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English 2010: Intermediate Writing Persuasive Research Paper 100 points

Assignment description and rationale: In most of your college writing assignments, you will try to persuade different audiences, including professors and classmates, that you understand a subject or that your position on an issue is logical. As you prepare to graduate from college, you will write to persuade specific audiences, including graduate studies administrators and prospective employers, that your research interests are worthwhile or that you are qualified to work in your field. Because persuading a target audience is a common purpose in college writing, the assignments for this course have focused on helping you plan to write an effective argument.

To complete your research and write your argument, this assignment requires you to support the persuasive claim in a 6- to 10- page persuasive research paper. You will also use ethos, pathos, and logos to appeal to a target audience and follow MLA documentation guidelines to format your persuasive research paper.

Assignment Requirements: Use the following guidelines to write and format your persuasive research paper.

1. Support your persuasive claim with at least five reliable research sources. Your research sources can include secondary sources (e.g., books, articles, Web sites, documentaries) or primary sources (e.g., interviews, surveys). Although I do not specify the number of books, articles, Web sites, etc. you must use to support your claim, I expect you to cite reliable secondary research sources from both the Merrill-Cazier Library and the Web in your argument. I encourage but do not require you to use primary research sources in your persuasive research paper.

Before you start quoting, paraphrasing, or summarizing information from your research sources in your persuasive research paper, review guidelines for avoiding plagiarism. When I grade your persuasive research paper, I will expect you to use signal phrases to introduce quotations (e.g., “Researchers at Dartmouth College assert. . .”) and to limit your use of long quotations.

2. Use ethos, pathos, and logos to appeal to a target audience. Because establishing your credibility, creating emotional appeals, and identifying convincing evidence for a specific audience will make writing your persuasive research paper easier than trying to accommodate a general audience, you should target a prospective reader(s) you analyzed in your research proposal.

To determine how to use ethos, pathos, and logos to persuade your target audience, consider these questions:

a. To establish credibility, how can you describe your investment in your claim, address alternative views, or mention the reliability of your research sources?

b. To create emotional appeals, how can you use a specific example, an analogy, or a brief personal narrative?

c. To appeal to your audience’s sense of logic, how can you make your argument clear and consistent and refer to primary and secondary research sources your audience will find convincing?

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d. Is your argument timely? Does it matter at this time?

3. Follow MLA documentation guidelines. You should format your persuasive research paper using MLA documentation style.

MLA documentation styles include in-text citations, a complete works cited, headers, and one-inch page margins. (See the sample student papers under lecture notes). For additional help citing print or online research sources, access the Online Writing Lab at Purdue University (http://owl.english.purdue.edu/).

Use these steps to indent the citations on your works-cited or references list:

1. Click Format 2. Select Paragraph from the drop-down menu 3. Click on the Indents and Spacing tab 4. Under Indentation, choose Hanging from the Special drop-down menu

To insert headers, click View then select Header and Footer from the drop-down menu.

4. Use a consistent voice. You can choose to use a formal or informal voice in your persuasive research paper, but you should be consistent.

If you use formal language in your argument, make sure to explain concepts your target audience—and your classmates and I—may not understand and define acronyms and other unfamiliar terms.

By describing your experiences regarding your topic or using the personal pronoun “I” to discuss your claim, you can adopt a less formal voice in your argument. If you choose to use informal language in your persuasive research paper, you should work to integrate information from formal research sources into the grammatical flow of your sentences. Remember, too, that the use of informal phrases such as “I think. . .” and “I believe. . .” are generally understood and become simply needless words.

5. Meet the six- to ten-page length requirement.

6. Use correct grammar, punctuation, and spelling. You should avoid surface errors in your persuasive research paper, especially fragments, run-on sentences, comma splices, and misplaced commas and semicolons. If I have corrected these errors in your assignments this semester, make sure to consult the OWL or Hacker’s website (see above) as you write your argument.