Week 14 Mon April 18: Assignment
- MW Section: your Essay Proposal, with due dates, has been emailed to you.
- Sat Section: your Essay Proposal, with due dates. Couple format oddities showed up in Google docs. It's best use the version I'm sending everyone. Here's your "Final Exit" Ethanasia blog.
- Read Reid, Chapter 10 (Arguing) pp. 295-306 and 328-336.
- Here's a 5 minute video on Topic Selection and research, with focus on thesis statement.
- In your journal, make an entry entitled Essay #4. This entry will have four items, which should be numbered as below. I suggest you read all four Items and do a little free writing before you start answering any of them. Then, at any point in completing this assignment, feel free to do some research on your topic. (We will soon be hold special intensive research sessions at the Oakton library to advance your research. But do at least an hour of research while completing this assignment (due Monday for the MW section).
- Item #1 Topic. State why your topic is of urgent and personal interest to you.
- Have you narrowed it down? 330
- Item #2 Topic sentence. This is your thesis. Reid uses the word "claim".
- Write one or more preliminary topic sentences.
- Feel free to use two sentences if you wish: one that identifies your topic and states its importance and a second that makes your claim, or argument, about your topic.
- Item #3 Types of claim and types of appeal 298-306. Identify the claims and appeals you will probably use in your essay.
- Item #4 Look at "Assignment for Arguing" 328 and identify your audience and possible genres for your paper.
- Do this work now and you will have a good grip on your paper. Put it off and you lose a week. I will be checking all journals in class. Good luck!
People: congratulations on the Fix the Budget project. Question for class: How many of you would like to spend LIMITED time in and out of class - perhaps 30 minutes a week total - completing this project by getting a better sense of each other's blogs and by following the current budget crisis debate?
On Thesis Statements
A good one takes a position, justifies further discussion, expresses one main idea, and is specific.
- Rindee Paul, writing tutor Undergraduate Writing Lab Academic Success Center Alliant International University.
General Rule: Almost all pieces of good argumentative writing, no matter how complicated, answer a single question. This question is raised and answered in a thesis statement.
Thesis statements can be strong or weak. Strong ones are precise: they are a roadmap to the paper to come. Weak ones are are vague: they are a path or two paths leading nowhere.
A strong thesis statement has three parts: topic, claim or assertion, and reason(s) to be supported by evidence.
- The topic is well defined, with
- A clear claim or argument about supported by
- reasons to be backed in the paper by evidence.
The high cost of medicine in the United States puts undue economic strain on the elderly, forcing may to go with out their prescriptions or to seek medicines from questionable sources abroad.
Here note the clear and constant focus on the “economic strain” of the elderly: on their suffering and the risks they take in buying low cost medicine. It’s clear that the paper will evaluate two claims: that seniors must go without their prescriptions or seek lower cost drugs from risky sources.
In a weak thesis statement, the topic is poorly defined (usually in general terms), the claim about it is contentious, and the reason in support of the claim is already familiar to most readers:
Senior citizens are suffering today because the companies that make their prescription drugs are charging outrageously high prices.
This thesis shows strong anger but lacks focus. It mentions the suffering of senior citizens but shifts focus to the drug companies with an angry assertion completely unsupported by reasoning or the promise of evidence.
Where will the writer of this paper take us? Your guess is as good as mine!
Where will the writer of this paper take us? Your guess is as good as mine!
