Assignment

Writing the Public Argument on a subtopic pertaining to your Annotated Bibliography and Synthesis Analysis. Your audience is college-educated essay readers who know little of your chosen subtopic, and who are interested in learning more, and who agree with some of your ideas but not completely (yet).

Goal: Create a 7-8 page research paper that educates your reader on the different aspects of a current controversy of your chosen topic, and argues for a specific solution.

MLA format: heading and header
7-8 pages, double-spaced
1" margins all around
Times New Roman, 12-point font
a Works Cited page

Drafting: You have been in the process of drafting the Public Argument this whole semester. Every reading and writing exercise support your analysis, research, and writing of the Public Argument. These include the rhetorical language study of the first unit, the Summary and Critique assignments, the interest inventories, the Annotated Bibliography and its synthesizing into your Synthesis Analysis, the library research ... for the Public Argument, review our course of study, decide what rhetorical strategies are best for you to incorporate, and write a Public Argument encompassing the rhetorical analysis and research skills you have learned thus far.

Note: The "introduction" of the Public Argument includes the topic and the subtopic(s) of your choice, the main points of your argument, and directly states your thesis. Take as long as needed on the page to introduce your audience to the topic (and the subtopics) your Public Argument will take on.

Revising: You'll spend much time over the next two weeks independently revisiting your writing and your research to make sure your Public Argument is 1) accurate, 2) written in your own words, and 3) connects ideas smoothly. You will most likely find your section's email list and small group meetings (that you set up yourself with your peers) most helpful. We will, of course, do in-class workshopping of global and specific writing issues. Good research + good revising = good persuasion.

Oh, and ... here's our three sheets of rhetorical appeals. At a minimum, think about your own ethical appeal.

Some Step-by-Step Direction: In creating your Public Argument, consider that most of the strongest essays I grade implement the classical argument style. If interested, here are some strong, clear guidelines for how to properly structure your argument in the classical style.
Also, especially for those of you tackling an emotionally charged topic, you may benefit from implementing all of or some aspects of the Rogerian argumentation as well.

Remember the free writing help via the Writing Center at the Think Tank ...

And the organizational tools to ease your research and writing:

--- the web plug-in citation manager Zotero
--- the library's online citation manager RefWorks/Write-N-Cite

Some Evaluation Criteria

The Public Argument

- identifies the thesis and main points of the original sources
- identifies the genre and the author and title of the original sources
- directly states your thesis, which while focusing on a topic of your choice and uncovering controversy from your body of research, may also focus on the strengths and weaknesses of the rhetorical strategies found in the original sources
- has a style and organization that are easy to follow
- reads smoothly with transitions connecting ideas
- paraphrases the important ideas of the original sources without using the author's phrasing
- "quotes" as often as needed to accurately incorporate sources
- makes effective use of specific detail from original sources to support analysis
- makes effective use of specific detail-of-place to increase rhetorical effect of your writing
- makes rhetorically significant judgments about the original sources
- avoids errors in grammar, punctuation, spelling and MLA formatting.