Argument Paper

Section 1

Your local town is addressing the following issues in its law-making:

1. Should people under 18 be subjected to legal curfews or restricted driving privileges?
2. Should libraries be required to install filtering software or otherwise censor the materials that they provide?
3. Should insurance companies in your state be required to pay for breast reconstruction, birth control pills, or Viagra?
4. Should the use of camera phones be banned in local gymnasiums or other locations?

As an active citizen, you ask to research and present to the town's citizens one of the above issues. The governing body has agreed and asks that your presentation be specifically designed to show citizens of the community how and why one of the issues above is controversial and how to be educated consumers of information regarding this issue. They ask this because the citizens will be voting on these issues in future elections and the governing body wants its citizens to be properly educated on these topics.

In your presentation, make sure you include the following:

Remember, you are giving a presentation to an audience that does not know much, if anything, about your topic.

• Explain the issue, including definitions of common terms involved in the issue and why this issue is controversial.

• Identify and describe three to four different conclusions that are drawn when arguments related to the issue are made.

• Summarize the kinds of evidence typically used for each constructed argument related to the issue. Be sure to discuss the reasons these kinds of evidence are used and/or are most effective.

• Analyze how each of the different conclusions regarding the topic use particular evidence to support their claims, paying particular attention to analyzing how the conclusions rely on different facts, different sources of evidence, or different reasoning from other conclusions. In other words, explain why certain groups would use a particular type of evidence while an opposing group would use a different type of evidence, or how two groups can represent that same data in two completely different ways.

• Utilize at least three different sources and properly cite them throughout the presentation.

The presentation should be 8 to 10 slides long, and each slide should have complete, formally written slide notes (proper grammar, APA formatting, and academic tone) for record-keeping purposes and in the event there are citizens who are deaf or hard-of-hearing at your presentation. The slide notes must include proper APA citation of sources, proper paragraphing, and proper grammar and tone. Visually, the slides should be easy to read. A properly APA-formatted reference page must be the last slide of your presentation. See the rubric for more specific requirements of the presentation.