Writing an Academic Essay Rough Draft

Writing an Academic Essay Rough Draft
Purpose of assignment: To compose a rough draft of an academic paper, using exigence, audience, purpose, and research.
Procedure: In previous assignments and discussions, you selected a topic to write about, explored its exigence, audience, purpose, and researched the topic using credible, scholarly sources. Now you will put it all together into a rough draft.
· The purpose of your essay (to define, to evaluate, or to propose) will be up to you, but your essay must demonstrate a clear purpose.
· The audience for your essay can be any group of readers who are affected by or interested in your topic. However, there must be a clear and specific sense of addressed and invoked audiences.
The purpose of this essay is not to prove whether you are right or wrong, but to represent in a fair manner different views of your topic and contribute in a meaningful way to an ongoing conversation about the topic. You may think of your essay as an “argument of inquiry”; intended to lead your audience to a deeper understanding of an issue that affects them.
Your rough draft should meet the following guidelines:
1. Between 750 and 800 words
2. Include quotations, paraphrases, and summaries from four or more scholarly sources representing more than one side of the issue
3. Qualifies authors (i.e., shows why your sources are credible)
4. Withholds personal opinion
5. Is written in third person
6. Multimodal elements, such as photos or graphics, may be included at your discretion
7. Includes APA Style in-text citations and a References page
8. Has been closely edited so it contains few or no mechanical errors
You will have a chance to revise this essay for Week 8; however, writing is a process that no one “gets right” on the first draft. Allow yourself plenty of time to work on this paper and even write a few drafts before you submit one for peer review and grading. For more on peer review, see below.
Format: Standard essay format of introduction, body, and conclusion. Your introduction should include a thesis statement that expresses the main point of your essay. For an example of an academic essay, see “Echoes of 1776 in 2011: A Rhetorical Analysis of Nicholas Kristof’s ‘Watching Protesters at Risk’” in Chapter 13 of your textbook.
Format the assignment in APA Style: one-inch margins, page numbers at the top right, title page, in-text citations, and a references page.
Submitting the assignment: Attach your essay as a single file Word document or .pdf file and submit to the W6 assignment drop box.
Peer Review: As soon as you submit your rough draft for grading, submit it also to the W7 discussion forum for next week’s peer review.

PART TWO ITS A DISCUSSION
Your initial post should be 75-150 words in length and is due on Sunday. By Tuesday, you should respond to two additional posts from your peers.
Counterarguments
Last week, you brainstormed a research question and several aspects of the topic you’ve chosen to write about for your W6 Rough Draft. For this discussion, you will give an answer to that question in the form of a thesis statement.
Example: Suppose your research question for W6 was something like, “Should pit bull terriers be banned in my community?” After doing some preliminary research, you have concluded that pit bulls, if raised properly, are no more dangerous than other breeds of dogs. Your thesis statement can be something like, “Pitbulls should not be banned in Kansas City, MO, because X, Y, and Z.” (Fill in the letters with reasons that support your claim.)
In addition to sharing a thesis statement, you will list every reason you can think of, or have discovered in your research, why readers might disagree with your thesis statement.
Example: “Some readers might disagree because there have been actual instances of pit bulls attacking people, even children. Not all pit bulls are raised properly. Pit bulls have a natural, aggressive instinct.”
Your goal here is to identify both your position and the position of readers who may need to be convinced by your argument. Readers who hold positions contrary to your own are said to hold counterarguments.
In your responses, weigh in on each other’s thesis statements.
Does the thesis statement present a clear, arguable position?
Does it list reasons?
Do the counterarguments seem valid?
What other counterarguments can you think of?

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