Essay Based on
Course Readings and Secondary Sources
Instructions
Design a short
research project that uses secondary sources to explore a complex, debatable
issue from assigned course readings. You may select an issue that you explored
in a previous course essay or choose a new topic. Write an essay that takes a
position the issue based on what you have learned from reading secondary
research sources and course readings. Support your position with evidence from
readings and at least two secondary research sources that are appropriate for
academic writing. The sources that you select should either report on
original primary research sources or use credible and appropriate evidence from
secondary research to support claims.
Purpose
The main purposes
of this assignment are to a) provide you with an opportunity to demonstrate
your overall learning for the course, b) demonstrate your readiness for English
102, and c) introduce you to key strategies for writing research-based essays
in English 102 and other college-level courses. This assignment will help you
learn how to use scholarly databases for college research, evaluate source
material, read research articles, and support a position with evidence from
multiple courses. The research and writing process activities for this
assignment will prepare you for more intensive research-based assignments in
English 102.
Project Steps
1 Identify a complex, debatable issue from
course readings. You may write about the issue that you selected for another
course essay or choose a new topic.
2 Reread selections from course readings to
review key arguments about the issue and to identify supporting evidence to use
in the essay.
3 Find at least two research sources that
present credible and reliable research on your selected issue. Each source
should be appropriate for college-level academic writing, for the focus of your
project, and for the purpose that you would like to achieve with your final
course essay.
4 Read and analyze your research sources.
5 Organize an essay
Essay
Guidelines
• Focus the entire essay on developing and
supporting an insightful argumentative position on a complex academic issue.
• Use the first paragraph to introduce your
narrow, focused issue and your specific thesis statement (not to talk about the
topic in a general way).
• Write a thesis statement that takes a
position on the essay issue. Your thesis statement should present your own
thinking about the issue in response to course readings and research
sources.
• Organize each body paragraph or section
around a clear, argumentative main point (or supporting point for the essay).
Include a topic sentence that introduces the main point of the paragraph or
section. Each topic sentence should help readers understand how that paragraph
or section will support and develop your thesis.
• Focus each paragraph on providing evidence
to explain and support the main point of the paragraph.
• Support your thesis and other assertions
with specific quotes, examples, details, or other evidence from sources.
• Use evidence from course
readings and at least two research sources that are appropriate for
the purpose of your essay and for college-level academic writing. The sources
should focus on presenting research findings (either the authors’ own original
research or secondary sources that the authors used for making their
arguments).
• Analyze and evaluate sources in connection
to your thesis statement; do not simply summarize or report on research
information without connecting source material to the point(s) that you are
making as a writer in that section of the essay.
• You may use the first person (i.e., the
word I) to present relevant personal examples and discuss your own
thinking about the essay issue. You may use a few carefully selected
examples from your own experience to introduce your topic and/or support your
thesis. However, the essay should focus primarily on your position on an
academic issue with supporting evidence from multiple sources—not on your own
experience.
