7 page research paper

Rothman

RESEARCH PROJECT/ARGUMENTATIVE ESSAY PROMPT

Act 1

This essay will use various rhetorical strategies to argue for a specific course of action. It will be at

least 7-8 pages long. Your Research Project will build upon your proposal, annotated bibliography,

and discourse essay. As you write it, parts of your earlier writings may be useful. You may change

your mind about something, and you may change the words on the page. But some of your ideas

and language from earlier writings will likely play an important role in your Research

Project/Argumentative Essay.

In the Argumentative Essay, you are expected to go beyond merely stating three or so reasons why

your position is a good idea. In this essay, you are expected to argue so that you thoroughly persuade

your reader to think and act further about the issues at hand. This means that you will need to

thoroughly address any real or possible objections a reader might have to your stance. This project

should include at least eight (8) sources, and you should use APA in-text citations and include a

References page.

Act II

As we discussed at the start of the quarter, your project MUST engage something about which you

are passionate, something you care about, something you believe is urgent for other to care about as

well. Try to demonstrate this in your essay.

The work you have done up until now has been substantial: imagining a conversation you feel

strongly about entering and contributing to, proposing it, researching, annotating some of your

research sources, more researching, putting much of your research into context (discourse essay),

and more researching. We’ve now discussed several major rhetorical concerns: purpose, audience,

some ideas about invention or how you might craft your research and ideas, some ideas about

arrangement (how you can begin thinking about productive structure), and a good bit about style

(language, tone, sentence and paragraph substance). In addition to engaging the CONTENT of your

project’s focus, you must also heavily engage and strategize about HOW you write everything in this

essay. I imagine this is quite a different challenge than what you’re used to in writing courses.

Please put your all into thoughtfully building your essay. Please do think of yourself as a builder, a creator, someone who has the purpose and freedom to make a piece of writing that will truly impact

its audience.

Epilogue

Please complete and submit on D2L a *full draft*, 7-8 pages, double-spaced, incorporating at least

eight sources, with References page, and using APA formatting, by Friday 2/19, 11:59pm CST.

Your revised, “finished” essay will be submitted with the rest of your Course Portfolio on Friday

3/19, during Final Exams week. So, don’t stress about that for now. Focus on writing a strong, full

essay.