Writing Assignment Three

Option One:

You are going to review a product (ie a movie, TV show, CD, video game, restaurant, etc) and you are going to submit your review to be published in a specific newspaper or magazine. This means that your review must take into consideration the requirements that your desired publication has for reviews, as well as the specific audience who will be reading your review.

To complete the assignment you must do the following:

• Choose a product which you would like to review.
  
• Choose a newspaper or magazine which you know accepts reviews of this kind. (In other words, don't send a CD review to Electronic Gaming Weekly unless it's a CD-Rom; Wired is probably not interested in a review of the latest gardening book, etc.) Who is most likely to accept your review and why?
  
• Research the publication and find out the requirements that they have for reviewers and the audience the publication is targeting. How long are their reviews? Do they have to follow a certain format in terms of length, plot summary, or evaluation techniques? Assign a letter or number grade? What is the audience who reads this magazine expecting in a review? You must provide at least two examples of reviews from this publication, which must be attached to your final draft so that I can evaluate your review in comparison with others of its type.
  
• Write the review, which must evaluate your chosen product or service, according to the guidelines you have determined. Your evaluation must also be written so that it appeals to your specific audience.

If the standards for your reviews require brevity (under 250 words) I will require you to review at least two products for the same publication. The minimum total word count for this project is 500 words; the maximum is 1000. Your review or reviews must meet this word count while satisfying the standards of your chosen publication. (If your chosen publication requires a word count higher than 1000, you may exceed this limit, but please come and talk to me first) In other words, two (or three) short reviews are acceptable if that's what your publication and audience require. One long review is equally acceptable.

If your chosen publication accepts unsolicited manuscripts, and you choose to submit your review(s) to be considered for publication, I will give you extra credit. If you submit your review and it is published, I will give you an A for this assignment.

Option Two:

Amitai Etzioni's essay "Working at McDonalds" evaluates a class of jobs, namely "McJobs," which he finds inappropriate for high school students.

Consider a job you have had in the past or consider a job you would like to have in the future, and determine standards you could use to evaluate it. Then evaluate the job using these standards. This means that the entire essay cannot be "this is what it was like to work at Burger King" or "this is what it would be like to work as a biologist." It must be more than a summary of good and bad points; you must both evaluate the job and justify your evaluations, which may require research on your part.

Keep in mind the suggestions which Axelrod and Cooper offer about this topic on page 318, as well as the criteria they give for a successful evaluation.

General Notes:

I will be evaluating your assignments according to the normal standards which I have concerning tone, use of language, grammar problems, structure and organization, but I will also attempt to evaluate your reviews or evaluations based on how well they measure up to the standards which you have devised from analysis of reviews or from thinking about how to evaluate a job. This means that if you give me a CD review meant for Rolling Stone, I'm going to be basing part of your grade on whether or not you followed the guidelines that Rolling Stone has for reviewing CDs. If you say that one of the most important criteria for evaluating a job is the salary, and then you don't mention the salary of your chosen job, that will be reflected in your grade.

Back to main page | Email the instructor