Assignment: Compare and Evaluate

Compare and Evaluate Essay

Length: 3-5 pages

Due date:

Student Learning Objectives (SLOs)

  • Define judgments and criteria that are appropriate to the objects of evaluation/comparison
  • Evaluate using these judgments and criteria
  • Produce a compare-and-contrast essay

Description of assignment:

Compare-and-contrast essays and the objects, phenomena, and/or ideas that they describe are an important kind of paper—they offer a chance to see beyond binaries and to view things in a complex and nuanced way. So, for this assignment, we will choose two related subjects or subjects that are often grouped together and describe in detail their similarities and differences.

Goal of assignment:

The goal of this assignment is to see two subjects in a more rich and detailed way in order to uncover why these two subjects are often grouped together or why they should be. At the same time, this paper also asks you to see how these subjects are complex and should be viewed with all their nuances and differences. We are, in short, making a paper out of a Venn diagram, where similarities and differences are described, as illustrated below, where the overlap between the circles signifies the similarities between two subjects.

Skills we will work on with this paper:

  • Observation and description
  • Argumentation
  • Thesis creation
  • Organization
  • Use of transitional words

Suggestions for topics:

Historical Events: The French and American Revolutions

Technology and Social Media: Twitter and Facebook

People: Beyoncé and Madonna

Ideas: Evolution and Creationism

Rubric [with percentage breakdown for different aspects of evaluation/grade (%)]:

Purpose & Supporting Details (30 points)

  • Clear contrast and comparison/specific examples/relevant information. 30 points
  • Clear contrast and comparison/general examples/relevant information. 20 points
  • Fairly clear contrast and comparison/general examples/includes non-relevant information. 10 points
  • Incomplete contrast and comparison/missing examples/includes non-relevant information. 5 points 

Organization and Structure (30 points)

  • Organization follows a consistent order, with logical connections between similarities and differences. 30 points
  • Organization doesn’t always follow a consistent order, but logical connections between similarities and differences are present. 20 points
  • Organization doesn’t follow a consistent order, and logical connections are missing. 10 points
  • Little sense that the comparison and contrast is organized. 5 points 

Thesis (20 points)

  • Thesis explains the contrast and comparison, highlights the importance of the comparison/contrast. 20 points
  • Thesis explains the contrast and comparison, gestures to the importance of the comparison/contrast. 15 points
  • Thesis explains the contrast and comparison, and the importance of the comparison/contrast is implied. 10 points
  • Thesis doesn’t explain contrast and comparison and makes passing reference to the importance of the comparison/contrast. 5 points

Grammar and Formatting (20 points)

  • No errors in grammar or spelling that distract the reader from the content. MLA formatting is correct. 20 points 
  • A few errors in grammar or spelling that distract the reader from the content. MLA formatting is correct. 15 points
  • Multiple errors in grammar or spelling that distract the reader from the content. Some MLA formatting is incorrect. 10 points
  • Errors mostly distract the reader from content. MLA formatting is missing or mostly incorrect. 5 points

Possibilities (the best essays do this):

  • Present a logical and connected discussion of similarities and differences, avoiding lists of things that are similar or dissimilar.
  • Choose subjects to compare and contrast that are similar enough to warrant the comparison and different enough to create a compelling argument.
  • Make clear the “so what” of the essay—why does this comparison and contrast matter? The most advanced essays address the relevance of these comparisons and contrasts in explicit and implicit ways.

Pitfalls (common mistakes students make with this assignment):

  • A data dump of similarities and differences that appear as lists
  • Choosing things that are too different or too similar
  • Not addressing why these similarities and differences are important

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Writing Rhetorically: Framing First Year Writing Copyright © 2022 by LOUIS: The Louisiana Library Network is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

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