First Draft: (10 points) To get the 10 points, you must be in class on this date and have one typed, printed copy of your draft with you. It must be the full length, three complete pages. Also, on this day, if you tell your partner something that will help him/her to improve his/her essay, you will get extra credit.

Final Draft: (100 points)

 

For this three-page essay, you will define a term and then show how items fit your definition or do not fit it. Many arguments are based on the definition of a term. Choose a term that you know because I do not want you to do research for this first assignment. You will give the meaning of a term or phrase and explain it further with examples and stories.

The definition argument essay should have three parts: an introduction, a body of supporting details, and a conclusion. The sentence that tells the main idea in an essay is called the thesis statement. The thesis should be the last sentence in the introduction. Each body paragraph should have a topic sentence with clear transitions and should be unified with the main idea in the thesis. NOTE: If the essay does not have a thesis statement, it will FAIL. If you plagiarize sources, the essay will fail, BUT you do NOT need to use sources for this essay.

 

 

Topic Choices: Choose one of these topics:

· Success

· Home

· Good parent (or Mother or Father)

· Effective education techniques

· True teacher

· True friend

· Honor

· Family

· Security

· Courage/Bravery

· Vacation

· Topic of your choice as long as the essay is definition

 

DO NOT USE SOURCES FOR THIS ESSAY!

The Writing Process Examples—Invention (Brainstorming) and Informal Outline

INVENTION for Definition Essay—three examples

 

Family-mine traditional, mom, dad, brother, sisters, happy marriage.

Mine just husband, wife, no kids, happy marriage studetns who have adopted us

Not traditional family—sister, divorced, estranged form two adult knids, raised and adopted granddauthter

 

Success—doing what makes you happy, not making money

Not money, not fame

Happy job,

Good frieds

Good marriage

Do what wnt to in life

IBM—money and miserable, cry

Teaching, no money, not miserable, most of time, feel happy

 

 

INVENTION

 

Vacation—what it is to me

Who taught me that

What it is not

Examples of good vaction—Parents, scott and England, Belize

“ of bad vatation—Trevin

Passion for vactions

All states

Costa Rica, Belize, Bahamas, Mexico, Canada, Italy, France, Vatican City,

England, Scotland, Ireland—11

 

 

INFORMAL OUTLINE EXAMPLE

 

To me, vacation is not a time to rest, but a time to see everything I can see.

· Throughout childhood, I learned to vacation from my mom and dad.

· When I became an adult, I discovered that not all people vactioned like my family.

· I made the mistake of taking a horrible vaccaton with someone who had a very different definition of vacation than I had learned from my parents.

· Unlike this awful vacation, I have had many wonderful vacations with those who define vacation in a siilar way to me.

· As a result of my love for travel, I have been to all of the states in the United States and to amny foreign countries.

 

See these two files on Blackboard for examples of definition essays: definition draft vacation unedited and definition A good student.

 

 

WHAT YOU MUST TURN IN WITH THE DRAFT TO BE GRADED:

 

_____ Your final draft to be graded

_____ The grading rubric (which I will give you)

——— Draft that a tutor or other helper comment on (if you have one)

_____ The drafts that you partners read and their comments

_____ Your outline and thesis (that I have already graded)

______Your invention (that I have already graded)