Persuasion Essay Assignment: What Is a Mentor? NOTE: I strongly suggest you PRINT OUT these instructions because you may not remember all the details.  Unlike your previous essay, this one has no body paragraph due; only the intro paragraph is due as a partial draft.  The intro paragraph is due to me as a Rich Text file by midnight, Monday, September 29th.   Please name your file D2 plus your initials.  The final draft is due by midnight on Wednesday, October 8th.   Submit in the usual RTF format.  Your filename will be yourinitialsE2 for the final draft. The Basic Assignment   Your essay should be a minimum of 1000 words.  As before with the previous essay, Essay Two will be graded on these criteria: Focus on the assignment; Organization according to the three-part format, with emphasis on use of a clear thesis sentence, clearly previewed supports, and equally clear topic sentences which use transition wording; Development in terms of clear general explanation and use of specific examples; And last, it will be graded for effective proofing. This assignment will ask you to look both outside and inside yourself. I want you to look around yourself and decide what it means to be a mentor.   To put this differently, I want you to answer the question What qualities make up a good mentor?  Notice I have used the word "mentor" rather than the word "teacher."  The two are similar, perhaps, but a mentor does not have to be a professional teacher in a formal classroom--though such a person could be seen as a mentor.  Yet mentors can also be coaches, parents, relatives, friends, even fictional characters from a book or a movie--anyone who has mentored you, who has taught you something valuable about life.  Even a fictional character can do such a thing, if you take that character seriously enough.  Yet I do not want you to focus mainly on individual mentors, but rather on their mentoring qualities that stand out.  So for this assignment, you will write an essay which tells the reader what you think the main qualities of a good mentor are.   Then, as specific examples in your body paragraphs, you will tell stories about certain people to illustrate these qualities of good mentoring. Do this as a persuasive essay. Your thesis will be your definition of what makes a good mentor; you are trying to persuade your reader that your definition is a good one, perhaps good enough for the reader to accept also.  Because you will probably be defining good mentoring by naming its main qualities, your preview sentence may be the same as your thesis; if so, that's okay.     In other words, your thesis might read like this:  "In my opinion, being a good mentor consists of _____________, ___________, and ________________. "  Alternatively, you might write a thesis which gives a sort of overall definition of a mentor, and in that case your preview of qualities would follow in a separate sentence, or in three separate sentences (one for each quality). In your main body, each quality of good mentoring will get a separate paragraph.  In general, you will use the same 3-part format for this essay as you did on the previous persuasive essay. The main difference will be that your body paragraphs will discuss qualities of a good mentor. In each body paragraph, you should still begin with a TS and end with a CS.  Your TS should name the quality to be discussed.  Your GE will be a general definition or description of the quality named in the TS.  Following the GE should be your SE. Your SE should be a story about some specific person you know who illustrates this quality of being a good mentor. IMPORTANT: the best SEs will not merely describe a person in general, but will tell the story of a particular incident in that person's life which clearly shows the quality you are describing.  Then you need to end each paragraph with a CS which no longer focuses just on the person in the story, but which explains how the quality shown in the story is an important ingredient in effective mentoring. In other words, don't just take it for granted that your reader sees the story as showing good mentoring. Then you will compose another, separate body paragraph for the next quality, and so forth. To begin the assignment, give enough thought to decide which qualities of a person you feel contribute most to good mentoring.  Hint: A good way to go about this is to think of several people you consider good mentors, and then ask yourself what it is about them which makes them good mentors. Those qualities are the ones you are looking for.  But take care not to become confused if you do this:  your supports are not the people, but the qualities.  If you can avoid this confusion, this type of brainstorming will also point you toward your SEs.  An alternative way to begin this assignment is to visit the website of Dr. Donna Smith.  In her website, she has copied excerpts from certain movies, scenes which show a character being a mentor.  If you wish, you can examine these movie scenes for ideas as to what qualities of mentors are being illustrated; then, if you think those qualities are among the crucial ones of a good mentor, you may use them in your own essay.  You could conceivably even describe the movie character as your SE for that quality, though in most cases you probably know some real person who exhibits that quality.  Note too that some of these excerpts may be showing bad mentors, and in some cases, opinions could vary.  The URL for the website link where you can find these movie excerpts is as follows: http://www.odessa.edu/dept/english/dsmith/movie_mentors.htm . As noted above, your intro paragraph is due by midnight, Monday, September 29th.  Please send your intro paragraph only--no body paragraph this time--to me with the filename of D2 and your initials.  I will comment there as I did with draft one and will send you your grade privately, also as I did before. Note that it is not required that you show me any further draft on this assignment. However, I would be happy to answer any individual questions on your drafts, also as I did with essay one, as time permits. Your final draft on this assignment is due by midnight, Wednesday, October 8th.   It must be submitted as Rich Text, as usual.  It should have a filename consisting only of your initials and E2 for essay two; please do not include your essay title or your full name or any other lengthy wording in your filename.  Also as before, include your full name within your essay file, at the very beginning, as a heading, and include a title for the essay, centered above the first paragraph.

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