Argumentative Essay

Assignment Context: 

As the editors of our textbook write, “We [as a nation] have always been divided by such factors as geography, political orientation, socioeconomic class, race, gender, and age, but in recent years it seems like we have become a nation of people estranged from one another.” . . . Across the dividing lines, Americans are increasingly bitter, angry, and suspicious toward one another” (209). Why? What might we do to improve upon this situation?

Assignment Subject (from which you identify your own topic to build an argumentative essay upon):

May people living in the United States believe that, as a nation, we need to work to improve communication and understanding across communities, but where exactly, do we start?

In your essay topic, identify a specific cause/causes of a particular group of Americans who are feeling isolated, left out of the conversations, ignored, and undervalued that influence the future and their own understanding of their futures, and, after identifying some of the effects of this situation, offer a solution, a strategy to help address the negatives evolving from this situation. The group of Americans, and we have read about many different types in our textbooks essays, might actually be quite powerful, but they want more power, more influence. Or, they might be as suggested above, those without much power. They might have a specific cause to promote and in promotion of this cause, they create divisions among us.

Writing Directions: 

Present a specific, debatable cause and effect and solution argument (it should be possible for reasonable readers to agree or disagree with your claim). 

· Be sure to back up your comments with, among other methods, quotes/summaries/paraphrases from four different research resources. 

· Match the format of your essay, the look of your essay, to MLA formatting rules.

· Utilize at least four outside, academically suitable sources, and cite them in accordance to MLA rules.  (More than four is encouraged, but not required.)  

· Create a Works Cited page for your sources.  I will evaluate the appropriateness of your sources (how they affect your ethos) and include my assessment of them in your overall essay grade.

· Include an image.

· Include four summaries/paraphrases, one or more dashes, colons, semicolons, ellipses.

Structure and Writing Principles:  

Place your thesis sentence at the end of your introduction. Introductions need to employ one of the introduction strategies we’ve worked on all semester and may be more than one paragraph long. Do not use a simplistic list of three as the focus of your thesis.

Nearly every body paragraph should be focused around a single topic, a topic sentence.  A topic sentence contains a topic and your opinion about that topic.  Topic sentences should connect meaningfully with the thesis sentence and the other topic sentences. Another useful tradition to adhere to is to place your topic sentence at the beginning of your body paragraphs.

The most successful essays will also possess a high level of unity, coherence, and development.

Concise writing is always superior to wordy writing.  

Draw upon your knowledge of how to make effective use of ethos, logos, and pathos.

Do not submit a 5 paragraph essay.

Requirements: 

Use MLA style for formatting the essay, including the Works Cited page and the in-text citations. 

The audience you are writing your essay for, the people who will read your essay is comprised of those folks who subscribe to and read The Los Angeles Times newspaper.