Additional Writing Assignments

Instructor's Notes

To assign individual Additional Writing Assignments, click “Browse More Resources for this Unit,” or go to the Resources panel.

  1. Write an evaluation of a college course you have taken or are now taking. Analyze its strengths and weaknesses. Does the instructor present the material clearly, understandably, and engagingly? Are the assignments pointed and purposeful? Is the textbook helpful, readable, and easy to use? Does this course give you your money’s worth?

  2. Evaluate an unfamiliar magazine, an essay in this textbook, a proposal being considered at work, a source you’ve read for a college class, an academic Web site about an area that interests you, or a possible source for a research project. Specify your criteria for evaluation, and identify the evidence that supports your judgments.

  3. Evaluate a product that you might want to purchase. Establish criteria that matter to you—and to the other prospective purchasers who might turn to you for a recommendation. Consider, for example, the product’s features, construction, utility, beauty, color, cost, or other criteria that matter to purchasers. Make a clear recommendation to your audience: buy or not.

  4. Visit a restaurant, museum, or tourist attraction, and evaluate it for others who might consider a visit. Present your evaluation as an essay, an article for a travel or lifestyle magazine, or a travel blog that informs about local sites and evaluates what they offer. Specify your criteria, and include plenty of detail to create the local color your audience will expect.

  5. Source Assignment. Read these two poems on a similar theme, and decide which seems to you the better poem. In a brief essay, set forth your evaluation. Some criteria to apply might be the poet’s choice of concrete, specific words that appeal to the senses and his awareness of his audience. Quote, paraphrase, summarize, and accurately credit supporting evidence from the poems.

For more on responding to literature, see Ch. 13.

211

Putting in the Seed

ROBERT FROST (1874–1963)

You come to fetch me from my work tonight

When supper’s on the table, and we’ll see

If I can leave off burying the white

Soft petals fallen from the apple tree

(Soft petals, yes, but not so barren quite,

Mingled with these, smooth bean and wrinkled pea),

And go along with you ere you lose sight

Of what you came for and become like me,

Slave to a springtime passion for the earth.

How Love burns through the Putting in the Seed

On through the watching for that early birth

When, just as the soil tarnishes with weed,

The sturdy seedling with arched body comes

Shouldering its way and shedding the earth crumbs.

Between Our Folding Lips

T. E. BROWN (1830–1897)

Between our folding lips

God slips

An embryon life, and goes;

And this becomes your rose.

We love, God makes: in our sweet mirth

God spies occasion for a birth.

Then is it His, or is it ours?

I know not—He is fond of flowers.

  1. Visual Assignment. Select one of the following pairs of images, and examine their features carefully. Write an essay that evaluates the items portrayed in the images or the images themselves. Specify for your audience your criteria for judging. Observe carefully to identify enough visual detail to support your judgments.

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    image
    Church at Auvers-sur-Oise, France (2002).
    Pierre-Franck Colombier/Afp/Getty Images.
    image
    The Church in Auvers-sur-Oise (1890), painted by Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890).
    Buyenlarge/Hulton Fine Art Collection/Getty Images.
    image
    Designers and software engineers at work in a division of Sony Computer Entertainment, 1999.
    TWPhoto/Corbis.
    image
    People working in an open-plan office.
    Hannah Mentz/Corbis.