Formal Paper # 1:

Critical Reading, Research and Analysis

Due April 29, 2023

Length: 850-1000 words

Objectives:

to practice essay conceptualization by coming up with categories that will organize your analysis of the book
to demonstrate the ability to write college-level paragraphs unified around a single topic
to demonstrate the ability to do basic research
to demonstrate competence or mastery of sentence-level writing, with an emphasis on plain language and complex ideas

Task: Choose one of these two options for this paper:

CONTENT: Write a paper in which you take a single entry, research it and develop an “expanded” account of the event/person and its significance.
FORM: Write a paper in which analyze of the structure, tone and/or other writing technique used in 4-10 calendar entries.

In both cases, you will want to do the following:

Cite at least two sources in addition to the Galeano book (using MLA in-text citation form: ie page number references) from a De Anza library source.
Cite at least one “internet source’ from Google Scholar search (hyperlink to this source).
Provide a “Works Cited” page at the end of your paper that lists all sources used.
Reread and edit your paper such that each body paragraph is unified around a single analytical focus.
Proofread carefully (start at the end of your paper and read each sentence in reverse order. This disrupts the comprehension mechanism and allows you to concentrate on the individual sentence).
Introduction: Although there are many good ways to write an introduction to an analysis of a book, or an historical incident, for this paper I would like you to use the technique of Broad Context. This is a useful way to open a college essay because it shows the reader that you know not only about the “subject’ that you are writing about, but also that you know about the context in which this book was written, and/or received. Generally you will want your “broad context” part of the introductory paragraph to be 3-10 sentences. For the Galeano book, you might speak a bit about his status as an important Latin American cultural critic or historian (he himself rejects the term historian for his work). For this first option, you would want to read a few reviews of this book and of other books he has written.

You could talk a a bit about the origin of his philosophy of history in Marxist thought if you know anything about that;

You could talk about how we typically “know” about historical events, and how basic and anemic most of our knowledge sets are, and in this kind of a broad context you could concentrate on the failures of education. Many of you pegged your knowledge of the world as about 30% from formal education. How is formal education failing to convey some of these important events, people and so on? If you are doing a “deep dive” into a single issue that you feel is very important, you might start out by citing the classroom’s sense of the low impact of education on what college students know as a way to introduce an “omitted” or neglected chapter of history.