Lessons · Teaching · the essay built from two sources
The essay built from two sources
The second essay gives you two short sources on one topic and asks you to write about it using both, with attribution. It is not an argument essay: you are being marked on selecting relevant material, representing each source fairly, attributing it, and building something coherent out of the pair.
Hone is a place to practise a career, one idea a day. This is one of its lessons, written out in full and free to read without an account.
In beta. This lesson was written for Hone and has not yet been checked by a state certification officer. Practice material, not professional advice. What that means.
What it is for
This is the closest thing on the test to the reading a teacher really does: two accounts of the same thing, neither complete. It also catches candidates who prepared only for the argument essay and then write one, ignoring the sources, which loses most of the marks available.
How to think about it
Read both sources and write one sentence for each before planning. Decide the relationship between them: agreement, disagreement, or different aspects of the same thing. Build the essay around that relationship, and attribute every borrowed idea by naming the source as you use it.
Worked example
Name the source as you use it: 'Source A reports that...', 'Source B, by contrast, argues...'Attribution inside the sentence is what the rubric asks for and it takes no extra time.
Using only one source loses marks however good the essay isThe task names both. This is the most common single failure on this essay.
Your own opinion is allowed but it is not what is being countedThe marks are in the handling of the sources.
Quote sparingly and paraphrase mostly, because a long quotation is the source's writing and not yoursThere is nothing to mark in a transcribed paragraph.
Your turn
Name how many of the two sources a passing essay uses.
A source-based essay must use of the sources given
Solve one, graded on the server
The trap
Treating the sources as background and then arguing your own case. The sources are the material, not the warm-up, and an essay that mentions them once in the introduction is marked as though they were not used.