the assignment
: In this final project, you’ll use the project 3 ( i will attach a file for my essay of proj 3) research to write a public opinion essay about your topic.
Your essay must take a position on the relevance and significance of your topic and the information you are bringing together. It needs to express a focused perspective on the topic, not a general overview. (An essay that simply presents information will not receive a grade higher than a C.) What question or angle really caught your attention? What points in your sources made you think?
Opinion essays are shorter and less scholarly than a traditional research paper, but they should still use specific and credible evidence from your research (and possibly from your own experience) to support your ideas. Generalizations and unexamined assumptions usually don’t interest readers (or will actually irritate them).
- Decide on the perspective or angle that you want to take, and use it to shape your essay.
- Describe your position in the first paragraph and explain it through the rest of the essay.
- You may vary the length of paragraphs, as you’ve seen in class examples. However long or short a body paragraph is, it need to have a topic sentence that links back to your position and forward to the main point of the paragraph.
- Refer to at least three excellent sources (with identifying tags, and hyperlinks or parenthetical citations).
- Encapsulate your position in a pithy title (short & meaningful or clever).
- Your conclusion needs to not only summarize your points but also to relate to your readers and (hopefully) get them thinking.
- Establish common ground with all readers, even those who may disagree with you. Acknowledge possible alternative perspectives and then relate them to yours.
- Write for a specific audience: identify a website or blog where you might post your piece and read some of the other posts and comments.
- Imagine a rhetorical context for your essay and revise your tone and word choices to be persuasive to that audience in that situation.
Grading criteria: focus, sense of perspective, expression of topic’s complexity, sense of significance, rhetorical awareness (tone, word choice, source selection, editing), connections among sources, responsible and effective use of sources, MLA formatting.
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