Discussion 5

Over the last two weeks, you have cultivated your critical thinking skills by analyzing and summarizing published works. You are one week away from submitting the rough draft of your Researched Argument paper. Hopefully you have all your sources lined up (remember, you need four sources for the Researched Argument paper). This week, you will create an annotated bibliography, which is a way to evalate your sources and to keep track of which sources provide support for various aspects of your thesis.

Let's talk a little bit more about your thesis, or argument, for this paper. As you read more about presenting an argument in the Writing Guide, pay attention to how you are building support for your thesis. Read with care the section on inductive reasoning, and the types of argumentation (ethos, logos, pathos, and kairos) that you might use to persuade your reader. You will see that much of the foundation for presenting an argument lies in philosophy - does this surprise you? After all, writing is an extension of your thinking. If this week's readings are a bit overwhelming, remember that you can post questions to the "Ask the Instructor" forum at any time.

Learning Objectives

The material we will cover this week pertains to the following course learning objectives:

• Cultivate research skills by searching online databases/libraries.
• Determine reliability of published works.
• Apply analytical thinking skills to evaluate a published work.
• Summarize a published work.
• Adhere to APA style guide standards in written work.