The purpose of this assignment is to begin revising one of the two essays that will appear in your Writing Portfolio, due next unit. This assignment should be a substantial revision of Essay #1, 2, 3, or 4.

To complete this assignment, select any of the 4 essays you have written so far in this course. Then, revise that essay, focusing on at at least one of the following higher-order concerns.

• Focus: Is your main claim, thesis, or central message clear? Does every element of your essay consistently support your thesis? Do your minor claims support your major claims? Have you defined the issue at hand? What can you do to further emphasize your focus?
• Development: What evidence does your essay provide to support your focus? Have you included examples, explanations, details, and descriptions that help persuade your readers of your position? Have you anticipated and answered your readers’ objections or counterarguments? Have you considered alternate perspectives?
• Rhetorical Strategies: Have you identified a target audience for your essay? What do you do to appeal to that audience? Does your essay rely primarily on emotional appeals or logical appeals? What do you do in the essay to establish your credibility as a writer? 
• Additional Outside Sources: How could adding outside perspectives strengthen your argument? Have other writers, scholars, or researchers addressed the issue at hand? Are your claims backed by a consistent pattern of reliable evidence? Are basic factual claims backed with evidence or sources? How does your essay engage with counterarguments or alternate perspectives on the issue?
• Organization: How does the structure of your essay support its message? Could the essay be re-structured or re-ordered to better support your arguments? Are paragraphs and transitions used to guide readers through your ideas?

Before you turn in this assignment, create a bullet list of the changes and revisions you made. Include this list either as a second file or an additional page. Failure to submit this required information will result in a grade deduction for this assignment.

After you turn in this revision, your instructor will provide further guidance for revising this piece for your portfolio. Your instructor will probably also provide pointers for revisions for the second essay you will revise for the portfolio in Unit 7.

Guidelines for Essay #5

Length/Due Date: approximately 1,000-1,400 words, due Sunday by 11:59 p.m. Central Standard Time (CST).

Style/Format: This, as all essays in EN106, should be formatted according to MLA guidelines. As a reminder, the following document formatting guidelines are required:

• Use 12 point, Times New Roman font, double-spaced.
• Use 1-inch margins top, bottom, and sides.
• Although no cover page is needed, you should include your name, my name, the course number/title, and date at the upper left-hand corner of the manuscript.

Research & Documentation: Your essay must include formal references to all sources. Be sure to provide in-text citations formatted according to MLA guidelines. And, of course, you must also provide appropriate documentation for any other sources you cite.

File format: Please submit your essay as a , x, or .rtf file. These formats are available in most word processors, including Google Docs and Open Office, and will ensure that your instructor is able to comment on your work.

Works Cited: Your essay should include an appropriate works cited page with an entry for each individual source you reference in the body of the essay.

Titles: Include a descriptive title at the beginning of your essay that tips your readers off to your thesis. Do not format your title with quotation marks, boldface, underlining or italics. Quotation marks or underlining are only appropriate if the title borrows words from another source.

Cover pages: Please do not format your essay to include a cover page.

Deadline: Submit your final draft essay no later than 11:59 p.m. CT on Sunday at the end of this unit.

Use of essays for future courses: Please understand that your essay may be used— anonymously—as a sample for future EN106 students and instructors unless you expressly request that it not be used. Your work, of  course, will only be used for educational purposes.

Assessment: See the Grading and Assessment content item under Course Information.

Why Is This Assignment Important?

By completing this assignment, you will further strengthen your revisions skills, and you will gain a head start on your Writing Portfolio, due next unit. The essay you revise for this assignment will be one of the two final-draft essays included in next unit’s portfolio. (The portfolio also must include an in-depth reflective essay and artifacts of your writing process.) So, think of this assignment as a chance to get started early on the revisions necessary for the portfolio.

Remember that effective revision is focused on higher-order concerns, such as focus, development, argument, rhetorical strategies, and organization. Lower-order concerns, such as editing for syntax, diction, punctuation, and other elements of grammar and mechanics, should be saved for later in your writing process — for instance, in the next unit. Writing research reveals that most writers can only focus on one or two elements of revision at a time, and that effective writers focus first on higher-order concerns.

As you determine your priorities for revision, review your instructors’ feedback on your previous assignments. Note any patterns or repeated comments. Also, make sure to use your peer reviewers’ advice and feedback as a guide to revision this unit.

Good luck as you revise!

Running Head: THE CULTURAL NORMS OF POVERTY 1

THE CULTURAL NORMS OF POVERTY 5

Essay Outline

1) Introduction

a) Author names and titles regarding the readings

b) Background information and summary

c) Thesis statement

2) Body Paragraphs

a) Topic sentence

b) Proof of thesis with examples

c) Direct quotes from readings

d) Indirect quotes from readings

3) Conclusion

a) Thesis analysis

b) Summary of the essay

c) Conclusion of the entire analysis

The Cultural Norms of Poverty

Introduction

The topics “How I Discovered the Truth about Poverty” by Barbara Ehrenreich, “Seeing and Making Culture: Representing the Poor” by bell hooks and “The Rise of the Working Poor” by Richard Reich, all are discussing about the poverty in our culture and the reasons of people who are poor. Why are they poor? What made them think they are poor and also who exactly are the ones working this society? The truth about the poor people is that they do their best to earn and work for this society, in which the people with status eat on their hard work and efforts.

Body

Poor people are not mostly welcomed by the rich people in their rich standards and stylish lives. They aren’t even allowed to sit with them or have the same dish. Because of these norms, kids in schools are also doing the same deeds with other kids which is a never ending chain. When these kids grow up from schools, there are institutes that are further categorized in the domain of expensive institutes that are specifically for rich people and government institutes where all the poor people re supposed to go. According to these standards, the poor students aren’t even assigned higher ranking jobs.

Barbara is discussing her life in her readings on how she came to know who is poor and why is she thinking herself as poor too. She is an author who worked hard for herself to accomplish the standards in a difficult way by not giving up. She made her way through education even though she was told that she’s not meant to be where she wanted to be (Ehrenreich).

“To be impoverished is to be an internal alien, to grow up in a culture that is radically different from the one that dominates the society.” (p.16)

In this quote, she is trying to inform how a poor person feels. It is obvious he grew up in a poor family, now he is criticizing and thinking what if he had been born in a rich one? A poor person’s dreams and fantasies are never coming true. They dream of knowing that fact. They don’t try too hard because they know that if they have to try hard, then it means they have to do more than their abilities just to fulfil one of their wishes. This is why the majority doesn’t do anything about it. They know they don’t belong in the rich people’s lives. To them, they are street rats or aliens. Children have to grow up in such circumstances doing labour daily.

Bell hooks are supporting Barbara’s truth and talking about society with their pre developed culture and school of thoughts. He is discussing why a poor person remains poor even in the end and those of them who are trying hard; they get nothing but miserable and demotivating remarks from the society (Hooks). Even the new generation thinks about the poor in a bad way. They don’t consider them people who are worth talking about, which is utterly wrong (p.486-488). These factors are just mere thoughts that are being passed onto people. Hook states that “Value was connected to integrity, to being honest and hardworking.” (p.488)

Indeed those who work hard are the ones who are truly valuable. The rich people are simply the bread eaters of this society who do nothing and who nothing about how things are actually done. They have hands with soft palms. They have no experience of hardships or sweating to earn. Instead, wealth is simply handed over to them. Richard is not showing the poor as the poor people, though. He is stating the facts of our lives. People who are rich are not exactly rich. He is claiming that the poor people are the ones who are the breadwinners and the workers of the society we live in. They are the ones who are earning in reality (Reich).

Robert is of the view that the Americans are more into this cultural norm. He states that Americans had their ancestors gather all the wealth which has been distributed among their children and grandchildren. After that, it is simply being used by them, and they don’t even have to work. He says that the non-working rich of the society were paying taxations up to 30 per cent in the late 1908s but now that has further reduced to 20 per cent. This means that 80 per cent of the taxes are paid by the people who are working hard day and night for themselves (p.740-749).

Conclusion

The society we live in has a predefined and pre-outlined step of procedures already. We are simply following or being led by the higher ups. They are controlling us from the schools of thoughts that are engraved in our minds. Because of this, our culture is mainly based on two categories. The rich rule and the poor work. The rich aren’t rich because they made efforts; rather, they are rich because they are living on the efforts made by the poor.

The poor consider themselves low lives or aliens. They think they live in a society where they have no worth. Because of this, most of them don’t make efforts to change their lifestyles. The bitter truth of being poor is that wherever they go, they won’t be accepted by the rich. However, they are the ones running the society. If they stop working, the rich will be devastated because they have no idea of how something is done.

References
Ehrenreich, Barbara. How I Discovered the Truth About Poverty. n.d. https://herculodge.typepad.com/critical_thinker/2015/11/how-i-discovered-the-truth-about-poverty-by-barbara-ehrenreich.html. 11 march 2015.
Hooks, Bell. “Seeing and Making Culture: Representing the Poor.” Pichpanharath, 2018. https://prath37420052.wordpress.com/2018/04/30/seeing-and-making-culture-representing-the-poor-by-bell-hooks-486-492/.
Reich, Robert. The Rise of the Working Poor and the Non-Working Rich. 30 march 2015. https://robertreich.org/post/115067624170.