English 1113 - Health Essay

ENGLISH 1113                                                

Essay 3: Argument                                                        1000-1250 words                                        

Assignment

Write an essay that offers your unique claim about the millennial generation and that supports the claim using your own experiences, observations, examples from popular culture, and information from the assigned texts, documented correctly*.

They Say, I Say asserts that “the underlying structure of effective academic writing—and of responsible public discourse—resides not just in stating our own ideas but in listening closely to others around us, summarizing their views in a way they will recognize, and responding with our own ideas in kind” (3). Now that you have studied what “they say” about millennials, you are ready to present your own ideas about some aspect of this issue, ideas based on your thinking critically about the arguments we’ve studied this semester and on your careful analysis of your own experiences and observations.

Guidelines for Planning, Drafting and Revising

When you write an argumentative essay for a college class, your purpose is always to demonstrate learning and/or to show readers (professors) your careful thinking process—the evidence you have accumulated to arrive at your conclusions. No matter what the writing assignment, the process of demonstrating your thinking and knowledge is similar: you assert an idea or opinion about a topic and present specific evidence to show the careful thinking that led you to form your idea or opinion. The evidence you draw upon and present in an academic paper will most often come from scholarly sources and/or from field research. As illustrated in several assigned readings, though, personal experiences and/or observations can also serve as good evidence for certain topics if those experiences and observations are good representative examples, create emotional and ethical appeals, or enlighten the reader to a different perspective.

To select a topic for this essay, review the assigned readings and your class notes as well as your previous essays. Which issues interest you most and why? Which arguments do you strongly agree or disagree with and why? How do your own experiences confirm or call into question a specific argument that occurs in one or more of the readings? Which arguments seem flawed and why? As TSIS explains, it’s best to begin your essay with “what they say,” then agree but with a difference, disagree and explain why, or agree and disagree simultaneously. Your agreement and/or disagreement can serve as your tentative thesis.

Before you begin drafting, you should mine the sources for good supporting evidence and identify experiences and/or observations that can serve as appropriate, relevant, representative evidence (see LB Ch. 43c and p. 190-94). With personal experiences and observations, the goal is usually to get readers to appreciate your perspective on an issue, so think about which specific experiences will help you achieve this goal. Examples from popular culture can also help convince your readers of your thesis if you present a detailed summary and thoughtful analysis of your examples. With both your experiences, observations, and examples from popular culture, remember the importance of supporting general assertions with specific detail: choose concrete, specific, formal language, evocative figures of speech and well-chosen adjectives. Focus on effectively describing the experience, observation or pop culture example, but add commentary or analysis to support your claim.