brainstorm

The final essay for this class is the Public Awareness Persuasive Essay. This brings us to the most outwardly focused we’ve yet been in our writing—This essay analyzes a topic but also works towards convincing the audience that your position on the topic is reasonable. Before you can do that you need to develop a reasonable position on a pertinent topic, have a logically organized argument, and word your thesis/introduction/conclusion powerfully—all of which we’ll focus on through our readings, discussions, and posts.

Assignments

Public Awareness Persuasive Essay:

Write a 6-to-7 page researched essay (not counting the Works Cited page and the cover letter), urging for the awareness of a specific and interesting topic or argument. To be successful in this essay, you must choose a topic that is unappreciated or misunderstood, then argue why your audience needs to be more aware/supportive of it. Part of that might involve sharing an argument involved with the topic, but the thrust of the essay needs to be arguing for awareness. Effective essays do the following quite well:

1) the topic is not very well known. If we took a poll in class about whether your topic was unique and interesting, would it pass with more than half of the students? (Hint: “texting and driving shouldn’t be a thing” would not pass, but “color-changing, self-tying shoes will be commonplace in 5 years” would).

2) The essay first establishes that the topic is misunderstood or unappreciated. It doesn’t just look at the topic—it analyzes people’s perceptions of the topic. You might perform your own survey, or you might interview people who don’t know about it to support this point.

3) It describes what’s at stake, the “so what?” of the topic. Rather than just randomly choosing an unknown topic, write a topic that you can nail down why people should care. (Hint: “Earthworms are unappreciated because not a lot of people like them.” wouldn’t work, but “companies would waste less money on Facebook’s new advertising tools if they knew how flawed they are” would). Looking at trending issues on the news, social media, etc. might be a good place to get ideas.

Your paper should include at least 5 credible sources.

Reading/Blackboard Posts:

The reading response post gets you thinking about the things we read from They Say, I Say in a deeper, more thoughtful way. The directions for this post will be available in the Discussion Board forum where you post them. There will be two separate readings, with a combined reading response being due with the second reading by Tuesday at 2:00pm—4/12/16

The brainstorm post makes use of a great resource for getting feedback: your classmates. Rather than just have me comment on your essay idea, follow the online instructions to post a description of the persuasive topics you could write about. Then, comment (around 100 words) on two classmates’ posts. Be positive and respectful, yet specific and constructive.

· Post the initial post of your Essay #3 topic by Thursday by 2:00—3/17/16

· Comment on two classmates’ posts by Tuesday by 2:00pm—3/29/16 

Peer Review:

Similar to last unit, we will work together to strengthen your work. I will expect the same feedback techniques as I described last time—the hug/slap/hug, the believing/doubting game, and the focus on details/examples.

Cover Letter:

See the cover letter instructions and example on Blackboard for more information and to see how it should look. Due with the final draft.