Essay One Assignment
English 111, Professor Newmark

Due: Wednesday, September 5
Required length: Three pages

The most important piece of information I can give you about this essay is that you are NOT supposed to answer a question in this essay, or offer an argument with a thesis, but rather you are supposed to ASK a question and analyze different possible answers based on summaries of different positions.

Follow the models in your textbook on pages 22-26. Rather than using the textbook’s prompt – about automobiles and fossil fuels – you will choose one of the topics below. Follow the guidelines for “Option 2” on page 22. Then read the student’s sample essay (Brittany Tinker) on pages 23-24. Use her essay only as a model. Continue to follow the guidelines on pages 25-26, for showing why this issue is problematic and significant. Your essay should not answer a question; it should pose one. Your question will be one of the following:

1. To paraphrase Walt Whitman’s question, is the literature (short stories, poems, novels) we receive from other countries applicable to present-day America? His question was, “Of the great poems receiv’d from abroad and from the ages, and today enveloping and penetrating America, is there one that is consistent with these United States, or essentially applicable to them as they are and are to be?”

2. Following Dorothy Winsor’s discussion in “Engineering Writing/Writing Engineering,” is “engineering knowledge” (which concerns “useful objects”) valued more highly in our culture than written knowledge?

Please be sure to:
• Write three complete pages
• Follow MLA guidelines for format
• Stay away from offering an argument – a thesis – in your essay
• Take a balanced view of the issue, using equal space for both the “yes” and “no” sides
• Discuss why this question is significant and problematic
• Steer clear of the grammar “no-no’s” we discussed in class