Expository Essay
DUE Wednesday, October 29, 2025 at 5:10 pm
Submit online in Canvas in the assignments section.
Purpose: Despite generative AI, humans must develop and exercise their mental skills or else they will never get to a level of expertise needed for their careers. Growing research shows that adults who do not regularly exercise their minds experience cognitive decline earlier and faster than those who do. Writing expository essays is an essential part of higher education that gives students experience with performing research, doing critical thinking to synthesize ideas, and writing. It therefore is a vital part of authentic intellectual growth. What does ChatGPT think?! "A university education isn’t just about producing a final paper—it’s about learning how to analyze complex ideas, form coherent arguments, and express them clearly in your own voice. These skills are transferable far beyond academia, into careers and civic life, where nuanced reasoning and original communication are invaluable." Thus, we can admit that writing is difficult and it is often not fun, but the whole process of doing it provides fundamental skills. There is no substitute possible for exercising this mental skill, you must write.
Activity: Working alone and without generative AI or other "aids", write a new 700-800 word expository essay in your own words using third-person voice (i.e. do not use "I", "we", or "you") consisting of a central idea supported by your own analysis and examples in which you address one of the topics provided below.
If this is your first college expository essay, then please learn more about expository writing by doing a web search on that key phrase using your favorite web search engine. One explanation is given HERE. You are encouraged visit the UCD Academic Assistance and Tutoring Centers so you can have your essay reviewed by a writing specialist.
This assignment is due at the beginning of class on the date stated above. For you to get full credit, your essay must be turned in at the beginning of class on the due date. Assignments turned in late will be penalized by 10% per day. Assignments late by more than 1 week will not be graded. Exceptions require either prior approval or doctor-validated medical excuse.
No copying, collaboration, using generative AI, or paying others to write your essay is permitted. No plagiarism is permitted; include citations to the sources of knowledge when you state informaiton that you did not invent yourself. All submissions will be reviewed by TurnItIn for plagiarism and also checked for evidence of having been written by anyone else. We cannot effectively police the use of generative AI, but choosing to use it only hurts yourself by making you less competitive for doing a job well. Employers generally do not hire people to write prompts, because if their needs could met with a prompt, then they would just write it themselves and fire you. You must be mentally skilled and experienced enough to provide function and value beyond writing a prompt.
Additional information on how to avoid plagiarism is available HERE.
Expository Essay Topics for 2025
You **must** pick ONE topic among the following two prompts for your essay. Regardless of which prompt you pick, include at the end of the essay as part of the references section the specific articles you found that addressed the topic of your essay (including name of media, date of article, and which page of the media it was on).
-
Droughts are endemic to California. Using the online California Digital Newspaper Collection (https://cdnc.ucr.edu/) that goes back to 1846 and modern newspapers accessible through the UCD library’s website, search for newspaper articles about droughts in California. Write an essay that compares and contrasts how California droughts have been portrayed in newspapers between the two 50-yr time periods 1847-1897 and 1975-2025.
-
Floods are endemic to California. Using the online California Digital Newspaper Collection (https://cdnc.ucr.edu/) that goes back to 1846 and modern newspapers accessible through the UCD library’s website, search for newspaper articles about floods in California. Write an essay that compares and contrasts how California droughts have been portrayed in newspapers between the two 50-yr time periods 1847-1897 and 1975-2025.
Researching Your Topic
It is no longer feasible to expect students to engage in traditional essay "research" involving a literature review, because there is no valid means of evaluating student performance in this arena without direct visual observation of students as they work (which I cannot do) in the new age of generative AI. Therefore I have changed the way this assignment works. Instead of providing a broad essay prompt and allowing for explorative research into the literature over some days (for which students would now just put the prompt into ChatGPT and have the esay written for them in 15 seconds), I am providing a specific prompt with 2 thorough literature sources. Therefore, your "research" should involve reading those two sources thoroughly, possibly even a few times each. Make sure you understand all the vocabulary in each essay and what each author is trying to explain. Then, use your critical thinking to develop ways to compare and contrast the ideas between the two essays. You may work on your generative AI "prompt engineering" to try to figure out ways to get AI to do some thinking for you, if you prefer to puzzle out how to manipulate AI rather than puzzle out what you think the authors are saying for yourself. For a deeper understanding of the content and to recieve a better education preparing oneself for a successful career, a motivated student will also search online for other content on the topic to gain diverse viewpoints to help interpret the provided readings.
Essay Format
- Submit via Canvas' assignemnts page. It provides you a text box you can paste your essay into. I advise you to write it in a word processing program first so you have a copy of your essay saved in your files before submission. Then just paste your text from your file to the Canvas text box.
- On the first line type the title of your paper.
- Leave the second line blank.
- Begin your essay on the third line.
- The reference list at the end will not count toward your 700-800 words.
- This report constitutes 20% of your grade, so the more time you put into them, the better your grade will be.
Writing Your Essay
Begin your essay with an introduction paragraph that identifies the theme of your essay. This theme, also called a "thesis", is a generalization that you have gleaned from reading the variety of sources that you have researched. The introduction paragraph needs to be fairly short to leave space for the main arguments and evidence to follow. With a short essay like this, I suggest avoiding the use of personal stories for the introduction, because they take too long to unfold. The following paragraphs should provide supporting claims and specific facts, quotations, and other forms of evidence backing up your claims. End your essay with a conclusion paragraph that summarizes what you have explained to substantiate your thesis.
In your essay, use citations from the two source articles to back up facts and examples you state based on your sources. You are welcome to read, draw from, and cite other articles you deem relevant, but it is not required. Citations in the body of the text should be in a format such as (Author, Year, page #). In the reference list, use a format such as "Author. Year. Title. Publishing information. Page number". Essays lacking adequate citations and citation formatting of the two source articles will be penalized. Writing the exact words from a source is not permitted. Avoid using long quotes as well, as you need to integrate the information into your own ideas.
What Makes a Superior Essay?
An excellent essay is one that addresses the topic clearly, demonstrates a thorough critical understanding of the material, explores the issue thoughtfully and in depth within the allotted space, is coherently organized with ideas supported by apt reasons and well-chosen examples, has an effective, fluent style marked by syntactic variety and a clear command of language, and is generally free from errors in grammar, usage, and mechanics.
Extra credit is possible for additional supporting materials (not words, simple photos, or additional citations) that improve the quality of the paper, at the discretion of the professor. Extra content should be explained in the text; avoid peppering random photos into the essay. The sources of any additional materials should be properly cited.
