Pick an issue affecting your future career field, your major field, or your community.

Assignment 3: Describing a Larger Conversation (4 pages)

Requirements

Format: MLA

Length: 4 pages (approximately 750 – 1000 words)

Grammar & Mechanics: While I don’t expect your writing to be perfect, your essay should be readable and relatively free of grammatical and mechanical errors.

Style:    Maintain an academic tone, but feel free to inject a little personal style. Don’t be boring.  Do your best to make every sentence crystal clear.  Choosing your subjects and verbs carefully and avoiding unnecessary words can help with this.  Remember to use the present tense: “Dr. Jones argues…”

Option 1:

Pick an issue affecting your future career field, your major field, or your community. Write a paper that explains various perspectives on this issue, addressing at least three different sources (published texts, interviews, etc.) and no more than five sources. Rather than presenting the issue as having two sides (those for or against something), explain more than two points of view, showing the complexity of the issue. At some point in the paper, take your own stand, but the majority of the paper should explain the larger conversation surrounding the issue.

Option 2:

Pick an issue described in the readings you’ve done from the book (why and how to care about the planet, how gender affects both our personal and political lives, the effects of divisions in American society, what college has to offer, or whether technology is changing us). In addition to the essays you’ve read, find at least two additional essays and explain the different perspectives on this issue. Use theysayiblog .com to find different points of view on the same topic. Rather than presenting the issue as having two sides (for or against), explain more than two points of view, showing the complexity of the issue. At some point in the paper, take your own stand, but the majority of the paper should explain the larger conversation about the issue.