Designing Two Persuasive Essays (Pro and Con)

This is your major assignment for this course. Your assignment is to design the arguments for two persuasive essays, each of which supports the opposite conclusion on a controversial issue of your choice. This will be a good test of your argumentation skills because it is not easy to argue well for both sides of a controversial issue. For one design you will present your personal conclusion on the issue (Major argument). That will be the more detailed argument. In the other argument, however, you will have to argue for the opposite side, as any good debater would be able to do (Minor argument). The Minor argument is to be less complex than the Major one. Your topic must be pre-approved by your professor (send an email). The details of the requirements are given below.

Major Argument:

You must clearly state the conclusion and then supply no more and no less than five distinct, directly supportive reasons (premises). Each reason or premise must be articulated in a single sentence. Each of these reasons must be supported by credible, properly-cited research. "Credible" means it must come from a well-known and/or respected media source, not one which is simply one person's personal opinion. You must also quote a relevant passage from each piece of supportive research that clearly demonstrates the support for your premise.

Example:

Conclusion: Same sex marriage should not be allowed in Canada.

Premise 1: Marriage has traditionally been a religious and cultural institution and the government has no business engineering the social fabric or values since its role is to protect these values, not to create them.

Reference: Ottawa Citizen, December 18, 2004. "Don't use the Carter for Political Correctness", Margaret Kopala. Kopola quotes and paraphrases from an essay in Divorcing Marriage, Unveiling the Dangers in Canadas new Social Experiment (Queens University Press. Eds. Daniel Cere Douglas Farrow, 2004) by F.C. DeCoste:

Quote: Exceeding these boundaries, the state no longer protects social life, but instead becomes its supervisor and engineer and "the source, and not just the custodian, of rights and duties."

Minor Argument:

You must clearly state the opposite conclusionfrom the Major and then supply no more and no less than three distinct, directly supportive reasons (premises). Each of these reasons/conclusions must be articulated in a single sentence. Each of these reasons must be supported by credible, properly-cited research. You must quote a relevant passage from each piece of supportive research that clearly demonstrates the support for your premise.