts required	Nov. 9 or before
Misery	no first drafts required	Nov. 30 or before
Harry Potter	no first drafts required	Dec. 7 or before

 
No late papers are accepted.  If you miss a deadline, just move on to write about another text.

EVERYONE MUST TURN IN AT LEAST ONE ARGUMENT PAPER BY OCTOBER 5TH.  Each final draft must be accompanied by an annotated copy of your first draft. {An “annotated copy” is a copy which includes the comments on your previous draft made by your AI.}  Please staple the two copies together with the final draft on top.

Upon occasion, your discussion section leader may ask for a copy of your argument paper.  This link tells you how to provide that copy:


How to send your argument paper electronically as an attachment

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D) Content:
Each paper will be built around a question of your own formulation.  Past classes have generally agreed that the toughest step in the process of writing the formal paper is the a formulation of a successful question.  (For help, see the appendix at the bottom of this web page.)  Obviously, the key is to come up with something that is narrow enough to fit the parameters of the assignment, yet broad enough to truly make a significant statement about the text and your understanding of it.  A few things to consider:

i) Your initial question is crucial.  A good question can do a great deal of your for you.  It provides you both with your thesis and the organizing principles around which you organize your paper.  It is critical that you have an engaging question and then make an argument for a specific answer to that question.

ii) In answering your question, BE SURE TO USE AND CITE specific textual evidence from the text you are discussing.  This means quotations from the texts and page numbers for those quotations.  Avoid plot summary, but do not avoid references to the text.  Stay close to the text in answering your question.  Avoid generalizations.

iii) Try to write about texts which engage your interest.  It is practically impossible to write a quality paper about a work which did not challenge you in some manner.

iv) These papers ask you to crystallize your thoughts and express them concisely.  Struggle to find what you consider the heart/soul of the text at hand and begin there.  Of course, this is not an easy task, but make sure you are making a significant statement about the work.  If you choose to elucidate a "minor" detail of the narrative, make sure you connect it to dominant themes throughout the text.

v) Courage and/or ambition are valued.  An ambitious, but conceptually flawed paper is usually rewarded, while a worn topic rarely captures my attention.  Avoid merely restating class discussion.  If you do pick up a thread from what was said in class, make sure you push it beyond what has been recited in class.  Go out on a limb, but do it imaginatively, not recklessly.  Always use the text as the scaffolding for your argument.

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E) Format:
(An average or "C" paper, should have all of the following characteristics.  The lack of any of these will affect your grade.)  Pay close attention to the following format instructions:

i) a title page (this should include your name, my name, the date, the course number, and of course, the paper's title)

ii) Your paper's first page should display your initial question at its top. Then type a line across the page.  Then proceed to write the rest of your paper in standard essay form.  The thesis statement concerning your central argument (what you are going to prove in your paper) should be in your opening paragraph ? and it should be an answer to your paper’s initial question.

iii) type your paper

iv) double-space your pages

v) number each page (not including the title page)

vi) pages should be held together by paper clip or staple

vii) PROOFREAD your paper (if you give the impression that your paper has not been proofread carefully, you will get a "D" no matter how good the ideas are.)  Proofreading is simply an assumed characteristic of any average paper.  Proper editing, spelling, punctuation, and other mechanics are essential to any good piece of writing.

viii) leave margins at the top, bottom, and on both sides


ix) use 12 point Times New Roman font for your paper


x) long quotations should be single spaced and indented on either side

xi) Always keep a second copy of your paper in case the one you turned in gets lost or damaged.  In the case of such a misfortune, you will be held responsible for being able to submit another copy of your paper.

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F) Plagiarism:
i) Plagiarism, simply defined, is taking credit for ideas or work that is not your own.  It involves including ideas or phrases in your paper which did not originate with you and then not giving credit to their source. When in doubt, always cite sources for material which is not your own.  It is fine to use the work of others if you credit it as their work.

ii) If you are citing quotations from a one or two texts from our class reading, simply place the author's last name and the page number of the text in parentheses after the quotation.  Never have a quotation in your paper which does not have some sort of page number or citation along with it.

iii) If you are using secondary sources, please footnote the source giving: author, title, publisher, copyright date, and pertinent page numbers.  With this kind of complete footnote, bibliographies will not be necessary.

iv) If you plagiarize in this course, you will fail the course.

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APPENDIX ON YOUR ARGUMENT PAPER QUESTION

Creating a good question is the single most important -- and probably most difficult -- part of writing an argument paper.  Below, there are some guidelines designed to help facilitate the creation of good argument paper questions.

One helpful process for developing good questions can be broken into four parts, remembered by the acronym O.L.E.F.

OBSERVE

Essential to any good interpretation of a literary text is the process of simple observation.  You need to take time to read the text carefully - and actively.  Write in the margins.  Diagram the relationships of the characters to one another.  Puzzle out the plot.  Pay close attention to details and larger themes.  Simply put: what seems to be present in the text?  Once this is determined, you can move on to questioning why it might be there.

LIST

Take these observations and begin to make lists.  Lists are most helpful when they are specific.  Look for distinct moments in the text and then include the page numbers where these moments occur in your lists.

Part of this exercise involves determining what kind of lists will be most helpful for the specific text you are reading.  You do not need to make lists which include everything, but lists which include major, or intriguing, elements of the book are usually the most useful.  Make up your own lists/categories/units of analysis.  Here are some examples of lists students have used in the past.  Remember, it is not an exhaustive list in and of itself.  Use it as a catalyst to forming a few lists of your own for the specific book about which you wish to write a paper:  

Sample Lists/Categories/Units of Analysis
Professions	Geographic Settings	Instances of Reading
Old women	Changes in Weather	Eavesdropping
Bachelors	Methods of Transportation	Hobbies
Young children	Self-destructive behavior	Ways of dying
Languages used	Education	Kitchens
Dialects	Etiquette	Important Emotions
Acts of violence	Mother/Daughter relationships	Parts of the body
Virtues	Father/Son relationships	Colors
Vices	Types of buildings	Dishonesty
Heroes	Animals and their uses	Marriages
Villains	Dietary habits	Crimes
Diseases	Widows	Drugs

EVALUATE

Once you have made your lists, focus on elements of those lists which interest you the most.  If it interests you, it will probably interest others.  You want to pick moments which lend themselves to the possibility of teaching something surprising and engaging about the text itself.

Take a moment, a character, an interchange from your list and then see how well you can broaden its significance in terms of some larger theme or issue found in the text.  Some examples of such broader connections might include a list of the various houses to be found in Uncle Tom’s Cabin.  Proceed then to think about how these houses are used in the novel and what larger themes they touch.  Eventually, you might think about how a character such as Uncle Tom spends time in a number of houses.  This can be further refined to thinking about what message Stowe might be wishing to communicate by having Uncle Tom move from the various houses in the order she chooses.  Another example might be the various languages used in the Sheik.  Exploring who uses, and how they use, the different languages within the book can lead to issues connected with larger themes such as gender roles and national identity.

FOCUS

You need to balance the extent of your question with the constraints of the length of your paper.  Thus, questions need to be focused.  Such focus is usually best obtained by centering your paper around a specific character or two, a specific incident in the text, a specific portion of the text such as a chapter, or a specific theme.  These are short papers and thus require a great deal of focus on one central argument.  Do not pick broad questions that require more evidence and argumentation than you can provide in the space allotted.

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Good Questions:

There are certain key elements that good argument questions usually share:

1) Avoid yes/no questions - formulate questions that focus on what’s, how’s and why’s.
2) Avoid overly general questions.
3) Always add something new to a topic previously addressed in discussion or lecture.
4) Choose questions that link specific textual elements to the text’s larger themes and concerns.
5) Choose questions which teach the reader something new, and potentially surprising, about the text.


Examples of good questions:

-How does Rowson’s view of individuals as victims of circumstance undercut the intended moral message of her story?
-What role does sexual potency have in determining the quality of leadership exercised by different male characters in The Godfather?
-What larger implications might Harry's great wealth have on Rowling's critique of greed and consumerism in Harry Potter and the
Sorcerer's Stone?


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