Purpose: For your Second essay, you will write a 850 - 1,000 word (heading and works cited page do not count as part of the word count) critical response to at least one of the texts we read in class. This first essay asks you to practice skills you will need to use for the rest of the quarter. Imagine that one of your goals as a student is to read widely and to think critically about the arpuments you encounter in books, on-line articles, opinion pieces, etc.. You may have read essays, plays, poems, stories, letters, and other genres before, but now yvou want to take the next steps toward a college level experience with critical approaches to ideas and issues in writing. Remember that everything is an argument, even the fiction, poems, and opinions we read in class. This assignment asks you fo read rhetorically and develop a strong response to ideas you identify in a text selected from the several we have read thus far. You'll then use that response to draft a closed-form, thesis-based essay. You'll support that essay with points that develop your argument (your argument for this essay 1s how you feel about the writing: is it good? Why or why not? Is the point of the story a good one? Etc) so readers understand how you arrived at your thesis. You will also present particulars from your selected essay that either support or contradict your thesis. Throughout the essay, you will document (use MLA formatted source citations) all information that originates from these outside sources. You will also produce a works-cited page that lists the text you chose to use in addition to one other text. Please try to use proper MLA format for this page. I want you to write this essay so that you can show your critical understanding of the readings, and your ability to show your thinking to readers. Directions: Write a critical response essay that includes: (a) a short summary of an identified and selected text; (b) a strong response to the text (either in support or in opposition to its ideas) in which you respond with your own critical thinking, personal experience, other texts, and values. As you formulate your response, consider both the author's rhetorical strategies and the author's ideas. Think of your response as your analysis of how the text tries to influence its readers rhetorically and how your wrestling with the text has expanded and deepened your thinking. Additionally, if you feel it fruitful. you can use one of the other readings we did in class or one that you picked in order to elucidate your views on the primary text Your essay should (in other words. use the following as a checklist of things your essay should. Be doing): -Summarize at least one of the texts we have read so far -Analyze that text and Respond to it critically Provide a thesis statement (what do you think of the text?) Provide support for your thesis using personal experience Provide support for your thesis USING the primary text -Organize paragraphs coherently -Show awareness of rhetorical situation and rhetorically strategies Cite all sources using proper MLA citation style Format paper in proper MLA format -Provide a properly cited works cited page