Biography Discussion
Biography is one of the more popular literary genres. Its popularity is also visible in documentary film projects as well as fictional films and television productions. Educators in the social sciences utilize biography when teaching about ethnic studies, history, sociology, political science, psychology, economics as well as many other academic fields such as business marketing, communication studies and of course theatre and film. A well-executed biography explains why historical figures are important, whether as really bad or really good examples of human beings. In theory, we are supposed to learn from the trials and tribulations, the successes and failings and the so- called rights and wrongs that are the framework of analysis in good biographical compositions. As such, communicating in an insightful, clear and concise fashion why this persons story is compelling, is the foundation component of this assignment. And, a well-written biography can be an inspirational and or entertaining read. The primary goal of this assignment is to serve as an exercise to enhance your writing skills. Woven into the concept of its design, this exercise affords students the opportunity to explore a significant individual of their choosing.
The Assignment: Compose a 750-word, 3-page biographical essay that discusses why this historical figure should be included in the education of a high school student. You can choose any historical figure.
o Can be either a Real Historical Figure OR a Fictional Character
You may only choose 1. The paper needs to meet all of the following requirements: Papers Thesis: This is the only assignment wherein the
students are given the thesis statement to build on: Name of individual should be a part of the education of high school students for these reasons: reason 1, reason 2 and reason 3. This thesis statement must be, somewhere, in the introductory paragraph and clearly restated in the conclusion.
Person, who is the subject of the biography, must be deceased; no living figures.
Famous to relatively famous o There is a 3-source minimum, and there is only 1
week for the assignment, because of this, I recommend keeping easy accessibility to a lot of online sources.
Three sources minimum four sources maximum no extra points for extra sources o These can be websites, articles, books, documentary
television programs or documentary movies § The sources can be any assemblage
Ie., 3 websites; 3 documentary movies; 1 website and 2 documentary television programs, etc.
Papers are graded on the quality of writing and accuracy of formatting
Overall structure of the Biography Essay: This is a standard, 5 paragraph essay. For the introductory paragraph, the thesis statement
should be clearly stated. In this paragraph, it should be stated when they lived and have a few sentences on who this individual was.
Each one of the 3 body paragraphs will discuss one of the 3 reasons given in the thesis statement. Try to balance the size (word count) of each of these paragraphs, as they should all be quite close in size.
For the conclusion paragraph, the thesis must be restated. Typically, this is the shortest paragraph.
No separate title page required Title is the name of the biographical figure BE SURE TO INCLUDE THE WORD COUNT AT THE END OF
THE NARRATIVE Students are required to stay with the 5 paragraph
structure
The Good Essay Writing text components that are of particular value to this assignment are: Chapter 7: Writing Introductions Chapter 8: Writing the Main Section Chapter 9: Writing Conclusions Chapter 10: Referencing Chapter 12: Some Common Worries
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