english writing

  Option One: Commentary

Format: 3 double-spaced pages, 12 pt. font, MLA

Weight: 50 points

Commentaries take a new angle on a timely topic and back up their claims with good reasoning and solid evidence. For this assignment, choose a current controversial issue that interests you about some aspect of your career field, outline both sides of the issue by researching current events or debates and respond to the argument of others by contributing something new to an ongoing public conversation.

Your goal is to convince readers to agree with you and, perhaps to change their minds. Readers of commentaries want to grasp the issue under discussion and understand the author’s angle quickly and easily. They want to learn something new and figure out how someone else views an important issue. To catch readers’ attention, a commentary needs to snap, making its point quickly and memorably using emotion and character to add life and energy to an argument.

A Commentary typically includes some of or all of these features:

A topic based on current events or current issues [regarding social media]

An introduction that immediately engages the reader by clearly announcing the issue under examination, the writer’s thesis, and the angle he or she will take on this topic.

An explanation of the current event or issue that reviews what happened and the ongoing conversation about it.

An argument for a specific position that includes reasoning, evidence, examples, and observations.

A clarification that qualifies the argument, avoiding the tendency to overgeneralize or oversimplify the topic.

A conclusion that offers an overall assessment of the issue, highlights its importance to readers, and looks to the future.