Helpful Hint about Common Assignment Organization

Ultimately, the way that you decide to organize your Common Assignment is up to you.  But it is very easy for this essay to fit into a pretty standard kind of academic essay format.  Let's compare and contrast:

In the Stelloh summary/response essay, the assignment prompt suggested that you write the neutral and objective summary of the Stelloh article in the first part of the essay, followed by a transition into your response section, signaled by a mini-thesis. 

This is a slightly unusual format, only because it requires the reader to commit to reading a summary without knowing what the purpose of the summary is.  (That is, the reader does not really know what the paper is about until he or she gets to the middle of the paper when the mini-thesis is introduced.)

In a lot of traditional thesis-driven academic writing, it is more typical for a paper to begin with an introduction that introduces the topic of the paper and ends with the writer's argument in the form of a thesis statement. 

Then, if there is something that requires background or summary, the writer will step back from that argument, and provide the objective and neutral summary or background that will help the reader become more oriented to the topic.  This seems odd to many college writers because it means slipping out of the argumentative mode into the neutral mode.  Again, look at this from the perspective of the reader.  The reader now clearly understands why he or she is reading the summary or background and can anticipate that an argument will follow. 

After the writer has provided adequate summary and background, he or she will transition into the argument itself, now much more understandable to the reader because the reader has the knowledge required to follow it. 

This second model is probably the easiest, and perhaps most effective, way to structure the Common Assignment.