Critical Thinking & Information Literacy
Across the Curriculum
Essay #3 Instructions
English 201: Spring 2005
Your assignment (2 pages + bibliography + worksheets) must be emailed by the deadline in your syllabus.
This week you’ll continue researching and writing about the same country. Our fourth visit to the library will
include tutorials on how to conduct efficient web searches and how to assess whatever websites we access. For
your third essay, which will be analytical or persuasive in nature, I want you to restrict your research, if
possible, to Internet sources.
If your thesis changes in the course of writing this one, that’s fine. Just make sure that the essay has a clear
thesis and a logical organizational framework.
Area of focus: What are the challenges your nation will potentially face in the next ten to twenty years, and
how will those changes be avoided or overcome?
Again, please remember that although this is a research exercise, your opinion and critical insight are still
necessary components of a successful essay. After familiarizing yourself with the websites you choose, use your
own insights, ideas, and imagination to devise your own opinion. Then use the sources as support for your point
of view. If your sources disagree with each other, then pick a side or develop a third perspective of your own.
In other words, merely handing me a list of names, dates and places will not do. I want you to further develop
your own views in this essay and use the sources, not be used by them.
I want you to use at least three sources again, but this time they have to be specific types of websites,
from specific domains. One should be an educational resource, one governmental, and one private. Evaluate
them in this order in response to the worksheet below. Then paste all three of your evaluations into the bottom
of your essay #3 file, immediately after the bibliography. The worksheet is worth 10% of this assignment.
Using MLA standard in-text citation, document everything that is not common knowledge or your own idea.
Attach a bibliography, and model the entries after the examples in Hacker (Section “M”).
Finally, in terms of grading, please take another look at the format/grading criteria handout, which you received
in class. This essay is worth 10% of your grade for this course.
Website Evaluation Worksheet
Complete this worksheet and paste it after the bibliography of assignment #3.
#1. Name of educational site:
URL of site: http://
Who created the site?
Can you tell if the information is accurate, or has been verified by an editor? How?
Are the site’s sources of information fully documented?
Are the goals of the person(s) or organization(s) presenting the material clearly stated? What are those goals?
Does the information seem biased, or is it logical and based on verifiable facts? Explain your answer.
Is the page current? When was it written? When was it last revised? Do links to other pages work?
Who is the intended audience of this web page? How do you know?
Taking into account all the previous questions and any other data you may have collected, assign this website a grade.
#2 Name of governmental site:
URL of site: http://
Who created the site?
Can you tell if the information is accurate, or has been verified by an editor? How?
Are the site’s sources of information fully documented?
Are the goals of the person(s) or organization(s) presenting the material clearly stated? What are those goals?
Does the information seem biased, or is it logical and based on verifiable facts? Explain your answer.
Is the page current? When was it written? When was it last revised? Do links to other pages work?
Who is the intended audience of this web page? How do you know?
Taking into account all the previous questions and any other data you may have collected, assign this website a grade.
#3 Name of private site:
URL of site: http://
Who created the site?
Can you tell if the information is accurate, or has been verified by an editor? How?
Are the site’s sources of information fully documented?
Are the goals of the person(s) or organization(s) presenting the material clearly stated? What are those goals?
Does the information seem biased, or is it logical and based on verifiable facts? Explain your answer.
Is the page current? When was it written? When was it last revised? Do links to other pages work?
Who is the intended audience of this web page? How do you know?
Taking into account all the previous questions and any other data you may have collected, assign this website a grade.
Library Media Center
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