Instructions
An issue analysis/logical argument essay helps you to take a stance on an issue with the purpose of persuading the reader to agree with your position. When you make a claim, you need to support your issue with logical and credible information. You will also need to defend your argument against other points of view to show that there's more validity on your side.
What's Expected in this Assignment - Understand the End Result First
This time, because you've done a lot of reading and discussion this week, you do not have to submit a complete draft for instructor feedback. You do need to submit your main ideas for the draft, in either outline, list, or idea matrix format, whatever resonates best with you. Logical arguments need to be precise in their ideas. So this is an "idea draft" as opposed to a whole essay draft, which should include:
- your thesis, with a topic + assertion about an issue.
- 3-4 main supporting ideas that will help you prove your assertion logically (Note that your supporting ideas may or may not be full topic sentences at this point.)
- a few details or examples for each supporting idea to provide a sense of the type of information you'll use to support your argument about an issue, to determine whether that argument is logical
- indication of where/how you will include information about the opposite side of the issue
Please do not include research in this assignment and eventual essay. Since you're writing about an issue you're interested in, you should be able to develop a logical argument with supporting ideas, explanations, and details on your own. You should end up with enough ideas to create a 3-4 page essay. However, note that you will eventually be adding research to this essay in the next module, so plan for a non-research essay right now in Module 3, but choose an issue that can eventually be researched for Module 4.
Although this assignment is graded, it's graded based on whether you complete it thoughtfully and on time. Because writing doesn't happen all at once, the purpose of this assignment is to get instructor feedback intended to help you develop the draft into a more final essay, which you'll submit at the end of Week 8.
How to Proceed
- Identify an issue, something that can be debated with at least two opposing viewpoints.
- Create your own assertion about the issue, which will function as your logical argument working thesis sentence.
- Identify the type of claim in your argument.
- Identify the type of support that logically goes with that type of claim.
- Create 3-4 main supporting ideas, which will eventually turn into your topic sentence assertions.
- You may want to consider creating one idea that supports the other side of the issue opposite to your own claim, so that you can refute it and show that there's more logical validity on your side.
- Use an outline, list, or idea matrix to draft just the idea skeleton for this issue/logical argument essay.
- Once you have a draft, set it aside for a while, and then review it for the characteristics of logical argument.
Consult the Essay Rubric to help you create a draft.