English Composition II (ENGL 112-14)
Arvay/ Fall 2013
Out-of-Class Essay #2 Assignment
Rough draft: Due Tuesday, October 15. Bring three copies to class for peer review.
Final draft: Due Tuesday, October 22. Four full pages minimum, double-spaced, 12-point
Times New Roman, one-inch margins. Use MLA style for all in-text citations and a Works
Cited page. The Works Cited page does not count toward the page requirement.
Readings: Your choice of ANY TWO of the following:
--Bradstreet, "To My Dear and Loving Husband" (425)
--Corso, "Marriage" (431-434)
--Olds, "I Go Back to May, 1937" (440-441)
--Chopin, "The Storm" (395-398)
--Updike, "Separating" (408-416)
--Fierstein, "On Tidy Endings" (454-471)
--Sanders, "The Men We Carry in Our Minds" (477-481)
--Cleary, "Boss's Son" (429-430)
--Heaney, "Digging" (437)
Purpose of this assignment: To practice using one text as a “lens” through which you interpret a
second text. This assignment is meant to prepare you for essays #3 and #4, both of which will
ask you to apply research to readings from our textbook.
Main question:
For your first paper, you used two readings to make an argument about a common theme that
they raised. For your second paper I’d like you to bring two readings together in a different way.
I’d like you to explore how one reading shapes your understanding of the second reading.
In other words, how does reading #1 affect what you notice or understand about reading
#2?
Some questions you might ask yourself include: Does one reading introduce ideas that help you
understand what happens in the other reading? Does reading #1 lead you to question the claims
(implicit or explicit) being made in reading #2? What does one text reveal about the other text?
Criteria for a successful essay include:
 Clear thesis statement in the introduction
 Well-developed support for your argument (weave in quotes and analyze them)
 Logical organization with topic sentences and transitions
 Well-developed introduction and conclusion
 Few sentence-level errors (grammar, spelling)