Oscar Wilde Deductive/Research Paper Instruction & Rubric

I. You will be writing a loose research paper on how Oscar Wilde’s life may have influenced his play, The Importance of Being Earnest.

II. You will need to have 4 or 5 relevant and documented points about his life that connect to 4 or 5 aspects of the play. It is best to have one print source (most of your research can be done with the Internet—make sure they are relevant sources).

III. Follow the MLA style of parenthetical line noting of your sources and the works cited page. This can be found in the Everyday Writer book you should own or can be easily assessed via the Internet.

IV. Follow the deductive writing style:

Explanation:

Deduction is the process of stating a known fact, principle, or assumption and then reasoning from it to particular observations to arrive at a conclusion. The logic is subtractive, as we know from Arthur Conan Doyle's great detective, Sherlock Holmes. Here's an example of how a doctor might diagnose a disease:

General Principle: Certain symptoms occur only in smallpox sufferers.
Particular Instance: These sick people show exactly those symptoms.
Conclusion: These sick people must have smallpox.

Most college humanities essays are deductive in that they state a generally valid claim or argument (a thesis) and then move from that claim to discuss particular parts of the work that fit the thesis, thereby lessening the plausibility of other, presumably weaker, arguments. Their structure is based on deductive reasoning.

Final Draft will be 750-1000 words in length and will follow a deductive style.

Due on Monday, November 10.

V. You will be graded on the following rubric point scale:

Thesis (10 points) Introduction (10 points) Body and main supports (25 points)

Conclusion (10 points) Syntax and grammar (10 points) Line noting (10 points)

Resource page (10 points) Deductive Style (15 points)