An issue analysis/logical argument essay helps you to take a stance on an issue with the purpose of persuading the reader to agree with your position. When you make a claim, you need to support your issue with logical and credible information.  You will also need to defend your argument against other points of view to show that there’s more validity on your side.

What’s Expected in this Assignment – Understand the End Result First

This time, because you’ve done a lot of reading and discussion this week, you do not have to submit a complete draft for instructor feedback. You do need to submit your main ideas for the draft, in either idea matrix, list, or outline format, whatever resonates best with you. Logical arguments need to be precise in their ideas.  So this is an “idea draft” as opposed to a whole essay draft, which should include:

• your thesis, with a topic + assertion about an issue. 
• 3-4 main supporting ideas that will help you prove your assertion logically (Note that your supporting ideas may or may not be full topic sentences at this point.)
• a few details or examples for each supporting idea to provide a sense of the type of information you’ll use to support your argument about an issue, to determine whether that argument is logical

Please do not include research in this assignment and eventual essay.  Since you’re writing about an issue you’re interested in, you should be able to develop a logical argument with supporting ideas, explanations, and details on your own. You should end up with enough ideas to create a 3-4 page essay.  However, note that you will eventually be adding research to this essay in the next module, so plan for a non-research essay right now in Module 3, but choose an issue that can eventually be researched for Module 4.

Although this assignment is graded, it’s graded based on whether you complete it thoughtfully and on time. Because writing doesn’t happen all at once, the purpose of this assignment is to get instructor feedback intended to help you develop the draft into a more final essay, which you’ll submit at the end of Week 8.

Consult the Essay Evaluation Criteria and Rubric to help you create a draft.

For additional help, access Academic Support. 

How to Proceed

1. Identify an issue, something that can be debated with at least two opposing viewpoints.
2. Create your own assertion about the issue, which will function as your logical argument working thesis sentence.
3. Identify the type of claim in your argument.
4. Identify the type of support that logically goes with that type of claim.
5. Create 3-4 main supporting ideas, which will eventually turn into your topic sentence assertions.
6. You may want to consider creating one idea that supports the other side of the issue opposite to your own claim, so that you can refute it and show that there’s more logical validity on your side.
7. Use the idea matrix or a simple list or outline to draft just the idea skeleton for this issue/logical argument essay.
8. Submit the draft as a Microsoft Word document.

You can refer to the Online Writing Center’s Key Terms in Academic Argument – “Argue” – for a quick review.

What’s Expected in the Final Essay

Although this particular assignment asks for just an idea draft, here’s what’s expected in the very final essay that this idea draft is working towards, in terms of both logical argument and essay structure. The following elements should be included in your final essay submission – this is what the idea draft is working toward:

• Your claim (thesis assertion)
• Supporting claims (topic sentences relevant to the main claim)
• Details and examples (appropriate type of support for your claim, enough support to prove your claim, logical support – no logical errors)
• Objections to your claim (another topic sentence and unit of support, including your refutation of these objections)
• Persuasive Conclusion