We’re starting (and finishing) Writing Project Three this week. Ignore everything in bold–this was written for a class during a different semester :Before I discuss the assignment and the points where students stumble, I want to give you a rough schedule of the final weeks of the course and a general description of the work you’ll be completing each week. Review this, cut and paste it into your own schedule, and make it part of your planning for the rest of the semester. If you have questions, or don’t understand any of the assignments when they’re posted, email me immediately! As WP Three is worth three hundred points (thirty percent of your final grade), it can make or break your grade. Ideally, WP Three is an opportunity to boost your grade, or keep it high.
A proposal argument is a two-part argument. In the first part of the argument, you’ll argue that a problem exists. You will show that the problem is so severe that action must be taken to solve it. It’s also important to convince a specific audience (the people who can enact your solution), so you’ll need reasons that will persuade them. The second part of the argument is the solution. In the solution section, you’ll need to clearly explain your solution, explain how it will solve the problem, explain how the community will enact the solution, and justify its cost. Review the following PowerPoint presentation for more information about proposal arguments.
Many students struggle to choose a topic of the appropriate scope. Notice that the assignment sheet states that the problem must be a local (community problem). The reason for this is that you can’t solve a national or global problem in a five-to-seven-page paper. Large problems are complex and require complex solutions. For example, many students will propose “climate change” as a topic. The problem is they can’t cover it all: How will they deal with subsistence farmers in Brazil clearing rainforests to live, pollution from developing industry in other countries, air pollution from automobiles in the US, pollution from farm fertilizer, pesticides, livestock waste runoff, and all the other forms of pollution in the world? You can’t do that in a short paper; it would take a book-length project.
If you are interested in a topic like “climate change” make your argument about how a community (Pueblo, your hometown, etc) can do its part to address the problem. I’ve even had students choose to write about problems at CSU Pueblo.
Just like WP Two, use research to help you discuss the problem and the solution. You probably won’t find many sources discussing a problem/solution in Pueblo, but you can use sources that discuss how other communities have dealt with problems. If you haven’t already, be sure to read the assignment sheet, so you know how many sources your paper will need to use. Remember, the assignment sheets show the minimum requirements—you can always cite more sources than the minimum.
The blog post was very helpful to me, especially the rough schedule because now I know all the due dates and how the process of WP three works. I believe, if I stick to the schedule I will do great for the paper, however I also think that is not not easy for me to find a good topic for the paper. Moreover, I like how the blog post is created, the pictures adress well to the students and the blog post is easy to understand. Personally, a list of possible topics for the WP three would help me a lot to get an idea of what topics would be good to chose for the paper. Altogether, the blog post has helped me to understand the WP three and I think I a ready for the final paper in this class. As I said, I would appreciate to have a list of possible topics for the WP three.
Hi Vinzent–think about problems in your community–maybe your hometown in Germany. What are problems that your community could solve? The solution could be as simple as a policy change or more complicated like building something to address a problem. Think about it, and I’ll post a list of potential topics later this week.
I really appreciate these blog posts because they offer a clear layout for the course and keep me on track regarding assignments. Especially in English class, I like an organized schedule that is fairly simple to follow, and these posts always keep me up to date about assignments and expectations for this class. As far as the third writing project, this should be interesting since we’re supposed to write about a local issue within Pueblo’s community. I think it will be a challenge to select a good topic for this project, but since the past few writing projects have been going well, this one shouldn’t give us too much trouble.
Glad things are going well for you, Meena.
I like to have the dates a head of time. It helps me keep my life in order. Thank you so much.