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Purpose
Now that students have begun the research process, compiled an annotated bibliography, and written a rhetorical analysis its time to write a research essay. The purpose of this assignment is for you to survey pre-existing research on your topic, create an argument of your own, and enter into the academic conversation around your topic.
Objective
This essay will need to accomplish the following:
Use the research and writing process to locate and evaluate sources to make sure they are appropriate for college-level writing
Synthesize a thesis supported by sound reasoning and logic and multiple sources, and
Add to the conversation on a topic to write for a college-level audience with the purpose to persuade (to get an audience to adopt an idea or consider a policy change or take an action) or analyze (to get an audience to accept an interpretation, consider a new way of thinking about a topic, or adopt a deeper understanding of how something works or why something happened)
Assess the rhetorical situation to define your purpose, anticipate and respond to audience needs and views, and to craft a message accordingly with sound reasons, evidence, and use of Aristotelian rhetorical appeals of ethos (i.e. credibility, or ethics, by gaining your audiences confidence), pathos (i.e. emotions, by gaining your audiences hearts), and logos (i.e. facts and logic, by gaining your audiences minds)
Task
Write a college-level essay using the sources you used in your annotated bibliography, plus any new sources found subsequently in your research process, if you deem it necessary to conduct further research. In your essay, develop a specific essay statement and support it with sound reasons, logic, and appropriate evidence from sources. Organize your writing in paragraphs, follow essay structure, and use the full writing process so that your final draft demonstrates a revision process.
The guidelines for this assignment include:
2000 words or more (6-7 pages)
MLA Style formatting and documentation, including Times New Roman size 12 font, double-spacing, one-inch margins, and MLA in-text citations and works cited
Cite no fewer than eight sources in-text, including at least five scholarly peer-reviewed journal articles from the SCC Library
This paper requires a specific format, so be sure to follow the outline below!
Outline:
Introduction: The content and organization of the introduction is up to you, but it should provide a hook of some kind to grab readers attention, and then a bridge, which can be information or contextual background information for readers to be able to know what you are writing about. Keep in mind that the introduction is a preview of your essaythough it should include your essays thesis statement (i.e. your argument, the point you are making about your topic), it should hold off on offering evidence to support the argument.
Body:
Evidence (literature review): In the first page following the introduction, summarize your research and what you found in sources to support your research. For example, if my topic were homelessness, and my thesis statement is that cities should adopt housing-first programs to help chronically homeless people get off the streets and have better odds of staying employed and out of emergency rooms and detox centers, I would then in the evidence section review my research sources and focus on the facts I found in them. This page or so of the essay should maintain a more objective and factual tone, focused only on establishing the main ideas of what your sources say about the topic. By the end of this section you should have written 2 to 2.5 pages.
Restate the argumentative thesis and offer the first reason for the thesis. In my paper on housing-first programs, I first established in the evidence section that homelessness is a serious problem in the United States and that there is research supporting housing-first programs, which put people in homes without regard to if they are currently abusing drugs or alcohol (a major hurdle in many communities, traditionally, which keeps homeless people out of housing). Perhaps for my first reason I could focus on a belief that shelter is a basic human right, and that chronically homeless people (about 10% of the homeless population) deserve a lot of help to be housed, get job training, and stay healthy and, often, sober. I will, as needed, cite sources to support any of the evidence used in this section.
Offer the second major reason for the thesis. This is much like the previous section, but with a different reason.
Offer the third major reason for the thesis. Again, much like the previous sections, in this section you will discuss your third major reason and why you support it and cite any evidence you use to support your ideas.
You can continue this format until you run out of claims. By now you should have 5 or so pages written.
Offer counterarguments. Whether you attempting to persuade your readers with an argument or an analysis, you should count on some members of your audience disagreeing with you or at least having questions about the validity of your thesis. Good arguers anticipate the disagreements that others may have against your argument (if your purpose is persuasion) or interpretation (if your purpose is analysis). In Letter from Birmingham Jail, for example, Martin Luther King, Jr. writes in response to clergy who were concerned that King was moving the civil rights movement ahead too quickly and that his protests in Birmingham were causing needless unrest. They urged King to wait until people were ready to accept change. King spends much of his letter countering such views and explains his own in great and convincing detail. If King had ignored his opponents views, his own argument would not have been as convincing or powerful. This section should be two to three well-developed paragraphs, about 1 to 1.5 pages, for a total of 6-7 pages.
Conclusion: A good conclusion circles back to the beginning, and revisits the conversation begun there, often restating the essays main idea (the thesis), and then wrapping up the conversation. There are a number of strategies a writer can use to conclude, so like the introduction, the content and organization of this final one to two paragraphs is up to you. By the end of the conclusion, your paper should total 5.5 to 6 pages or morebe sure to do a word count, too, to make sure you are close to meeting or exceeding the 2400-word count requirement.
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