Long Essay 1 ENG-L 204: Intro to Fiction ("Epic Kids"), Spring 2022

FORMAT

For those students taking this course for honors credit, your essay will take the multimodal form of an online, scrolling essay via Adobe Express. What does “multimodal” mean? It means your essay will weave together multiple forms of media to make its case. Depending on the issue you choose, you can embed powerful images, videos, headlines, community resources, and more alongside your textual argument. This collaboration of media can powerfully bring your essay to life for the audience, helping them appreciate its immediacy and relevance. While this is an analytical, academic essay that advances a thesis supported by close reading and research, it should be written for a broad audience. Think about the kids, teens, parents, teachers, and others who are familiar with the massive Harry Potter franchise. What do you see in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire that you want them to see? How can you motivate them to think critically about this theme, including its treatment in the novel and its real-world consequences?

If you are not taking this course for honors credit, you are still welcome to choose this multimodal format if you'd like. But you are also equally welcome to write your essay in a traditional document format (i.e., Word Doc or Google Doc).

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

While we are always working to develop the skills associated with our three overarching learning objectives outlined in the syllabus, this essay specifically focuses on the following.

SLO 1: Critically read and interpret fiction as well as scholarly and theoretical texts.

Your essay should demonstrate your ability to:

• Analyze the way the formal literary elements function within fiction, including plot, setting, characterization, point of view, narration, style, and language (SLO 1.3)
• Apply close-reading techniques to specific passages to reveal relationships in the language and details that drive the text’s meaning (SLO 1.4)
• Make claims about the way a piece of fiction (including both its text and subtext) addresses issues beyond its pages (this could include how a piece of fiction speaks to a general theme and/or how it responds to a specific issue of genre, culture, history, social movement, etc.) (SLO 1.5)

SLO 2: Write analytical arguments about fiction.

Your essay should demonstrate your ability to:

• Construct clear, effective, rigorously revised arguments supporting a central claim (SLO 2.1)
• Provide and analyze relevant evidence in support of claims (SLO 2.2)
• Use proper protocols and conventions of academic writing, including succinct prose, correctly citing sources according to MLA guidelines, and avoiding plagiarism (SLO 2.3)
• Demonstrate appropriate awareness of audience, including who your readers are and in what context they will be reading your work (SLO 2.4)

SHORT ESSAYS v. LONG ESSAYS

In L204, both Short Essays and Long Essays are formal pieces of academic writing. For both essays, you should block time on your calendar for working through the iterative writing process, including multiple rounds of planning, outlining, drafting, and revising. The difference between Short Essays and Long Essays isn't really length so much as depth.

The Short Essays ask you to choose a narrow focus and say more about less. In the Long Essays, you continue this skill of a narrow focus, but you add to it the ability to develop more depth. In other words, don't go wider, go deeper! The short essays helped you practice (a) choosing a narrow focus, + (b) writing about it succinctly (no fluff!). Now, you bring those skills into the Long Essay but you choose a heftier topic that requires more work to effectively develop your argument. Keep in mind that development and depth in your essay come from:

• digging into your main claims and finding smaller and more sophisticated sub-claims that are worth pursuing
• working more carefully with outside sources to establish the interpretive context framing your interpretation and its significance
• unpacking your evidence even more carefully and/or finding complicating pieces of evidence

EVALUATION

Your essay will evaluated according to the following grading rubric:

• CLAIMS/ARGUMENT [25%]: Essay delivers a central analytical, interpretive claim (i.e., non-obvious central claim) about the way the novel (including both its text and subtext) addresses a specific current issue beyond its pages; moreover, the essay persuasively demonstrates this theme's current relevance [SLO 1.5]. Beyond the central claim, the essay as a whole delivers clear, effective, rigorously revised arguments supporting the central claim [SLO 2.1]. Finally, the essay clearly and productively analyzes the way one or more specific formal literary elements function within the fiction to develop this theme [SLO 1.3].
• OUTSIDE SOURCE(S) [25%]: Essay uses at least one secondary source in a meaningful, productive way that contributes to framing an intellectual discussion about fiction [SLO 2.5].
• EVIDENCE [25%]: Essay provides and analyzes relevant evidence in support of claims [SLO 2.2]. It applies close-reading techniques to specific passages/scenes/details to reveal relationships that drive the text’s meaning [SLO 1.4].
• AUDIENCE/WRITING [25%]: If multimodal, this essay incorporates media choices that directly and meaningfully support and develop the central argument [SLO 2.2]. Whether multimodal or traditional, the essay demonstrates an effective awareness of its two audiences: academic and public; that means it avoids unnecessary jargon and uses clear, focused language and an organized, logical structure that's accessible to readers outside academia, even as it uses proper protocols and conventions of academic writing, including succinct prose, correctly citing sources according to MLA guidelines, and avoiding plagiarism [SLO 2.3, 2.4].

IMPORTANT NOTES

• DEADLINES: As we've discussed all semester, writing is an "iterative" or "recursive" process, meaning you can't produce your best work in one sitting. Rather, carefully considered work takes time and bears repeated reflection, revision, and new iterations. Over the next two weeks, you will have a series of iterative deadlines outlined in this chart.
• HOW-TO INSTRUCTIONS: Download this PDF for step-by-step instructions guiding you through creating your multimodal essay in Adobe Express.
• TECH SUPPORT: If you run into trouble, take a deep breath and don't worry! Nobody expects you to be an Adobe expert. But keep in mind: digital tools structure the mediated world in which we live and work, so if you can cultivate an open-mindedness to trying new technologies and the bravery to experiment + problem-solve, then you're empowering yourself for long-term success. For help with Adobe Express, you can consult the Adobe Creative Cloud Express Help Page as well as search the web and YouTube for tips and tutorials. It's a very intuitive tool, and you can certainly opt to keep things fairly simple.
• PRIVACY: Although this essay is intended for a broad, public audience, you are not required to officially publish your essay to the web. If you do decide to publish to the web (which is great!), be sure that you do not put any L204-based information on your essay. Under FERPA, you have the right to fully protect your academic information, and that even includes keeping private which classes you're taking. Thus, to keep your academic information private, you can simply publish your essay without making any reference to our class (the same way you might publish anything to the web outside of your classes).