A researched-based synthetic analysis

Your second essay is a researched-based synthetic analysis. You will continue to build on all of the skills we have practiced so far this semester, including quotation sandwiches, citation and documentation, and supporting a thesis through well-constructed paragraphs. In this unit, you will learn how to find good scholarly sources to complement and supplement the core readings that are the starting point for this essay, and thus you will have the freedom to shape your essay through the sources that you select.
Your first step is to choose 2 articles from They Say/I Say in which to ground your potential topic. The “Readings” section of the textbook has 5 subchapters: “Why Care About the Planet?”, “How Can We Bridge the Differences that Divide Us?”, “What’s College For?”, “How Is Technology Changing Us?”, and “What’s Gender Got to Do with It?” Start by selecting 2 articles of interest to you that are both contained within one of these subchapters. The articles you choose must not be ones we have already read this semester (Klein, Crenshaw, Chen & Murthy, Boyd, Mehta, Frum), though they can be from the same subchapter as those articles.
Using the 2 articles you select and other scholarly sources that you find through the library databases, develop a research question that you can answer through a synthetic analysis of your sources. You will then write a paper that makes an argument about your topic, building on your articles to explore how they connect to a specific issue that you explore through scholarly research. Your research question will guide your research, and the answer to your research question will be the thesis of your essay. The most successful research topics will examine a narrowly defined issue (such as coral reef bleaching in the Caribbean, the role of Google in an academic setting, etc.).
A successful research essay makes a clear argument while acknowledging that there are multiple perspectives to consider in making that argument. In other words, your task is to clearly articulate what you believe after reading a variety of sources, demonstrating that you base your argument in research and recognize that there may be a wide variety of reasonable views regarding your topic area by engaging perspectives that complicate your own. The body of your essay, therefore, will consist of synthetic paragraphs in which you analyze parts of multiple sources to support your own thesis.
You will reference your two articles from the textbook as cited sources in your essay, and you will gather at least three more scholarly (ie peer-reviewed) sources, for a total of five sources on which to draw in your writing. In the essay, you will reference all five of these sources directly: you will quote from each of them, and each will appear in your Works Cited page. Your final essay will be 5 full pages long, followed by the separate Works Cited.
As with all assignments, follow all rules for MLA formatting of headers and identification, double space evenly using 12 point Times New Roman, and use MLA style documentation and citations. Write in a formal academic style, avoiding first person plural, second person, and contractions. Be sure to check your work carefully for grammar/spelling/usage errors.

Last Completed Projects