Poetry Analysis Argument / Research Paper Assignment Sheet Note: Take this document with you to any writing lab appointment you make. Tutors need to know this information, in addition to seeing your essay in order to fully assist you in the writing process. Points: The final draft of this paper is worth 20% of your overall class grade. Maximum points: 100. Length: The paper should be a minimum of 4-5 complete pages (not counting the Works Cited page) and should not be more than 7 pages. Source Requirement: The Works Cited page must list 4-5 sources, primary and secondary; see note below for more details. Every source listed on the Works Cited must be used in the text of the paper. Your book’s biography of the poet may be one source; the poem will be another. Assignment: For this essay, you will focus on one poem and its poet. It must be a poem assigned in this class. PART 1: (50 pts) The first two pages will focus on the life and history of the poet. Choose a specific angle (relationships, education, family, thematic connection the poem, childhood, vices/problems, etc) to discuss in this portion of the essay. • Include details from your textbook (if available) and from at least two research sources (15 points). • Your life and history portion must be accurate, cohesive (not a list), detailed, and focused (15 points). • You must make and support conclusions about the author (15 points). • The paper should have an original title that is not just the title of the text you are writing about. State the author’s full name and title of the text in the introduction, and refer to the author by last name only thereafter. (5 points) PART 2: (50 pts) The second section (must be at least three pages) should argue your interpretation of the poem. Consider this to be a thematic analysis – it will be your job to support your reading of the poem, your interpretation of its theme and how its use of literary elements contributes to that theme. • Your essay should show a strong familiarity with the poem and should use literary elements and terminology to explain your debatable, interpretive angle and argument. (20 points) • Your introduction must have a debatable thesis. This should be the last sentence (or two, if necessary) of the FIRST paragraph. Underline your thesis/claim statement to make it stand out. (5 points) • Everything in your essay should work towards helping your develop and prove the literary argument as stated in this thesis sentence. This section of your essay should be paragraphs developed in support of your thematic interpretation of the poem. It should be organized by literary element or section of the poem. Each paragraph should be an organized, contained unit, using quotes from research and the poem to support your reading. Do not organize by summary. (20 points) • This section should use research to support its interpretative claims, integrating quotes into your own sentence. ML ...

1. Poetry Analysis Argument / Research Paper
Assignment Sheet
Note: Take this document with you to any writing lab
appointment you make. Tutors need to know this information, in
addition to seeing your essay in order to fully assist you in the
writing process.
Points: The final draft of this paper is worth 20% of your
overall class grade. Maximum points: 100.
Length: The paper should be a minimum of 4-5 complete pages
(not counting the Works Cited page) and should not be more
than 7 pages.
Source Requirement: The Works Cited page must list 4-5
sources, primary and secondary; see note below for more
details.
Every source listed on the Works Cited must be used in the text
of the paper. Your book’s biography of the poet may be one
source; the poem will be another.
Assignment: For this essay, you will focus on one poem and its
poet. It must be a poem assigned in this class.
PART 1: (50 pts)
The first two pages will focus on the life and history of the
poet. Choose a specific angle (relationships, education, family,
thematic connection the poem, childhood, vices/problems, etc)
to discuss in this portion of the essay.

2. • Include details from your textbook (if available) and from at
least two research sources (15 points).
• Your life and history portion must be accurate, cohesive (not a
list), detailed, and focused (15 points).
• You must make and support conclusions about the author (15
points).
• The paper should have an original title that is not just the title
of the text you are writing about. State the author’s full
name and title of the text in the introduction, and refer to the
author by last name only thereafter. (5 points)
PART 2: (50 pts)
The second section (must be at least three pages) should argue
your interpretation of the poem. Consider this to be a
thematic analysis – it will be your job to support your reading
of the poem, your interpretation of its theme and how its
use of literary elements contributes to that theme.
• Your essay should show a strong familiarity with the poem
and should use literary elements and terminology to explain
your debatable, interpretive angle and argument. (20 points)
• Your introduction must have a debatable thesis. This should be
the last sentence (or two, if necessary) of the FIRST
paragraph. Underline your thesis/claim statement to make it
stand out. (5 points)
• Everything in your essay should work towards helping your
develop and prove the literary argument as stated in this
thesis sentence. This section of your essay should be paragraphs
developed in support of your thematic
interpretation of the poem. It should be organized by literary
element or section of the poem. Each paragraph
should be an organized, contained unit, using quotes from

3. research and the poem to support your reading. Do
not organize by summary. (20 points)
• This section should use research to support its interpretative
claims, integrating quotes into your own sentence. MLA
formatting should be used throughout. (5 points)
Source Details:
You are required to use and document a minimum of four
sources in this paper.
• One of these sources should be the primary text (poem) you
are discussing.
• Another source may be the biographical information in the
textbook.
• The other two or three sources should be secondary sources in
which scholars or experts have written their
interpretations and analyses of the texts or topics that are
relevant to your argument.
• At least two of your secondary sources must be either database
sources (journal articles that you can access
through the library website’s database) OR print sources.
• Additional sources can be any type (website, documentary,
personal interview, etc.) as long as they are relevant and
credible. Do NOT use Wikipedia, Ask.com, About.com,
Sparknotes.com, etc.

4. Note:
• Each source must be listed on the Works Cited page that will
be the last page of your essay.
• Every source listed on the Works Cited page must be used in
the text.
• The in-text citations should take readers to the alphabetical
list of sources in the Works Cited page and should lead them to
the
correct source by providing the FIRST word of the source entry
(which will almost always be the author’s last name).
• In-text citations must include page numbers when the source
has numbered pages (as almost all of your sources will).
• You should have a good balance of direct quotes and
paraphrased information from your sources.
• Every time you use any information from any source, you
must credit the source with an in-text citation in the same
sentence
with that information so that it is very clear to your readers
what information comes from you and what information comes
from a
source (and which source it comes from).
• Read more about source documentation in your textbook
and/or in the documents posted online.
Format:
Your paper and the Works Cited page MUST be submitted in
correct MLA format.
If your writing contains ANY plagiarism (if any source
information is not credited to the source it came from), you will
be
given a ZERO on the paper.

5. Final Tips:
• Don’t try to cover too much information or use too many
literary elements as the focus of your work; instead, choose one
or two
elements that work together to give an overall interpretation of
the text;
• Don’t use summary any more than you need to in order to
make a point; assume your readers have already read the text;
summary should only be used as support and for clarity;
• Don’t use 2nd person “you” or “your” in your writing (1st
person “I” or “we” is allowed IF it fits the tone and style of
your work;
• Do remember to underline your thesis statement and make sure
your work stays focused on discussing and proving your main
argument;
• Do make sure your work is in MLA format and your sources
follow MLA guidelines;
• Do proofread and edit carefully!
PART 1: (50 pts)PART 2: (50 pts)Source
Details:Note:Format:Final Tips:
Figures and Figure Legends.
Reading and evaluating science is often about looking at and
interpreting figures and figure legends. What makes a good
figure? What makes a good figure legend? When we go to read a
figure legend what are we looking for? This assignment is about
reading, and producing figure legends.

6. Introduction: The parts of a good figure legend. The object of a
good figure legend is to give your audience the overall
conclusion of the figure, and all of the technical aspects that
they need to understand what you are doing in that figure.
However, this is a fairly short piece of writing. Thus, you are
often required to assume a certain amount of knowledge from
your audience. The purpose of talking about “variables” in our
techniques section was partly to give you some knowledge of
what you need to know in order to interpret figure legends.
The labeling on the figure also plays a big role in your
audience’s ability to understand and interpret your figure. Thus,
unlabeled or poorly labeled figures are some of the worst
elements of science. A well labeled figure and its legend should
almost stand alone, and an experienced scientist can generally
understand and evaluate the majority of a figure without having
to read the associated text. We are going to practice this here,
but first, what are the parts of a figure legend?
Figure legends can be broken into 3 parts
1) The big picture conclusion sentence: This sentence is
designed tell your reader what you found overall in the
experiments depicted in the figure.
2) The experimental details, this gives your reader all of the
variables they need to look at the figure and understand what
you did (the labels on the figures are also very important for
this)
3) Statistics - for quantitative figures the number of “n’s” and
the p values often go at the bottom of the figure legend.
This assignment is broken into 3 parts. We will start by looking
at a figure and its associated legend, and you will be asked
interpret what the figure is showing you, then you will be given
a figure without a legend, and you will describe the results of
the figure, and write your own figure legend, and finally I will
ask you to draw your own figure with labels and figure legends.

7. When you are drawing your own figure you can do this on the
computer, or just draw on a piece of paper and scan it or take a
picture of it and turn it in. Id you are taking a picture please be
sure any labels are legible in your image.
The figures we are using here are from a paper that is the
continuation of the experiments that we examined last week.
This is partly to give you some background about basically what
they are doing, so that we can look at these figures in isolation
from the paper. In class on Friday we will briefly look at these
figures, and then we will go on and try to look at the figures
from a completely unrelated paper, and see if we can understand
and interpret those figures on their own.
Although I am sure you could go find this paper, please don’t.
The purpose of this is to practice looking at and evaluating
figures without the associated words.
Part 3 of this assignment mimics something that I might ask you
to do on an exam. (Although in that case I often let you design
your own experiment rather then giving you an experiment and
results). Thus, you can think of this as exam practice.
Here is a great example of a figure and legend (in this case I
have removed A-C to make this a single experiment)
Figure 1: Depletion of Gαq/11 inhibits traffic-pulse-dependent
SFKs activation at the Golgi complex. D) HeLa cells were
treated with non-targeting siRNAs (Ctrl), siRNAs against
Gαq/11 and Gαs (Gαq/11, Gαs siRNA) for 72 h, or 400 ng/ml
PTX for 16 h. After infection with VSV for 45 min, the cells
were incubated at 401C for 3 h (temperature block) and then
shifted to 321C for 30 min (block release). Control cells and
siRNAs-treated cells were fixed and stained for active SFKs (p-
SFKs, grey scale) and giantin (marker for Golgi area
definition). Merged images following the temperature-block

8. release are shown (p-SFKs/Giantin; red and green respectively).
Scale bars, 10 mm. (E) Quantification of data illustrated in (D).
The p-SFKs IF intensities at the Golgi complex are expressed as
arbitrary units (AU). Data are mean values (±s.d.) from four
independent experiments. ***Po0.001 compared with 321C
control (ANOVA analysis). (F) Western blotting reveals
decreases in Gαq/11 and Gαs levels in siRNA-treated cells,
compared with control cells. HeLa cells were treated with non-
targeting siRNAs (Ctrl) and siRNAs against Gαq/11 and Gαs
(siRNA) for 72 h, and then homogenized. The cell lysates were
analysed by immunoblotting for the different Gα subunits, with
actin as the loading control.
Part1 : Going through the figure, What it tells you and what it
doesn’t
1) What do the labels on the left hand side of the images in part
D tell you about? Given that they are doing siRNA, what can
you tell me about Gαq/11 and Gαs…what are they? What is
happening when we do siRNA on them? What about PTX – what
might this be? – Note this is one of those places where the
figure legend may not provide all of the info you need.. you
would probably go look this up in the paper.
2) What are the labels at the bottom of part D showing you?
Given that this work is a continuation of the paper we did last
week, what is the temperature shift doing for them here?
3) What are labels at the top of part D telling you?
4) For each of the four horizontal sets of images in Part D in
one sentence describe for me what is shown in these 4 images
(You should have 4 sentences, one for control, one for Gαs si
RNA, one for Gαq/11- siRNA, and one for PTX)
5) In Part E what are all the stars telling you?
6) Part F is not a very well organized or labeled figure. In this
case the label siRNA is not very informative because they are
showing you two experiments with different siRNA targets… I
know this partly because they show you actin twice. Why are

9. they showing you actin, what does this control for? What does
this figure show?
7) How would you redraw or reorganize this figure to make the
experiments clearer? If they really wanted to convince you that
their siRNA was working as intended what else might they do in
this figure? (Hint: Since Gαs and Gαq/11 are pretty similar,
might Gαq/11 levels be affected by an siRNA that targeted Gαs?
How would they ensure that was not the case?)
Part 2 – Here is the very next figure from the same paper as
shown above (remember this is a continuation of the work that
we looked at in class last week so p-SFK’s are the protein
kinase family that becomes phosphorylated during traffic
pulses, and VSVG is a viral protein that is exported to the
plasma membrane. Just like Gigantin in the previous figure
GM130 is a golgi marker.
1) Describe for me what this figure is showing. What happens to
VSVG at these time points in the 3 conditions (control and the 2
siRNA’s) What is the difference between total VSVG and
external VSVG?
2) Write a figure legend to accompany this figure.
Part 3 – They want to show that KDELR and these G –proteins
(Gαs and Gαq/11) physically interact. To do this they use a Co-
IP where they pull on KDELR and use a western blot to look for
individual members of this family of G-proteins. They find that
KDELR interacts with both Gαs and Gαq/11, but not with the
related G-protein, Gαi3/0. Construct your own figure to show
the results of this experiment. Make sure to show any controls
that would be required for this type of experiment. Label your
figure and write a figure legend.