Assignment:
Topic: Teenage Obesity in California
Notes: the regional focus cannot be too broad. It has to be in the California or a county in California or a city in California.
Things might help: The problem I addressed for teenage obesity is weight related illness (for example, type 2 diabetes). The reason I addressed for teenage obesity is lack of physical activity and sugar drinks.
As you research and evaluate various sources, and as you draft, craft and organize your thoughts and evidence, you will at some point have to make a decision to become an advocate for a solution/policy to your central problem.
Your argument for advocating a solution/policy in combination with the analytical reasons you provide for why you have chosen to focus on a particular solution/policy will after weeks and weeks of diligent engagement become a richly-textured thesis statement, one that deepens your articulation of the problem at hand and argues for a convincing way to move forward.
1. Your solution must be a policy that you find in your research - this is a requirement. A policy is a definite course of action.
2. Your solution/policy may not be implemented where you have defined the problem - the solution/policy must either be proposed (i.e. not implemented yet) or the solution/policy may be implemented outside the location of your problem (i.e. advocate for a current policy in NY to be implemented in CA, if CA is where you have defined your problem).
3. While you will be advocating for a solution/policy in this paper, it is important to understand that your solution/policy will likely not solve the entire social/cultural/political problem - these are complex issues that are current problems because there is no simple singular "solution." Thus, your task for the advocacy project is to find the best solution/policy to minimize your chosen social/cultural/political problem. What policy will minimize the problem the most?
This is not to say that academic writers are not advocates. They are, and over the course of this project, you will become such an advocate-one who uses academic research and methods to deliver persuasive arguments convincingly to a public of one's peers. Academic writers in many disciplines often write with the purpose of advocating for a solution/policy to political/social/cultural/environmental problems. When they do so, they are expected to consider and present positions that run against theirs in various ways - call them counter arguments - in order to meet the expectations of their academic audience. They must demonstrate their mastery of established arguments and knowledge in areas of discourse and recognize the legitimacy of other perspectives, even if the author seeks ultimately to dismiss them.
In the realm of public advocacy, arguments and persuasion can look, feel, and sound quite different. Public advocates deliver strong and impassioned arguments by undermining counter arguments. They do so by choice and with knowledge about the various perspectives and pieces of evidence that may potentially undermine their case. When putting forth arguments in academic or public settings, the most convincing advocates do not simply put forward a solution/policy without first comprehending the informed debates in which this solution/policy is situated. Rather, successful advocates draw from a deep well of knowledge when carefully selecting the evidence and rhetorical appeals that will make their case about how to address the profound social problems they put before their audiences.