Essay Assignment: The Position Paper
The first assignment is the argumentative position paper; this paper should be four to six pages in length, not including a Title and References pages.To successfully complete this assignment, you will:
1. Identify a current issue that is debatable.
2. Take a position/side on that issue.
3. Research the issue and find appropriate resources and support to develop your position.
4. Address the opposing side's views and refute those with logic and reason.
5. Demonstrate an awareness of your target audience and appropriately use appeals for that audience to persuade them of your position.
Prewriting: You will begin this assignment by first doing some exploratory research to find out what people are discussing in relation to your topic. In most cases, you will need to narrow your topic selection to a specific issue. For instance, immigration is a broad topic. In the early stages of my project, I would need to do some research to find out what specific issue within immigration is under debate right now. To do this, I might search for things like "immigration reform" or "immigration amnesty.
Research: The first step in research should happen in the pre-writing stage, as mentioned above. Note that you will want to make use of the Baker College Library databases to find current articles on your issue. In this paper at least three different sources must be used with not more than one deriving from the Internet. Reference sources, such as an encyclopedia, (e.g. Wikepedia.org) or a dictionary will not count as legitimate sources. This includes reference sites like WebMD.org and About.com. In addition, personal blogs or essays posted on personal websites or self-published on sites like Associatedcontent.com and Helium.com are not acceptable.
Note that by "make use" we mean the essay should incorporate quotations, summaries, and paraphrases using introductory phrasing and document sources in the text according to APA: The Easy Way!
Basic Organizational Pattern: There are multiple ways to organize argumentative position essays, but most follow a basic pattern like the sampleoutline below:
1. Introduction. Setting up some context for the issue is a great way to open a position paper, as it allows you to show the issue is current. End this introduction paragraph with your thesis statement.
2. Claim 1: Set up the first reason/claim for the position in a topic sentence. Develop a paragraph on that one claim, using supporting evidence to develop that point.
3. Claim 2: See #2
4. Claim 3: See #3
5. Refutation of the Opposition's claims: This may take a couple of paragraphs. This section of the paper requires you directly address the main claims made by the opposition and refute those, showing why those are not strong or valid claims.
6. Conclusion: Think about how you can lead the reader back out of the paper.