English essay

Problem Assignment | kgavand

Reporting an Issue

Assignment Sheet

Our previous essay assignment was a review: you had to make a claim about a specific topic and provide reasons and concrete evidence to support it. Our new essay assignment demands that you use a similar approach; indeed, you must convince your readers of the existence and severity of a specific problem that affects you and them.

Purpose: Identify and analyze a problem that you face as a student at MTSU, as an international student at MTSU, as a tenant at one the apartment complexes around town, or as a member of a club (soccer, etc.). Your goal is to make your readers care about the issue enough to want to address it.

This essay’s emphasis is on demonstrating that the problem is real and worthy of attention. One way to do so is to expose the problem’s consequences; also, you may discuss its cause(s).

Your essay should include an explicit thesis that identifies the problem, as well as enough supporting details and explanations to support your thesis. In other words, prove that what you focus on is a real problem.

(When we think of a problem, we usually also think of a solution. For this essay, focus on the problem only: you will suggest a solution to it in our last writing assignment)

Audience: Think of your audience as the people who are not aware of this problem but need to know that it exists. Depending on the problem you report on, your audience will change and you will have to adapt to it.

Length: Your final draft should be 800 words minimum (1200 words maximum).

Research requirement: For this assignment, you will conduct research. More specifically, you will interview at least two persons and include some of the information thus retrieved in your essay.

Due Dates: The only way to produce a good essay is to write multiple drafts. For this reason, we will have multiple due dates.

W 4/1: A full, typed outline of your essay is due in class.

M 4/6: A full draft is due at conference time.

W 4/8: A revised draft is due for our Revision workshop.

W 4/15: The final draft of your essay is due by the end of the day: submit a digital copy through D2L and a hard copy in class.