Can you persuade your readers?
Conflicting viewpoints and voices surround us every day, telling us what to think, how to act, even who we are. Learning effective argumentation teaches us to evaluate and analyze information, improves our reading and listening skills, and helps us communicate more effectively. In learning to persuade our readers, we develop skills we can apply every day as we hear and respond to messages from an infinite number of sources and work toward positive changes in our home, work, and social lives.
Purpose, Topic, and Audience
The purpose of this paper is for you to make a claim and support it with evidence from credible sources. Instead of informing your audience about the topic, you will choose a side to argue in an ongoing conversation about the topic. This means your topic choice should involve at least two distinct viewpoints with numerous points to debate. Part of your work in this essay may be to convince your audience to take an interest in your topic in the first place, but once that is established, your goal will be to sway your audience to your side by providing convincing evidence from your sources. Your audience will include your professor, your classmates, and the academic community at large. Please remember, however, that you should not use one of the topics to avoid as discussed via our Selecting a Topic page. Also remember that you should, at some point, acknowledge oppositional/alternative views; in other words, you will not be very persuasive (or appear credible) unless you engage ideas that differ from your own.
Development and Evidence
Your thesis should be an arguable claim, meaning it is something that two rational, well-informed adults could debate. It could begin as a statement that answers a question or questions about your topic. For example, “Why should your county commission approve a motion to build a new pickleball court in XYZ Park?” Your response might be a thesis that answers that question with, “The county commission should approve the motion to build a new pickleball court in XYZ Park because it is a cost-efficient, low-maintenance facility that would meet community demand from local pickleball leagues and provide recreational opportunities for the adjacent county-run day camp.”
Once you choose a side and have a working thesis–one that might change as you read through a variety of sources–choose rhetorically effective reasons and evidence to support your argument. Evidence may include personal experience, newspaper and magazine articles, statistics and facts, authoritative websites, scholarly articles, community brochures or information, and interviews with experts. If your thesis is about social media, you may need to include posts from social media to make a point, but these would not be considered credible sources for other topics.
You will also need to include appeals to the major stakeholders in the problem, which might include graphic elements like charts, illustrations, etc. You’ll need at least four (4) sources, at least two (2) of which should be scholarly and from a database in GALILEO. Prepare to write 3-5 pages to fully develop your argument.
Organization
Present an effective, consistent argument. Be sure to provide enough background on the topic so readers understand the issue and why it is important. Be sure to develop your own authority and credibility.
Your essay should include the following sections:
An introduction to the problem and its context or background;
The reason you feel the issue must be addressed;
Your argument regarding how the problem should be addressed;
The limits to or potential barriers to your proposed argument being enacted;
The benefits that will result from addressing this issue, and;
A summary of the issue, your position, and a call to action.
Clarity, Readability, and Format
Write with your audience (well-disposed, intelligent adults) in mind, in academic English, and with effective style. This includes varied sentence structure and precise word choice. Please do not use the first or second person in this essay. Prepare your essay following the MLA 9th edition format, and include a Works Cited page including all cited material.
Requirements
Your essay should meet the following markers for success:
Effective overview of the topic and its main ideas, with clearly articulated and specific thesis;
Well introduced, contextualized, accurately represented, and explained textual evidence in each body paragraph;
Strong organization, including topic sentences, logical relation of points within paragraphs, and transition sentences;
Use of clear and straightforward language with little error;
Evidence of critical thinking and synthesis, not just summary;
Informed use of four to five credible sources;
Full attribution of all summarized, paraphrased, or quoted source materials through use of signal phrases, in-text citations;
Completed development of a 3-5 page essay in full MLA document format
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