English 101 essay insturction

A good way to start finding your own voice in academic writing is to incorporate your own interests into the research of others. That is, to basically say, “Here’s what so and so said about topic x. I’m going to add topic y to the mix and see what new ideas I can come up with.” The fancy name we give to this kind of writing is synthesis. You can think about it as putting people in conversation with one another. In the last assignment, “Working with Others’ Sources,” you selected three of Harari’s sources and began to work with them. In this assignment, you will add three of your own sources to three of Harari’s. The goal will be to see what interesting ideas you can come up with.

There are two steps to this assignment. The first step is select three of Harari’s sources that interest you (feel free to use the ones you previously used). The second step is to find three sources that can “speak” to Harari’s. They don’t have to be academic sources, but they should be compelling and credible. You might pick sources that relate to your academic major, your hobbies, or your community, for example. Then, write a 500-word, exploratory essay in which you put these six sources in conversation with each other. Your purpose for the essay is up to you. You can have some sources contradict each other, extend Harari’s ideas, point to new directions or applications for the ideas, and so forth. The essay doesn’t have to be formatted in any particular way, but I do want you to include all the information for each source that will allow me to track them down.

I have multiple goals for this assignment. The first is to have you practice informal research. The second is to practice developing your voice as a writer.

Out of a total of 20 points, 12 points will go to how you discuss each of the six sources you found (that is, do you cite and discuss each source), 3 points will go to the word count, and 5 points will go the quality of your ideas and writing. Although I’m not looking for brilliant ideas that will blow my mind, the essay should be thoughtfully written and submitted in .docx or .txt format.

Remember that the previous discussion board post explored how to go about finding sources and speculated about what kind of sources would fit well with Harari’s. It might be a good place to get some ideas.