General Assignment Directions
1) Carefully read the paragraph (in dark blue font) below. The passage is taken directly from the
scholar, Eileen Pollack’s essay entitled, “Flannery O’Connor and the New Criticism,” published in the
Summer 2007 journal, American Literary History, page 549.
For author Flannery O’Connor, the advice that she write what she know took the form of
setting her stories in rural Georgia and centering each story on the thematic question of
what it might take to get a sinner to recognize the central mysteries of Christianity. Her
problem as an artist was how to write about such a theme for an audience composed
largely of nonbelievers. Preaching or moralizing about her characters’ sins would have
been not only inartistic but ineffective. The advice that she show rather than tell was
particularly well suited to her thematic concerns as a Christian because it would allow her
to bring alive for her readers the spiritual struggles of characters unlike themselves,
creating on the page the power of unfamiliar sacraments such as baptism and/or the
operation of grace in the material world.
2) Complete ALL THREE PARTS below using the MLA citation guidelines and formatting discussed in
Unit Module 1’s literary research lecture notes, the readings from your LIT textbook, and the posted
PowerPoint presentations. ←these are very helpful! The “MLA??…Citing…” and “Paraphrases and
Summaries…” PowerPoint presentations are both very useful in completing this assignment.
General Document Formatting
• Don’t forget to include your name at the top of the document.
• Please place all three parts within the same document; you do not need to compose a separate
document for each part. Please label each part: Part 1: Paraphrasing, Part 2: Summarizing, Part 3:
Quoting.
• Your submitted assignment should be typed in 10, 11, or 12 point Times New Roman or Arial font,
with 1” margins on all sides, and double-spaced.
• For the purposes of this assignment, you are only required to include parenthetical/in-text citations.
You are not required to include bibliographic citation entries. Please see below for more details.
Part 1: Paraphrasing
Please paraphrase author, Pollack’s, paragraph and adhere to the following criteria:
— Do use an introductory phrase incorporating the author’s full name as a lead-in to your paraphrase.
— Include a parenthetical/in-text citation after your paraphrase (this is not the same as a bibliographic
citation entry. You do not need to include a bibliographic citation, like you normally would in a
Works Cited page. You only need to include the parenthetical/in-text citation).
Part 2: Summarizing
Please summarize author, Pollack’s, paragraph and adhere to the following criteria:
— Do not use the author’s name in the summary.
— Include a parenthetical/in-text citation after your summary (this is not the same as a bibliographic
citation entry. You do not need to include a bibliographic citation, like you normally would in a
Works Cited page. You only need to include the parenthetical/in-text citation). Remember, since you
don’t use the author’s name in your summary, what you include in the parenthetical/in-text citation
is important!
Part 3: Quoting
Please directly quote from author, Pollack’s, paragraph and adhere to the following criteria:
— Use one of the three quoting strategies from the “MLA?? Citing…” PowerPoint
presentation, posted in Unit Module 1 (remember, how and where the author’s name appears
and is formatted both matter!).
— Please accurately quote and cite the material, using a correctly formatted parenthetical/in-text citation
(this is not the same as a bibliographic citation entry. You do not need to include a bibliographic
citation, like you normally would in a Works Cited page. You only need to include the
parenthetical/in-text citation).
— Do not make the mistake of including a “hanging quotation” (please see the above mentioned
PowerPoint presentation for an explanation of hanging quotations).
Directions for Submitting U1Ex1
• Please submit U1Ex1 through its appropriate dropbox, entitled, “U1Ex1 Dropbox,” listed under the
“Assignment” menu link found on the left-hand side of our course.
• Please upload this assignment in a .doc, .docx, or .rtf format.
U1Ex1 is due by 11pm on Sunday, June 23*
*Reminder of Late Work Policy: I will accept this research/MLA assignment up to three (3) days
after its due date (by 11pm on day three after the assignment’s due date), but I will subject an automatic 6.5
points, starting the assignment at a maximum worth of 90%.
U1Ex1’s dropbox will remain open for late submission until 11pm on Wed, June 26.