Category: English

Choose one of the topics below and write a paper that is 8 pages in length and use at least three research sources in your paper. You must use sources from the bibliography posted on BB in “term paper sources.” All papers must be typed, double-spaced and all citations must be in MLA style and the bibliography must be in MLA style. You must use direct quotes from the texts) as well to support your conclusions.
Your paper must have a bibliography that is in MLA style.

Select one of the following clips to view and analyze (recommended: check out the prompts under #3, below, before you begin the vid).
* Usability of Fruit
* Silicon Valley: Pied Piper Focus Group/UX (who should we beta test with?)
* Better off Ted: No UX? Big Problems…
(3) After viewing your video, type up a 150-200 word synthesis (don’t reply to the bullets/questions, but write a cohesive paragraph responding to them holistically) to post in this forum that addresses the following:
* What major insight did the video provide about UX/usability? For example, did it illustrate how UX testing is done in a certain industry? Did it provide insight on a specific sort of research process?
* How do the readings, which are focused on technical documents (not products) correspond both with the video you watched and the instructions you drafted?
*  What function do you anticipate UX/usability will have in your future workplace? What responsibility will you, as a professional in that setting, have for producing communication that promotes usability- and, as a corresponding ethical matter, accessibility? 
* What are potential costs to poor or non-existent usability testing for a given product or document? What short and/or longterm impacts could this have on users and/or creators?

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1o8hZW9c9cM2amedtbE4Xi4fEfipdZf6D
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JefjSO71jRrfC1A2Zeuu-AVkbCTyOYXa/view?usp=drivesdk

write a modern fractured fairytale based on the bear trainer and his cat, use the same framework but change the story to reflect a timeframe within the last 50 years. 1200 words. 

Research the issue of genetically modified foods, and then write an essay to be read by
your peers in which you argue against using genetically modified foods. Support your 
position with evidence.

Analyze how Rubio uses fantastical elements and/ or parody to convey a specific theme or themes in 2-3 of her stories. 
Grading
Give the essay a meaningful title that engages the reader and indicates something meaningful about the essay
Include an introductory paragraph that indicates which option you will focus on and what your thesis is. Your thesis must include indication of subject and perspective/ opinion, and your thesis must unify your paper.
Include a body section of the paper with 3 or more paragraphs that start with clear topic sentences, each related to your thesis.
Body paragraphs will also include textual support (quotes and examples from Rubio’s and/or Adichie’s work) as well as commentary (your analysis and thoughts) that fleshes out each of your topic sentences. A good guideline is to have at least 3 instances of textual support per body paragraph (and be sure to analyze each!)
A concluding paragraph with remind the reader of the thesis and expand on the overall significance of the paper/ thesis.
Writing will be clear, with few errors (coherence).
The essay will be focused on the thesis and stay on topic (unity).
The structure and organization will be logical and easy to follow. Transitions will be used to guide the reader.
The style of writing will be appropriate to an academic setting but still draw on your unique voice as a writer.
The paper will be formatted MLA-Style with a works cited. No outside sources are required, but you can use them if you like, and you need to cite them if you do. Everyone will need to cite the stories they use in the paper.
The paper should be 1400+ words.
15 points: Exemplary execution of assignment criteria
13-14.5 points: Meets the demands of the assignment with minimal distractions or inconsistencies
11.5-12.5 points: Meets major expectations of the assignments with some noticeable distractions or inconsistencies
10.5-11: Meets some of the major expectations effectively, but also struggles to meet other major expectations. Noticeable distractions and inconsistencies. 
1-10: Fails to meet most expectations.
0: Fails to turn in an assignment!
Learning Objectives
Continue to practice and demonstrate abilities in analytical writing
Continue to develop and demonstrate an understanding of the rhetorical concept of genre
Continue to develop and demonstrate conventions of academic essay writing
Demonstrate your ability to write a thesis that indicates subject and opinion and use it to unify an academic paper
Engage in analytical appreciation for the artistic elements of writing and literature

Perspectives of Young People in Postcolonial Fictions:
Discuss how young characters in Cardoso’s “The Return” and Sebbar’s “The Seine Was Red” offer unique perspectives on urban contexts and cultural consciousness.
Analyze the connection or complication of these perspectives with your understanding of coming of age.
USE CLOSE READING QUOTES (CITING CARDOSO’S OR SEBBAR’S)
150 WORDS
Double-Voicing in Petrushevskaya’s “The Time is Night” and Sebbar’s “The Seine Was Red”:
Explore instances of double-voicing in the form of recounted dialogues, narrative voices, intertextual resonances, and interpolated texts.
Discuss how these techniques reshape authorship, authority, and storytelling in the context of the works’ engagement with history.
USE CLOSE READING QUOTES (CITING PATRUSHEVSKAYA’S OR SEBBAR’S)
150 WORDS
Reconfiguration of Story and History by Women’s Voices:
Examine how women’s voices and experiences in Petrushevskaya’s and Sebbar’s works reshape storytelling and historical narratives.
Reflect on how engaging with these texts prompts a reconsideration of your own story and history through the lens of gendered voice and experience.
USE CLOSE READING QUOTES (CITING PATRUSHEVSKAYA’S OR SEBBAR’S)
150 WORDS

choose your 3 favorite performers from Season 1 of Def Poetry Jam  hosted by Mos Def. that you connected tthe best. Write an intro, 3 short body paragraphs, and a concluding statement.
Here is the link for the youtube video

In what ways do you think the anthropological perspective might be useful in studying migration? In your response, consider what makes the anthropological perspective different from other types of approaches to studying migration.
For each Daily Discussion, you will create one original post that includes a discussion question, and respond to one of your classmates’ posts/discussion questions with a response discussion post.
The original discussion post should be 450-600 words, and must include a discussion question about the readings or course content for that day. Keep in mind the best discussion questions will be:
Open-ended- Questions cannot be answered with yes/no or either/or
Answerable by your classmates- Questions do not require extensive knowledge from outside the course, and can be answered using knowledge/experience versus speculation
Substantive and relevant- Questions should be related to a significant point/argument in the course lesson or readings assigned for the day, and should ask us to consider the point/argument in the context of the themes of this course.
In addition, you will craft a response post that replies in a substantive manner to a discussion question posed by one of your classmates. The post should be at least 150 words.

KIKO
In the preface to the chapter, Noah notes that missionaries provide the only education available to black South Africans before the beginning of the apartheid government, and “nearly every major black leader of the anti-apartheid movement” gets this kind of education. During apartheid, the government shuts down mission schools and makes sure that blacks are confined to “Bantu schools,” in which they only learn “metrics and agriculture.” “Fully grown teenagers” are taught through songs: “three times two is six. La la la la la.” This is the difference between British and Afrikaner racism: the British promised natives a way to “civilize themselves” and potentially join polite society, while the Afrikaners thought, “why give a book to a monkey?”
Noah explains that he is “a product of [his mother’s] search for belonging.” Her parents are forced to move to Soweto and divorce soon after having her; Patricia is “the problem child” and fights constantly with her mother (Frances) but loves accompanying her father (Temperance) “on his manic misadventures.” She tries to move in with Temperance at the age of nine, but he sends her to live in Transkei, the Xhosa “homeland,” with his sister.
As the middle child and “second girl,” Patricia is unwanted, and she ends up living in a hut with 14 other unwanted children in the overcrowded, infertile “homeland.” She works the fields in the early morning and fights the other children—or sometimes the pigs or dogs—to make sure she has something to eat for dinner. At times “she literally ate dirt” to feel full. But she is lucky to go to one of the only remaining mission schools and learn English, which gets her a job at a nearby factory, which pays her with dinner.
VIEGAS
When Patricia is 21, her aunt gets sick, so she has to return to Soweto. This is when she takes the typing course and works as a secretary—but all her money goes to the family, which “is the curse of being black and poor,” having to work endlessly to help everyone else catch up. She soon tires of paying this “black tax” and runs away to live in downtown Johannesburg.
Patricia tells this story in occasional vignettes—never all at once—and only so Trevor wouldn’t “take for granted how we got to where we were.” She thinks it wrong to dwell on past suffering, so she never does, even though she also wants to ensure her son never suffers like she did.
Most Xhosa names become self-fulfilling prophecies; Patricia’s, “Nombuyiselo,” means “She Who Gives Back,” and is fitting: even as a child, she would care for younger, abandoned children. So, to exempt her son from fate, she names him “Trevor, a name with no meaning whatsoever in South Africa, no precedent in my family. It’s not even a Biblical name.” He is free to become whomever he wants.
Patricia also makes sure Trevor speaks English as his first language and gives him as many books as possible—he treasures them and particularly loves fantasy. She “spoke to [Trevor] like an adult, which was unusual.” Unlike school, Patricia teaches Trevor to think.
DAVID
Apartheid ends gradually, with various laws coming off the books or otherwise losing their force. A few months before its ultimate collapse, Patricia and Trevor move to Eden Park, a colored neighborhood with real, suburban houses, surrounded by black townships. Trevor is uncomfortable having his own bedroom and sleeps in his mother’s bed. They also get a car, the secondhand Volkswagen that often fails to start up (forcing them to hitchhike). But this lets them freely explore—they visit every park and picnic spot imaginable. Patricia refuses to spend money on anything but food and books—all Trevor’s clothes are secondhand and their furniture is always falling apart. Even the food they do get is the cheapest available, the meat often limited to scraps and bones intended for dogs.
However, Trevor “never felt poor because our lives were so rich with experience.” They visit white neighborhoods and other “places black people never went.” In essence, Patricia raises Trevor “like a white kid […] in the sense of believing that the world was my oyster, that I should speak up for myself, that my ideas and thoughts and decisions mattered.” Following one’s dreams depends on the limits of one’s imagination, but Patricia shows Trevor limitless possibilities, even though nobody ever did the same for her. And, most astonishingly, she does this all despite never having known that apartheid was nearing its end. She refuses to bend to “the logic of apartheid” and wants to make sure that, in her words, “even if [Trevor] never leaves the ghetto, he will know that the ghetto is not the world.”
Conclusão
Kiko
“After carefully analyzing the story, it is evident to me the overwhelming impact of apartheid on people’s lives, especially black communities in South Africa. The detailed narrative of Patricia and Trevor’s experiences reveals not only the injustices of the apartheid system, but also the extraordinary resilience and determination they demonstrate in the face of this adversities.”
Viegas
It is inspiring to witness how Patricia, despite overwhelming difficulties, never gives up on fighting for a better life for herself and her son. Her quest for belonging and her tireless dedication to providing Trevor with a quality education highlight the fundamental importance of education as an empowering tool, even in the most challenging circumstances.”
Parte superior do formulário

PAPER TWO ASSIGNMENT
Technical Specifications:
4 to 5 pages, MLA, double-spaced, font 12/Times New Roman, 1-inch margins
Due Dates:
Submit a document that indicates topic + play + thesis to Paper 2 Folder in the Google Drive Folder or share with me directly by Wednesday, April 24th. Remember that an effective thesis/argument/claim asserts a specific and concrete arguable position.
Upload final paper (4-5 pages) + original work statement to Paper 2 Folder in the Google Drive Folder or share with me directly by Monday, May 6th.
ASSIGNMENT: Select one of the topics below and apply it to one of the plays read since the midterm: The Rover by Aphra Behn, OR Rachel by Angelina Weld Grimke, OR Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett, OR Skeleton Crew by Dominique Morisseau. Remember to adapt the topic into a thesis/argument/claim that will allow you to develop a 4-5 page paper that supports and illustrates its points and claims using textual evidence in the form of specific details and quotations from the text. Quotations must be included and when including quotations, the page number in parentheses should appear after the quote, and there should be a Works Cited page.
Topics:
• Setting or environment and its impact upon a character in one of the plays listed above (think of the contrasting effects of the home and outside-home environments upon the various characters in Rachel, for example)
• Actions (which can also be inactions like waiting) and their impact upon a character in one of the plays listed above
• Choices/decisions and the impact upon a character in one of the plays listed above (think of Faye’s decision to resign at the end of the play, or Faye’s decision to defend Reggie in the face of Dez’s criticism, for example)
• How and why one of the plays listed above could be performed in 2024 to engage a specific audience (think of the ways in which The Rover addresses sexual violence and harassment, for example or the ways in which Waiting for Godot captures the experience of the marginalized, for example)
Your paper should include the following elements:
• a clearly stated argument that alerts readers to the “so what” or the implications of the argument
• a clear organizational structure (paragraphs identifying central ideas linked back to the central argument)
• smooth integration of specific textual evidence, including concrete details and judicious quotation
• a clear writing style
• an inclusion and development of your voice
• MLA style that incorporates parenthetical citation and a Works Cited page
In addition to addressing the elements of the assignment, all papers must include the following two items:
1) Quotations from the plays followed by page number in parentheses and linked to a Works Cited page. Your draft and your revision must include quotations from the play as well as page numbers in parentheses after the quotation. Electronic versions of plays should have page numbers, but if they do not, then you should use a print-out, number the pages and attach the print-out. Anytime you use quotations, you need to include a Works Cited page.
2) Original work statement: You must include the following language on both your draft and your final version before submitting:
I certify that this assignment represents my own work. I have not used any unauthorized or unacknowledged assistance or sources in completing it including free or commercial systems or services offered on the internet. Signature: