Argument Essay Assignment Sheet - Service Learning | WRT 105, Papers of Creative writing

Download Argument Essay Assignment Sheet - Service Learning | WRT 105 and more Papers Creative writing in PDF only on Docsity! WRT 105—Service Learning Karen Oakes Fall 2005 Unit III—Argument Essay Assignment Sheet Your assignment for this unit is to write a 7-10 page research-based argument essay, in which you will develop an idea or claim based upon what you have learned about a topic of your choosing. You will arrive at this topic by examining what you have learned in your service work. Consider what you understand about your agency/tasks/clients/experience and what you don’t understand. How can you better comprehend the issues you’ve been confronting? What other questions or ideas has this experience led you to? What work situations have been enjoyable for you? Which have been uncomfortable or awkward? Why? What do you want to know more about? What do you wish to understand better? Spend some significant time in this phase—try to locate questions or issues that you are passionate about; develop a line of inquiry that will hold your interest for the next several weeks. You aren’t going to know what your argument is right away. (Remember that uncertainty is an academic value.) Expect to spend time in research (which includes the observations you make during your service work and in your journal, as well as the more traditional search for outside sources). Your argument will grow out of evidence and reason (you will analyze your sources!), and you will seek to convince the reader of the legitimacy of your idea. This idea will be original: you will be making a contribution to some of the larger conversations that surround your areas of inquiry, whatever they may be. Keep in mind the different forms that this idea can take. As we learn from Rosenwasser and Stephen, An idea may be the discovery of a question where there seemed not to be one. An idea usually starts with an observation that is puzzling, with something that you want to figure out rather than with something that you think you already understand. An idea may make explicit and explore the meaning of something implicit—an unstated assumption upon which an argument resets or a logical consequence of a given position. An idea may connect elements of a subject and explain the significance of that connection. An idea often accounts for some dissonance—that is, something that seems not to fit together. An idea answers a question; it explains something that needs to be explained (17). Your idea will allow you to carve out a space within the larger debate surrounding your topic, so that you can move your essay beyond a mere demonstration or report and into a complex piece of analytical and persuasive writing. Remember that the latter depends upon the former. See chapter seven of Writing Analytically for more advice on developing a strong, original thesis. To do all this, you will need to engage in some careful research. This is research as inquiry—looking for material that will help you to understand something better. You will be searching for source material that provides ideas, not just information, so that you have some issues to engage with in your analysis. I expect that most of you will use around three to six outside sources, though you may review many more than that as part of your research process. I do not have set requirements for minimum or maximum numbers of sources; you will need to use your own judgment and work with me and with your peers to determine if you have found adequate material. Make sure that you keep track of all the sources you review; you will be submitting a list of works consulted with your final essay. Once you have located your sources and have begun to narrow your focus, your primary task is to develop the idea that you want to pursue. Remember that this idea will develop over the course of your drafting. Allow it to evolve through the conversations you have with your sources, and be prepared to represent that work to the reader in your final essay. In other words, I expect to see how you have developed from a working thesis that will, by definition, be incomplete (though still original, and not a mere generalization), towards a more complex and textured argument over the course of your paper. Review chapters five and six of Writing Analytically for more information and suggestions on what an evolving thesis is and how to create one. As with your jumpstart essay and your unit 2 analysis, this paper has a larger purpose. A significant part of its function, of course, is to explain something to your reader, but you also have the opportunity in this assignment to further your understanding of community. This is a very different sort of community than the ones you have written about before—not one that you have been intimately involved with for a long time, but rather one to which you are a newcomer and perhaps, in some ways at least, still an outsider. I expect that this community you will be considering is somewhat foreign to you as well. These features of your position give you a unique perspective for analysis and research. Help us to understand better, and you’ll help yourself in the process. As always, your essay must be typed, double-spaced in standard 12-point Times New Roman font, with one-inch margins on all sides, and all pages stapled. The paper must have a title at the top of the first page, page numbers throughout, and appropriate APA citations. In addition to your parenthetical citations and References page, you will need to include a list of works consulted. We will discuss this more as the due date approaches, but in preparation you should be keeping track of all the sources you examine in depth, whether or not you end up using them in your paper. Your essay will be evaluated based upon how well you develop your position, demonstrate the validity of your argument in light of your outside sources, and establish the importance of your idea in a larger context. (This last part is critical to any successful argument —you have to make your reader care about what you are saying and understand how it is significant.) To accomplish these goals, you will need to communicate clearly and effectively and pay careful attention in your writing to answering “so what?” for the reader. This argument will be complex; you will have to explain it to a reader who is interested, but not as fully informed as you are. Keep in mind that many people will see this—me, your classmates, perhaps supervisors at your agency. We want to hear what you have to say, and we want to understand you—make that happen. We all argue everyday; here is your opportunity to identify a question that is interesting and important to you and to formulate a potential (feasible, logical, but not necessarily absolute) answer to that question in such a way as to make your reader realize its importance, too.