Purdue Owl Website Contains What Is Your View On

LENGTH / SOURCE REQUIREMENTS: (Essays that do not meet minimum requirements may not be accepted.)

The final draft of your essay must be at least FOUR full pages (not more than six), not including your works cited page.
You must use at least TWO of the following sources:
- Steinberg
- Suttie
- Rifkin
- “Does Empathy Guide” (Room for Debate)
- Smith
- Brennan et al.
- Shanker

Introduction

MOTIVATES the reader to read on through an engaging lead-in strategy
INFORMS the reader with necessary background and context (e.g., definition, summary of what people are saying, overview of a trend, statistic showing scope of problem, etc.)
FOCUSES the argument and FORECASTS where it is going by clearly stating the thesis as “one provocative thought.”

Thesis

Thesis conveys “one provocative thought,” reflecting the complexity of the issue.
Ideas are unified through clear logical relationships such as subordination.

Sources & Examples

You provide enough evidence to back up your claims.
You have used at least TWO different sources in your paper from the ones listed above. (You may use additional outside sources, but they do not count toward this requirement. They should be cited properly, both within the essay and on the works cited page.)
You have done some “diving” into specific examples from personal experience and/or sources and/or observations to illustrate your points.

ABC CyclesBody paragraphs are structured to:

ASSERT one arguable claim as the topic sentence (i.e., the first sentence of each body paragraph should be one of the claims we broke out of your thesis during our conference)
BRING IN at least one quotation and/or specific examples to support the claim
CONNECT the support to the claim

Signal phrases

Each quotation is introduced with a signal phrase that provides relevant information on the “guest speaker” who is about to “speak” in the quote.
You have prepared the reader for the quoted words by providing necessary background or context

In-text citations and works cited page

In-text citations are handled correctly in MLA style.
- Use the following checklist to help you: WRITER’S TOOLBOX: Checklist for Quotations in MLA Style
Works cited page matches the sources cited in the essay. To do your works cited page, copy and paste the contents of Works Cited for Empathy into its own, final page of your essay, and then delete the sources you didn’t use. If you used outside sources, be sure to include them. The Purdue OWL website contains information to help you create citations for these sources. Be sure to alphabetize.

Language, Style & Formatting

Paper shows careful attention to editing and proofreading
Sentences are clear and graceful.

Later, when you produce the final draft of your argument…

…you will include a works cited page as the last page of the essay. It should include ONLY those sources you actually used (cited) in the essay you wrote.

To create your works cited page, you can:

Start by centering the words “Works Cited” at the top of a new page.
Copy and paste the entries for the sources you used from the document provided here onto your works cited page.
Make sure the sources are listed in alphabetical order.
Make sure you keep the formatting (double-spaced throughout, hanging indent).
If you use any outside sources, add citations for them and make sure you alphabetize them. You can find information here (Links to an external site.) on how to create MLA-style citations.