Analysis of an argument
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SHORT TITLE OF YOUR ESSAY ALL CAPS FLUSH LEFT
The Title of Your Essay in Title Case and Centered
Firstname Lastname
Rogue Community College
WR 121 English Composition I
Instructor: Dr. V. E. Lasnik
DD Month 2015
Words: ????
The Title of Your Essay in Title Case and Centered
Your introduction begins immediately. Begin with an engaging “hook” to interest your reader; within the first paragraph, fully address the reader’s rationale “Why should I care?” With the exception of any block quotes and the end references, all text should be flush left and ragged right, in the same font throughout the document (with the exception of italics when needed), and double-spaced. Indent each paragraph’s first line at a standard depth using the Tab key set to one-half inch or five to seven spaces as shown in this paragraph. Tabs ensure consistency.
Your second of many paragraphs to come logically follows the first. You are permitted to use a simple/open narrative style such as the one show here, or you may choose to use a more formally-structured format in which you identify major sections and subsections of the essay manuscript. However, in such a relatively brief paper as required by the minimum (1000+) word count requirements for this course, section and subsection headings are not required. The exception is the end bibliographic section: in APA style, this final section is simply titled “References,” and the word is centered, begins on a separate page (following your conclusion) and does not contain quotations. Please consult additional APA materials if using headings/subheadings is something you plan on doing, but again—these secondary demarcations are not necessary.
By this point, but certainly no later than this third paragraph, you should have thoroughly engaged your reader as to the interesting, fascinating, intriguing, and salient, compelling nature of the particular problem or issue you will explore in this essay. You should have clearly, unambiguously, and explicitly stated the gist (and arguable through logic and evidence) of the essay or concise set of questions that you will investigate/explore in your paper. If you haven’t completed your in-depth introduction by the end of the first page—do so now!
You should beginning the body of your essay here. You will now understand why we suggest the thoughtful construction of an outline with which to proceed writing your analysis of an argument. You high-level outline can provide the basic organizational strategy of your essay and should begin with the most critical element(s) of the question you are investigating. You should routinely use your most powerful, convincing, and authentic evidence and persuasive logic early in your argument. There is not an absolute rule on this approach, and some writers reverse the pattern of the strongest logic/data first and the weakest—last. However, this is not an easy task to pull off successfully, and although many dramatic courtroom stories have the hero/heroine lawyer do precisely that (saving the best for last in a slam-dunk, final scene evisceration of his/her opponent)—such a theatrically-appealing approach is not recommended for this assignment.
It is a good idea to have multiple sources to support your most important point(s). Two heads may be better than one—and two references are often better than one in convincing the astute, discernable (i.e., critical) reader that an argument corroborated by multiple sources (from different researchers and sources) has more strength, validity, and generalizability. Musing back to the courtroom metaphor, a fair assessment is that your readers are on the jury as you prosecute (or defend) the positions at issue: your research analyses. It is the jury or readers that will render the final verdict after all the evidence (on both sides of the equation) has been presented.
If there are flaws in your thinking or weaknesses in your evidence—your readers will find them! Any fuzziness, uncertainty, vagueness, obscurity or lack of clarity between the evidence you present and the arguments you weave should become apparent by this point in your essay. To summarize your task: you are to (attempt to) write so that you cannot possibly be misunderstood and the “verdict” falls clearly in your favor.
After you have completed the body of your essay and convincingly argued (and richly supported with sound, solid, scholarly empirical (i.e., observable, verifiable, demonstrated) evidence—you should briefly summarize the major findings of your essay. This penultimate essay section is thus known as the summary , and you only need to restate the principal points you already made in your essay. One way of doing this summarizing efficiently is to take the “thesis sentence” (or data) from each of your critical paragraphs, rephrase them to flow together in a convincing and logical narrative form within one or two short paragraphs.
Finally {Note: You may only use this word once and only once in your entire essay), you have an open opportunity to expand and elaborate on your own perspectives in the paper’s conclusion (which follows the summary). Still using only third-person, impersonal, objective voice [i.e., Do not use I, my, me, mine, etc.]—The conclusion is where you can present you own ideas, models, approaches, and potential solutions to your research problem and ask: “Where do we go from here? What future research needs to be conducted to fill in the gaps to our critical knowledge and understanding of the problem/question? How do we get a consensus about how to move forward while reconciling all of the participants, stakeholders, policy-makers, corporate, government, community, and individual interests?” Try to end your essay on a positive, fair-minded (if not optimistic) note—but maintain and emphasize that something needs to be done or some definite action taken if the problems/phenomena you analyzed are to be resolved and remedied. Address the jury’s hearts and minds (this is your last chance to persuade them that their cause is your cause, and that your view(s) should prevail) and then “rest your case.” The judge (your instructor) will act as “jury” in this case—and grade the outcome of your writing performance all things (and stated scoring rubrics) considered! Do not forget the references section that follows.
References
Each of your end references must follow the APA style correctly and fully. Study all of the APA style (format) content/materials included within this course. There is ample information in the course to learn the APA style for in-text and end references, but feel free to explore other outside APA sources as appropriate and helpful, as well as giving/receiving peer reviews. This is flush left, ragged right text but with a hanging indent of one-half inch.