Hi everyone!
1. For my teaching artifact, I’d like to redesign a very classic essay assignment I give my students in ENG2850 – Great Works of Literature. It is a 1000-word essay on Candide, by Voltaire, which gives them four prompts (including a develop-your-own-topic one). There is no use of external sources for this essay; it is a rhetorical analysis only. The results on this assignment hasn’t been great, and students seem to have felt lost as to how to approach an academic essay, even though they are sophomores.

2. I would like to scaffold that assignment into more steps that help them break down the task and develop a good writing methodology that they can take beyond my course.
I am also condiering giving them more choice as to which book they choose to analyze, among the ones we have studied. The trouble is that there are few texts we read in full, hence my assigning this text and giving them only a choice of prompts on the same text. I did get sick of reading essay after essay on the same text, and no one chose to come up with their own prompts, so I may still offer more liberty next time and require them to do more research on texts we haven’t read in full.
Some tools I could use to scaffold this assignment are:
– StoryMap (they can build a visual map of their background research on the author and literary movement, or use it to trace a character’s journey);
– Slack channels (for peer-reviewing one another’s drafts and brainstorming ideas);
– A Google Doc (for building a group essay together maybe, though I’m unsure about that one, as we already use a Google Doc every week for presentations on the readings, and I’m not sure a group essay would really give students the opportunity to develop their individual writing skills. They do get another short essay in the semester, so maybe I could give them one essay to write in groups of 2-3 and one individual essay).
– I also want to reduce the amount of instructions on the essay pages of my website and give them advice more efficiently.
– Finally, I want to consider “ungrading” for this course (giving only feedback, but no grades, except the final grade required on the Baruch transcript. I have done that fro my ENG2150 and ENG2100 courses before, and it has removed a lot of pressure off both the students and I.
To determine their final grades, students keep track of their own work (just as I do keep my own records, where I suggest letter grades) and they fill in a self-assessment form. The letter grade they suggest for themselves is rarely very different from the one I suggest. Often, students underestimate themselves.

Here is my assignment sheet as it currently is (it’s quite rigid, and admittedly, it testifies to my French academic education…):

Short Essay #1

Date due (via TurnitIn, on Blackboard): Friday, October 15th by 11:59pm EST.
Please use the assignment template provided below and write your essay directly into it. Kindly save your document as ENG2850_LastName_FirstName_Essay1.ENG2850-Assignment-TemplateDownload

Instructions

Your first essay will be on Candide, by Voltaire (1759). It should be 1000 to 1250 words long. You should organize your argument in two or three parts and choose specific examples to illustrate your point, duly presenting your quotes in quotation marks and indicating the page number in parenthesis.

Here’s a tip: divide up the word count into your two or three main points. You can title each part of your essay if you wish, or simply lay out your page so that the different parts of your analysis are clearly discernible, but don’t forget to write transitions for your reader when you switch parts.

In any case, you should have a separate paragraph for your introduction (in which you will explain your topic, formulate the questions you will attempt to answer, and outline the structure of your analysis) and another paragraph for your conclusion (in which you will reiterate your point and open up towards further questions your analysis will have prompted).

Very important: Give a clear outline of your essay structure in your introduction. Clearly state what are the different parts of your essay, and you arrive at your argument or thesis. There should be a clear thesis statement in your introduction, and it should be clear in your conclusion as well.  You can even say plainly: “this essay will argue …”; “first, I will analyze…”; “second, I will analyze…”; “Ultimately, this essay finds that…”

Please choose one of the following prompts to guide your analysis:

1. Analyze the concept of optimism as depicted through the story of Candide (the character).
You may choose to focus on the character (characterization), on plot, or on any other aspect through which you read the text. How is optimism pictured in the text? Can you associate this depiction of optimism to any political or philosophical position? How can you tie it back to the historical context of Candide, which was published in France in 1759? Make your analysis as specific as you can by focusing on one particular aspect of the story which conveys a depiction of optimism (character, plot, etc.). Note that “optimism” does not merely refer to a way of thinking positively, but to a dangerous theory of Voltaire’s time: the Church was using the theory that all is part of God’s plan (aka. optimistic determinism, by Gottfried Leibniz) to justify evil done in the name of God (e.g. burning people at the stake and other persecutions). To avoid psychological or philosophical flat statements in your essay, focus on the specific literary devices through which the text criticizes optimisic determinism. Analyze some of these devices’ effects on the audience, in relation to the specific historical context of the novel.  Organize your argument in two or three parts and choose specific examples to illustrate your point, duly presenting your quotes in quotation marks and indicating the page number in parenthesis.

2. Discuss the use of satire as a literary device in Candide. How do you recognize satire in the text? What are specific examples of it, and what effect do these passages produce? What is their intended audience? How can you relate those satirical passages to the whole plot, and more broadly, to the historical, social, and/or political context of 18th-century France?

3. Discuss the representation of religion in the passage below. Closely analyze the passage below through the lens of religion. Relate it to the whole chapter, the wider plot, as well as the wider context of Candide. Two or three points should emerge from your reading of this passage: make them the different parts that structure your essay. What does the passage suggest about religion? Additionally, is there anything the text suggests about the female gender, in this passage?

Candide fled quickly to another village […] The orator’s wife, putting her head out of the window, and spying a man that doubted whether the Pope was Anti-Christ, poured over him a full…. Oh, heavens! to what excess does religious zeal carry the ladies.’ (Chapter 3)

This is how the passage begins and ends: please analyze the whole passage contained within the […].

Tip for close text analysis: Read the passage a first time without taking any notes. Pause at the end and listen to your thoughts. What does it make you think about? How does it make you feel? Why? Take note of where your head takes you, and read the passage again, now influenced by your particular perspective. You now have your topic angle, and from a second and third reading should emerge some subpoints to structure your analysis.

4. Formulate a question of your own, which you will first discuss with me to ensure it has the potential to yield analysis. This is a good option if you read Candide through a perspective you do not see represented in the prompts above.

*No other texts than Candide are required for this essay, but if you would like to use any additional sources, please feel free to do so, as long as you acknowledge them. Please note that the rubric does not take into account any use of external sources for the calculation of your grade.*

Rubric

This assignments counts for 25% of your course grade.

Here is how I will assess your essay:

• Clarity of Argument: 30%
• Organization of Argument: 20%
• Support of Argument with Specific Examples from the Text: 20%
• Attention to Reader (clear transitions and multiple formulations of the points addressed): 15%
• Language, Grammar and Layout: 15%

Please use this rubric as a checklist before you submit your work.

The points gathered out of 100 will determine your letter grade as presented in the table (cf. syllabus). You will be given a letter grade for this essay, but it is your score out of 100 which will determine the 25% of your final grade that this essay represents. At the end of the semester, the points gathered in essay 1, essay 2, participation, and the final exam will give a total score out 100, and you will see the corresponding letter grade on your transcript.