As youre look over the TEDTALK (Video Provided) you must have stories from your own life to back up your point; avoid any other evidence. Avoid data and quotes. We will cover that later in the semester and using data and quotes requires quite a bit of formatting – which we will cover later this semester. Whatever you write about MUST be something that happened to you, as you will be using your own anecdotes (little stories) to back up your argument, not evidence that you get from research or online. You yourself must have experienced what you are going to discuss, and it must be an argument using your own small stories to back it up.

Once you have given it some thought, your first task is to create an outline of your essay. Outlining is important because planning what you write helps you deliver a stronger message to your audience. There is a template at the bottom of this assignment sheet that you should download into a Word Document. You will be able to type into the template which will help you organize your thoughts. This is not an essay, yet. You must first construct the outline. For the next step, after I’ve read the outline and given you feedback, you will write the paper.

Your outline should contain complete sentences because it is a graded assignment. It should also be about half as long as the final paper will be. You want the outline to provide a clear skeleton of your proposed paper. It should follow this general pattern:

I. Introduction (4-6 sentences long)
Introduce the general topic
Move toward the more narrow topic that involves you
End your introduction with a thesis sentence (the argument that you
will make in your paper)

II. Body Paragraph One (10 18 sentences)
Start the paragraph with a topic sentence (The main idea of the
paragraph and one that develops the thesis)
Develop the main idea of the topic using a story from your own life. The
story should be one that took place in less than a day

III. Body Paragraph Two (10 18 sentences)
Start the paragraph with a topic sentence (The main idea of the
paragraph and one that develops the thesis)
Develop the main idea of the topic using a story from your own life. The
story should be one that took place in less than a day

IV. Body Paragraph Three (10 18 sentences)
Start the paragraph with a topic sentence (The main idea of the
paragraph and one that develops the thesis)
Develop the main idea of the topic using a story from your own life. The
story should be one that took place in less than a day.

V. Conclude your paper with a short paragraph (4-5 sentences) that does
not start with the phrase IN CONCLUSION.

TEDTALK https://www.ted.com/talks/angela_lee_duckworth_grit_the_power_of_passion_and_perseverance?utm_campaign=tedspread&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=tedcomshare