Young Rhetorical Arts
Young Rhetorical Arts
PERSUASIVE RESEARCH PAPER ASSIGNMENT
Assignment: Building off your Topic Proposal and your Annotated Bibliography, compose an academic argument (often called a “position paper”) that takes a clear stance on your central research question. Your paper should be 6-8 pages, include a Works Cited page (this does not count towards paper length) and use MLA citation. Due Dates: Third Draft due Monday, March 21st at the beginning of class.
• First Draft due: Wednesday, March 9th in class. • Second Draft due: Wednesday, March 16th in class. • Optional Revision due: Wednesday, April 27th in class.
What is an Academic Argument? Academic arguments, as discussed in your text, are composed with a specific structure: through claims, reasons and evidence. They are multi-faceted, often complex, and require a good deal of research (and not just of your side, but of as many sides of the issue as you can find) so that you, the author, can make a responsible, well-informed claim. The Topic Proposal and the Annotated Bibliography create a foundation for your Persuasive Research Paper. You now have a clear, focused topic and background information on your specific research question. At this point, you are being asked to join the conversation on your topic, and in doing so, you will take a clear stance on your question. You will need to develop a clear thesis (the claim) and support that thesis with reasons (the “becauses”) and evidence. While this evidence may come from your Annotated Bibliography, you also may need to conduct additional research. Your audience is an academic reader who has an interest in and a fair degree of knowledge of your topic, and you are attempting to persuade him/her to believe that your stance is both valid (conclusions follow from premises), sound (conclusions are true), thoughtfully composed, and well-supported. Further, since this academic essay does not address a specific discourse community or function as a product of a discipline, you will have fewer genre conventions to which you need to adhere (e.g. a prescribed structural formula for a scientific paper, or the requirement for many citations in a history essay). Use this latitude or freedom/choice from the constraints of some disciplinary-specific conventions to invent/develop your arguments with responsible reasoning and sufficient depth to satisfy the expectations of an academic reader. In other words, this essay affords you the opportunity to strut your logos (Aristotle’s Appeal, not brands) and demonstrate your own original thinking and analysis. Of the three Appeals, academic discourse generally prizes logos slightly above ethos and certainly above pathos. You may want to offer counterarguments for rebuttals, indicate logical fallacies, consider the premises and underlying consequences of your logical conclusions and assess their warrants (i.e. assumptions) with the Toulmin system in order to enhance your reasoning. In addition, you may consider simplifying the dense, complex information from your sources in order to be able to manipulate these arguments in conjunction with your thesis to produce the logical conclusions driven by your analysis. Remember that the general purpose of persuasive academic inquiry is to advance knowledge, and so you should consider and interrogate the knowledge gap to which you as a student are contributing instead of focusing only on winning your position. Your discovery processes of brainstorming and writing (during which you conceive of or invent your arguments) should reflect your discernment (your acceptance of responsible arguments and dismissal of the irresponsible).
Young Rhetorical Arts
The following criteria will be used to evaluate your paper: 1) Does the introduction introduce the reader to the issue in a clear and accurate way? Does the author establish his/her ethos? Does the introduction clarify who is a part of the conversation as well as the ‘stakes’ involved in this issue? Is there a clear, central thesis (specific/narrow, debatable and qualified) that relates to the framing of the topic in in the introduction? 2) Are the body paragraphs thoughtfully composed and arranged so that the reader can follow the author’s logic? Is there a topic sentence that introduces the reader to the idea of the body paragraph? Is there a clear, fair explanation of the opposing viewpoint/counterargument and the opposing viewpoint’s evidence and/or reasoning? 3) Do the body paragraphs include appropriate and persuasive evidence that encourage the reader’s acceptance of the thesis? Does the author account for the potential shortcomings of the evidence presented? 4) Does the conclusion reevaluate the author’s stance on the issue and examine this stance in relation to the stakes? Does the conclusion add insight to the complexity and specificity of the prior discussion? Does the conclusion take full advantage of having earned the freedom or opportunity, by the end of the essay, to step back and think? 5) Is the paper appropriately formatted with an introduction, body paragraphs, a conclusion and Works Cited Page? Does the author cite parenthetically (Author, Page Number) and accurately, remaining faithful to proper MLA format? 6) Is the essay a sufficient length for both the requirements of the assignment (6-8 pages) and to fully explore the issue, deeply engage the reasoning, and adequately support the claim?
