Documented Argument
Overview A documented argument has the purpose of informing your audience about an interesting topic or controversial issue and persuading them to accept your conclusions about the topic. Like any research essay, the Documented Argument contains researched information about a well-defined issue with which you already have some experience, expertise, or a high level of interest. Your objective for the documented argument is to take a stance on a topic as well as describe it. Do not merely report your findings but develop an original thesis which argues for a particular position or attitude towards your topic.
You will develop the following research skills with this assignment:
Special Guidelines: Your final documented argument should include the following:
Evaluation: After reading several documented arguments and essays on effective argumentation, we will create a class rubric for the documented argument.
You will develop the following research skills with this assignment:
- Personalizing a research question
- Narrowing your focus to a manageable topic.
- Locating source materials (traditional and online) and taking notes.
- Analyzing, evaluating, and interpreting materials.
- Arranging and classifying materials.
- Writing an essay with a clear purpose that demonstrates an effective use of the rhetorical appeals.
- Incorporating source material into your own style of writing.
- Offering documented evidence for and defense of your particular argument.
- Convincing support of your argument with logical reasoning, concrete examples, sufficient evidence, appeals to pathos and ethos and documentation.
- Developing your argument utilizing specific argument types depending on the context of your conversation, such as narrative argument, rebuttal argument, definition argument, causal argument, proposal argument, and evaluation argument.
- A key consideration is that the body of your essay should contain your own argument. Your argument will be informed by your research, but it should be written your own opinion with your own words. Documentation is only used to add authority to an argument which you have already stated.
Special Guidelines: Your final documented argument should include the following:
- Research paper length should be between 5 – 6 pages of text, not including title page or Works Cited page. Also, any special graphics, such as bar graphs or embedded pictures, will be deducted from the page length.
- Refer to at least 6 secondary sources in your essay, although you will have consulted more than this during the research process. No more than 2 can be online sources, such as websites
- Cite from a variety of sources: encyclopedias, journals, magazines, books, newspaper articles, on-line sources, videos and interviews appropriate to your topic. Be careful to assess the quality of any source, remembering in particular that on-line sources require nothing but access to the internet and cannot be considered strong support.
- Include a minimum of 8 – 10 citations to these materials. Use the MLA style for documentation. This method is clearly explained in your writing handbook and in on-line resources.
- When integrating material from other sources into your writing, paraphrasing should predominate, direct quotations should be brief and smoothly incorporated into your own style, and long direct quotations (indented) will be rare, if used at all.
Evaluation: After reading several documented arguments and essays on effective argumentation, we will create a class rubric for the documented argument.