This second assignment will help you toward mastering important technical skills for summarizing of a multipage text, using paraphrase and quotation, engaging in the writing process, using the tools of analysis, interpretation, definition, comparison/contrast and argument, integrating source material, and writing effective complex sentences without a pattern of errors.
Task
In the chapter “Rice Paddies & Math Tests,” Gladwell discusses the way that a cultural legacy — like rice farming — can lead to an attitude about work and persistence that can be profitable in later contexts (like math classes). And in “Marita’s Bargain,” Gladwell shows how a different cultural legacy — the tradition of summer break from school — can have negative effects on learning, effects that have an immense impact on future individual success. He ends the chapter on Marita’s Bargain with the word “meaningful work.”
For this paper, address the following question:
What makes meaningful work the key concept for understanding Gladwell’s point in both “Rice Paddies & Math Tests” as well as “Marita’s Bargain”?
Format
As we did in Essay 1, you will develop a:
1. Preliminary outline
2. Outline, Part II
We will not be writing an essay in paragraph form. (We will do that in Essay III.)
In addition you will write an introduction.
A successful paper will…
- Be an obvious attempt to follow the assignment;
- Have a thesis statement at the end of the introduction;
- Have an organization that is logical and easy to follow, making serious use of the “they say, I say” design and relevant templates;
- Have sentences that are grammatically complete, logical and easy to follow; and
- Have a minimum number of surface feature errors—correct use of periods and question marks, correct spelling, absence of typographical errors, etc., including no use of any form of the pronoun “you.”