Final Paper Project

Post your Final Paper Project here, the reflection on writing that essay, and anything else related that you want to include. Here is the assignment:



Writing 100 / Fall 2014 / Darling
Final Paper Project
Your task in completing this project is to write a paper that takes on the larger themes of community and citizenship and engage with visual and other media.  You will need to focus in on an issue, idea, element/example of social activism or social engagement, and decide what it is you want to say about this to your audience. You might focus on a particular social/economic/environmental or other issue, an idea about (or example of) social activism, a type of social engagement, or a specific idea or argument that connects some of the texts and topics that we have discussed over the semester. The paper will be stronger if you work from your own personal interest, experience, and reflection. Because the project will be “published” on the web (in your eportfolio), it can include graphics, images, video, links to other web pages, and/or other media. Sources used can be from class readings or other, and you may use interviews or surveys if you choose.  You should think about issues or topics relevant to our contemporary world and with which you can engage and reflect upon. Be creative and make it into your personal writing project.
To begin, you should think about how you might define and discuss Community and Citizenship. Next, think about a specific topic, idea, aspect, example that you are interested in and what kinds of things you might have to say about that. For example, you might write about a time that you volunteered in a soup kitchen through which experience you learned about hunger or poverty from a perspective you hadn’t considered before; you could then focus your paper on this issue in contemporary America and also what individuals can do to help. Or you might think about the current election season and wonder why so many people are unhappy with the state of the state/country/world, but at the same time so many people don’t vote or participate in government. You might consider answering some questions like: what is the relation between citizenship, voting, and social engagement? How might citizenship go beyond concepts like “patriotism” to think more about kinds of activism that can make society better for more people? Should citizens be responsible to participate in society? How? What are the effects and consequences of low voter turnout? What would society look like if more people voted and participated actively in their communities, got involved in local and larger issues and causes?

Writing the Paper:
You have a wide variety of options for writing this paper. This means that you also need to spend a lot of time freewriting, drafting, organizing, and focusing. As you pre-write, draft, revise, rewrite, remember to pay attention to the following:

Focus: What, specifically, are you going to focus on in your paper? Spend some time introducing the “topic” and explaining your relationship to this topic, what you want to say about it and why, and what you want your readers to learn. What message, point, main idea do you want to get across?

Organization: What kinds of information, examples, evidence, and sources are you going to use in this paper? How do you want to present the information so that the paper is interesting, effective, and accessible for readers? In what order will you present your points (paragraphs, body of the paper)? How do you see order and organization as important for the particular body of content that you want to include in the paper?

Development: How will you develop examples, evidence, and reflections in the paper as the support for your main idea/focus? What kind of tone, language, style of writing, etc. are you going to use? Will your essay be narrative or more academic, informative with a particular message, or persuasive in some way? How will the various types of content (evidence and examples, etc.) contribute to the “personal, cultural analysis” nature of the paper?

Coherence: How does the paper flow from beginning to end, within each paragraph, and within each sentence? Work on grammatical and syntactical cohesion at all levels. If you have problems with focus and clarity in your paragraphs or sentences, then you may need to go back and refocus the whole paper from the beginning.


The final paper should have 7 pages of written text as well as whatever additional elements you want to include. Any sources should be cited in MLA format in the text and in a bibliography at the end.

Due Dates: See Syllabus for due dates of proposal, drafts, revisions

Add a one page reflection after the bibliography page: Discuss your writing process and anything you learned about yourself, the world, the writing and construction of an argument/thesis-focused paper that you didn’t know before.


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