Project 1: Advice Essay on Behavior Change (MLA Style)
Synopsis
Purpose—To inform a general audience about how to establish and maintain good habits
Sources— Must use two out of the three provided and may not exceed five total
Length— Must be 750-1,000 words
Formatting/Documentation—Must follow MLA guidelines
Tone/Style—Must be formal and objective (no “I” and “you”)
Partial draft due—Must be submitted by 11 PM on Friday, 6/18 (corrected from the 11th on 6/8)
Final draft due—Must be submitted by 11 PM on Sunday, 6/27
Prompt
We set goals in all areas of our lives: our health, our relationships, our finances, our jobs, our careers, and our families. To meet our goals, whatever they are, we must form good habits and avoid bad ones, but this is hard work, especially if we go about the process without concrete strategies, trusting our success to sheer willpower alone. The good news is that there is plenty of advice available about effective behavior change, about how to form good habits and maintain them. We do not have to blindly will ourselves into positive behavioral change; we can make informed, deliberate, and strategic choices to change our lives for the better.
For your first major project for our course, write an essay that offers advice to a general audience about making a positive behavioral change. In addition to drawing on your own ideas, you must also show me that you can work with sources by incorporating material from at least two out of the three I’ve provided for you. You may incorporate other sources into the paper, as long as you do not exceed five total sources. You must document source material in MLA style. This means you need MLA style in-text citations for all material you directly quote, paraphrase, and summarize from sources. This also means that you need to have an MLA style Works Cited list. In total, your essay must be 750 to 1,000 words long. Your tone and style throughout the essay should be formal and polished. Do not use “I” or “you” in the essay.
Provided Sources
You must use at least two of these in your essay.
This source is an excerpt of a book chapter, provided for free by the author himself. In your bibliography, cite the source as a regular complete book:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/jamesclear/Atomic+Habits/Atomic_Habits_-_Chapter_1_Excerpt.pdf
This source is a work from a website. In your bibliography, cite it the source as a work from website: https://theconversation.com/how-to-use-habit-science-to-help-you-keep-your-new-years-resolution-129286
This source is a work from a website that is a reprinted excerpt from a book: https://ideas.ted.com/how-you-can-use-the-power-of-celebration-to-make-new-habits-stick/. Your textbook does not give advice about how to cite such as a source (a reprinted excerpt), so please use this citation in your bibliography if you use this source:
Fogg, B.J. “How You Can Use the Power of Celebration to Make New Habits Stick.” TED, TED Conferences, 06 Jan. 2020, ideas.ted.com/how-you-can-use-the-
power-of-celebration-to-make-new-habits-stick/. Excerpt. Originally published in Tiny Habits: The Small Changes that Change Everything. Houghton Mifflin, 2019. Accessed 26 Mar. 2020. < Update in your own citation.
Steps
The process to complete Project 1 spans weeks three through five.
Finish reading this assignment sheet, including the rubric, so that you understand how you will be graded.
Brainstorm on your own, without researching anything and without reading the sources that have been provided for you. Take at least thirty minutes to jot down your own ideas about what you think is good advice about what it takes to form and maintain good habits. Take stock of your own thoughts first before you consult with others.
Now that you have a sense of your own ideas, take a look at the required sources. Read them. I recommend that you print the sources out, grab a pen, and annotate (take notes on) them. As you read, pay attention to how the advice from experts corresponds to your own. Do their ideas support any of yours? Do they bring new ideas to the table that are worth including in your paper? Mark parts of the sources you may want to quote, paraphrase, or summarize in your own paper.
Take the reading quizzes on the sources that have been provided for you. You must complete these quizzes in Week 3, before 11 PM on Sunday, 6/13.
Now circle back to your original ideas. Was there an idea of your own that you did not find any support for in the required sources? Would your ideas benefit from having support from a source? Remember, source material often strengthens the validity of your insight in the minds of your readers. If you need research to support your idea, do that research now.
At this point, you have quite a bit of ideas to work with, including your own and those from sources. Review all of your notes and decide which are the most significant ideas to include in your essay. I recommend that you focus only on three to four pieces of advice that you can explain in sufficient detail.
Now that you’ve decided what ideas you want to move forward with, draw up a basic outline for your own sake. Your outline can be a really simple list of main ideas and sub ideas in each paragraph. This outline will keep you on track as you draft.
Start drafting in whatever way works for you. You can take one paragraph at a time over a few days or knock out a full draft in one sitting. However you do it, be sure that you cite your sources as you draft. Don’t leave documentation as the last thing you do. Students who do this sometimes run into plagiarism issues because they can’t remember what came from sources and what were their own ideas. Avoid this problem by citing as you write!
Submit a draft (it must be at least three paragraphs) in Week 4 by 11 PM on Friday, 6/18. I will comment on your draft over the weekend, and my comments will focus on ideas, organization, and documentation. You will take this feedback into consideration as you finish the paper.
I recommend completing a full draft in Week 5 by Friday, June 25, and then carefully revising and proofreading it. I recommend you do this by reading a hard copy out loud. (Personally, I find my own errors better when I’m not looking at a screen, and I hear awkward phrasing better when I read aloud.)
After polishing your draft, submit your essay in Week 5 by 11 PM on Sunday, 6/27.
Recommended Structure:
Introduction
Introduce the broad topic in a way that is relevant and engaging for your audience.
Include a thesis statement at the end of the introduction. Your thesis statement should summarize your advice about good habits. A basic thesis statement you can work with is this one: “People wanting to form better habits should X, Y, and Z.” In this case, x, y, and z represent distinct pieces of advice that will be elaborated on further in the essay.
Body
Focus one body paragraph around the first key piece of advice from your thesis.
Focus another body paragraph around the next piece of advice from your thesis.
You get the idea . . .
Conclusion
Review your main ideas without repeating them verbatim.
Reflect on their significance in the bigger picture.
Support
If you have any questions at all during this project, please email me! You can bounce ideas off of me, ask me questions about citation, show me an outline—anything.
Evaluation
The final draft of the assignment counts 20%* of your final grade in the course. In assessing your work, I will use the holistic rubric below.
A (100 – 90)
The “A” paper does a good job meeting its informative purpose for the audience, but this paper stands out in the quality of its ideas or the sophistication of its style. It offers a clear thesis statement in the introduction, develops the thesis in a coherent and engaging manner in the body, and ties everything together in the conclusion. The writer uses at least two of the provided sources and does not exceed five. The sources’ language and/or ideas are correctly integrated into the essay and do not overwhelm the writer’s own voice and insights. The writer’s prose is carefully edited and appropriate for the audience. There are virtually no errors with editing, MLA document formatting, or MLA documentation.
B (89 -80)
The “B” paper does a good job meeting its informative purpose for the audience. Overall, it is a solid effort. The “B” paper sufficiently develops the thesis in an organized manner. The writer uses at least two of the provided sources and does not exceed. The writer correctly integrates and cites direct quotations, paraphrases, and summaries from sources. The writer’s prose is carefully edited and appropriate for the audience. There may be minor issues with editing, MLA document formatting, or MLA documentation.
C (79 – 70)
The “C” paper responds to the prompt, but it may struggle with clarity, organization, editing, source use and/or documentation (though the source documentation problems are not tantamount to plagiarism). Even with these missteps, however, the essay meets the goals of the assignment, and readers can understand what the writer wants to say.
D (69 – 60)
The “D” paper is unsatisfactory. Even though it does represent some kind of effort to respond to the prompt, the “D” paper struggles with clarity or organization, making it difficult to follow. The “D” paper also struggles with integrating and documenting sources. The “D” paper does not show that the writer has sufficient knowledge of how to write papers using sources.
F (59 – 0)
The “F” paper has significant problems with many areas: content, organization, mechanics, formatting, and documentation. *Essays with egregious plagiarism will earn Fs, possibly zeroes.*
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