Close Readings: All close readings are to be completed by midnight on Fridays. Each week that you are assigned you will be required to write a short essay of 300-450 words in length. You will complete each of these on canvas. I will be grading these based on three criteria.
Thesis: You must make a strong claim that you will then
Support: I expect there to be solid text based evidence present in the form of quotations and paraphrase.
Organization, Style, Mechanics: While a stray comma, miss-spelled word, or errant noun-verb agreement wont be penalized, I expect solid academic work, consistent grammatical errors, poor writing, and botched citations will result in a lower grade.
I also expect focused work. You are trying to delve deep into a small piece of the text, not summarize the text as a whole. For prose pieces I want you to focus on only 8-12 continuous lines and for poetry 5-8 continuous lines. So no jumping around the text and cherry picking your favorite lines. The more that you can get out of the fewest number of words, the better. That said you will not automatically receive an A for choosing a shorter section. Section selection is part of the assignment, and being able to pick out an important piece of the larger body of work is a skill in itself. Youre also connecting your selected section to the piece as a whole. You arent expected to write about the selection in a vacuum.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/12/20/escape-from-spiderhead
