Read Barry Estabrook’s “Selling the Farm”
Read Ryan Kohls’s “Clean Sweep”
Review the “Roadmap” on pages 280-286 of “Reporting Information”
For your second synthesis essay, you’ll write an 800 word report on a particular job or industry through a focused perspective.
In “Selling the Farm,” Barry Estabrook reports on the demise of the family farm through the perspective of the Borland family. In “Clean Sweep,” Ryan Kohl reports on the work of facility crews by describing a cleaning shift of Toronto’s Sky-Dome. We’ve already written two assignments inspired by these pieces. You might choose to expand one of these (Discussion 3.2 or Analysis 3.2) into this full-length essay, or you can start fresh. Following the roadmap, you’ll first need to narrow your topic and determine what truth the perspective through which you’re going to report reveals about the specific job or industry in general you’ve chosen.
Refine your purpose and stance into a thesis
This will be presented in a thesis statement (at the end of your introduction) that identifies the perspective (or lens) through which you’re looking and the truth (or light) it will shed on your topic.
Check out the thesis for each of the essays we’ve read:
“After six generations on the same 400 acres of rolling pastures, lush fields, and forested hillsides tucked up close to the Canadian border in Vermont’s remote Northeast Kingdom, the Borlands were no longer a family farm” (Estabrook 318).
“Standing at the curb as the game wraps up inside, these are the cleaners. They’ll work until dawn, gathering up some 15,000 pounds of garbage, scrubbing, rinsing, bending and lifting with pain-staking thoroughness” (Kohls 947).
Generate Ideas
You’ll need to use a minimum of two sources (maximum of four) for this essay, but you do NOT need to do a lot of research. You may only use two different kinds of research for this assignment:
Personal Interview: you’ll need to include cited paraphrase and quotation of at least one personal interview in your essay (but you may not use more than two interviews). If you’re describing your own workplace or a family business, this might be a co-worker or family member (anyone who isn’t yourself). Your interview should be from a personal conversation and have never been published online or anywhere else. Check out how Estabrook and Kohls use interviews. Note their descriptions of their subjects, their reliance on paraphrase, and when (and how little) they actually quote their interviewees. The bulk of your information will come from your interviews and experience.
and
Statistic: you’ll need to include cited paraphrase or quotation of at least one numerical fact or statistic in your essay (but you may not use more than two). These, of course, can be published and will probably come from the web; they could be anything from average salaries, to production numbers, to industry data. Look at how Estabrook and Kohls use this kind of data in their essays–the price of milk, quarterly earnings, pounds of garbage, dollar value of a team–effortlessly incorporated into their descriptions of their subjects.
Organize your details
In between your opening and conclusion, you’ll have to organize your information. Estabrook and Kohls organize chronologically (Estabrook establishes a moment, moves backwards in time in a couple of flashbacks, and returns to the moment in which he started. Kohls traces a shift and also moves a little spatially around the stadium).
Cite your sources
You MUST quote and paraphrase (providing an in-text citation as required) as indicated above for each source (page 538 of MLA Style). You MUST have an MLA style Works Cited page with at least two entries (remember these are alphabetized, section begins on page 544 of MLA Style).
Remember that you are free to paraphrase (with citation) as much as you like, but you may not directly quote more than 10% of your total word count for this assignment.
You CAN use any of the original writing you’ve already done in your discussion postings, replies, or analysis exercises…that’s what they’re for! Don’t start from scratch…we’ve been working on this! Go back and check out what you’ve already done. Just be sure to cite when necessary.
You’ll also edit your work to ensure that your writing is free of language and usage errors.