Critical Thinking & Information Literacy
Across the Curriculum
Annotated Bibliography Instructions
English 201: James Torrence
Email your final draft (10 paragraphs, 3 to 4 pages, single-spaced) by the deadline in your schedule.
Your annotated bibliography should consist of one-paragraph summary-responses to at least ten sources which you plan
to use for your final essay. Feel free to use some of the sources you used for your three short essays, but make
sure that the sources are useful and informative enough to be incorporated into your final. Whatever sources you
decide upon, your annotation (what you write about the sources) needs to be a clear, informative assessment of the
sources. Poor annotation that makes me wonder if you really know what you’re talking about will receive a poor
grade. By this stage, you should have clear and specific ideas about your topic and enough information to speak
with some kind of authority. Your annotation should reflect your expertise, and each entry should include the
following four elements (not necessarily in this order):
A brief summary of the material you’re referencing
Identification of the source’s original audience
Some critique of the information presented in the source
A brief discussion of the way in which you plan to use the source in your final essay
Since this assignment doesn’t require any real organization skills (besides knowing the alphabet) and focuses on
bibliographical information, the grading criteria will be somewhat different. My scoring breaks down as follows:
Content: 25%
MLA Style: 25%
Mechanics: 25%
Expression: 25%
This is a fairly linear assignment, but inability to follow directions and inattention to the details of MLA standard
bibliographical citation and annotation will quickly affect your grade. Once again, there are sample citations in
your textbook (pp. 348-367).
The sample first page, including two entries (next page), should help, but if you have any questions, be sure to ask
me for help as soon as possible.
This assignment is worth 10% of your grade for this course.
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