Purpose
For this assignment, you will compose a research-based argument in which you identify and define a problem in your home or school (or other) communities and propose a solution to that problem. The exercise is designed to help you develop your research and rhetorical abilities as a means to investigate and solve real-world problems. You will learn how to create a compelling, rhetorically effective argument based on credible sources, how to find and evaluate these sources and integrate them into your argument, how to recognize the elements of effective argumentation, and how to evaluate arguments you encounter outside the classroom so that you can become an informed, responsible citizen.
Instructions
- Review the entire prompt (below) for the assignment Research-Based Argument and look back at all the activities related to this project that we have done so far.
- Submit as complete a draft as you can. The final draft will be between 6 and 10 pages in length (over 1500 words). Your Works Cited will not be included in this word count, but you should include in this draft your in-text citations and Works Cited page. Your draft should include solid, credible evidence (statistics, facts, paraphrases, quotations, surveys) that supports your claims.
You will share the essay here with your teacher and your peers.
Your topic should come from your previously approved proposal although you may change directions if a better topic or focus emerges along the way. (You’ll want to discuss any such shifts with your instructor.) Your topic is a problem facing a local community (that you are part of) and how you suggest solving that problem. The essay should include recent news about the issue and what led up to it. Writers should also explain what repercussions the event had or will have on the community and, most important, your argued, supported opinion.
Questions to answer:
- What is the community that you are researching?
- What is the issue, and what led up to it?
- How does the issue affect the community?
- What are the relevant contexts impacting this issue? For example, what are the important social, political, economic, biological, cultural, environmental, and/or educational contexts of this issue?
- Who are the stakeholders involved?
- Who is already speaking about this issue? What arguments do they have to say, and do you agree or disagree or have a solution somewhere in between?
- Are there multiple perspectives that people take on this topic?
- What decision-making has already been done regarding this issue?
- Do you have a connection to this topic?
- What is a nuanced solution to the issue? Who might be left unsatisfied by this solution?
Your instructor will be the audience for the final draft, but because we will use peer review, your peers will be an audience as well.
Your final, double-spaced draft should be six to ten pages (at least 1500 words) long, plus a Works Cited page. You must include at least six credible sources to get a sense of what is being said about the issue you are investigating. Every source you use needs to pass the CRAAP test (Currency, Relevance, Authority, Accuracy, and Purpose). Three of the sources you use must be peer-reviewed academic articles or academic books. You can use the Regionals Library Course Guide for more information on finding journal articles, news, books, and websites as well as the CRAAP test. Watch this tutorial about Synthesizing Information for Academic Writing as a reminder of how to turn your research into an effective and cohesive argument.
The majority of these sources will probably come from your Annotated Bibliography, but you may need to add or even dismisssources as you write your paper. No matter what type of sources you use, they must be credible as defined in class. Do your sources pass the CRAAP test? If not, don’t use them.
At least three scholarly, peer-reviewed sources are required. Some topics may be too contemporary to already have been published in an academic journal; however, there are always larger implications for a local issue. For example, you might be arguing that the arts are important for students at your school in particular, but there are larger studies that show its importance to overall student health and success.