HOW:

1. Your instructor will assign a specific short story or poem (or stories/poems) for this evaluation project.

2. Read and reflect on the story or poem and decide upon a single aspect you believe makes it interesting or special. For example, you might consider one of these elements for a short story evaluation:

• story’s development of a particular character;
• author’s use of metaphor in the story;
• story’s use of sensory details to affect mood.

3. BRAINSTORM: Once you have chosen about which literary task you will argue, brainstorm and make notes about your evidence–parts of the story or poem in the form of quotations, paraphrases, or summary–you intend to use to prove how well the author succeeded.

4. THESIS: Write a thesis statement representing your ideas about the selected component. The thesis must be clearly written, provide a debatable position, and offer an appropriate qualifier(s). Here’s an example: “In the book, The Girls with the Dragon Tattoo, Stieg Larsson, the author, uses detail, dialog, and plot brilliantly to develop the character of Lisbeth Salander and make the reader care about what happens to her.”

5. RHETORICAL STRUCTURE:

a. In an introductory paragraph, summarize background information on the literary task and author; include your essay’s thesis statement as the last sentence of the introduction.

b. In each paragraph, write a topic sentence that connects to your thesis statement. Develop each paragraph with facts, details, examples, or reasons from the text to support each of your topic sentences.

c. Conclude your essay: Summarize the main points of your essay and explain how your conclusion connects to your thesis statement.

6. REVISE the entire document several times to ensure you have conveyed your thoughts clearly, you have developed your paragraphs with details, facts, reasons, examples or evidence, and you have shown logical transitions from one paragraph to the next.

7. EDIT: Print your essay and read it ALOUD to check your spelling, grammar, and punctuation.

APA Citation Basics: You need to cite the poem/story assigned by your instructor using correct APA format. If you are evaluating a single poem or story, cite the poem or story on the References page and in the first paragraph of the essay; if you use a direct quote, ensure you correctly cite it. If you are evaluating two poems or two stories, cite them on the References page and throughout the essay as needed. You will not need to conduct outside research for this assignment to support your evaluation.

The assignment also requires a properly formatted APA cover page. The assignment does not require an abstract.

Academic Format, Citation and Integrity Resources:

Please view this link to learn how to format in-text citations or make a references page:

https://guides.lib.unc.edu/citing-information/apa-in-text

Please view this link to learn what plagiarism is and how to avoid it:

http://subjectguides.lib.neu.edu/plagiarism