ENGLISH 1A: ESSAY 2 Yolanda Santiago Venegas
Formatting requirements: three to four double-spaced pages in 12 point Times New Roman font with one inch margins all around. On the top right hand corner include your name, the draft number and date.
Also include page numbers in a footer on the bottom right hand corner of the document. Please staple the pages
 no foldies. Your essay MUST meet these formatting requirements in order for me receive it. NO
LATE PAPERS WILL BE ACCEPTED
What Is Academic Literacy and How Does One Gain It?
“This combination of reading, writing and thinking is what we call strong reading , a way of reading we like to encourage in our students” 
Bartholomae and Petrosky,
Introduction Ways of Reading
“Scholars from a range of disciplines have described the “culture of academia in different ways but essentially agree that it involved particular habits of thinking, acting, speaking, and writing that are often incomprehensible and alienating to people outside academia”
 Rebecca Cox “Academic Literacies”
From our course syllabus you know that the theme of this English 1A course is literacy and in particular academic literacy. Now in Essay 2, I want you to first define academic literacy and then discuss how one gains it. Your task in part one of this essay is for you to construct your own definition of ‘academic literacy,’ a definition that makes sense to you, that helps you process and distills Bartholomae and
Petrosky, Freire, Cox, and the other readings we have had thus far. I want to see you using writing to wrestle with the texts in the process of constructing your own definition. This does not mean that you have to include all the texts; it means that the definition you build needs to engage the texts we have read thus far. Instead of simply repeating what others have said academic literacy is, I want you to use the words of others to create a definition that makes sense
 that is meaningful
 to you! You can use all of our course readings thus far in creating your definition of ‘academic literacy’ and, if you wish, you can use sources you find on your own or from another class.
For the second part of this essay, you are to go to the library and find two scholarly sources about how you, as a community college student, can gain the academic literacy you defined in part one. The sources you use are to be scholarly sources, books and/or articles, and not online websites. You will have an opportunity to begin this library research during our library orientations with our course librarian Lorena
Mata on October 2 and 9. Research hint: A good place to find your sources for part two is in books and articles about community college student success and the community college transfer-student experience.
If your draft already has 3 to 4 pages and you haven’t yet included the 2 scholarly sources, read through your essay and keep the parts you like best and then simply add part 2 without worrying (for now) about how long it is. The focus of draft 3 is to shorten or tighten part 1 and include the library research. And, since we have only learned how to look up books, your two scholarly sources will have to be books.
Your essay will be graded using the Scoring Guide for English 1A posted on our course website. Please read the scoring guide so that you know what your essay need to include to receive and A or B. Your essay has to have an introduction with a strong controlling idea, sometimes called a thesis, that tells the reader what the essay will be about. Read the scoring guide for more. I have also created a page on our blog called Thesis Statements and Topic Sentences—read these as you write your draft one. Remember that I am grading to see how much you have developed your essay from Draft 1 to Draft 2 and Draft 3.

I am happy to read your outline, discuss your thesis statement, or read a draft during my office hours, just stop by or make an appointment with me if you can’t make my posted office hours.
Give it your best shot, and good luck!