I need an explanation for this English question to help me study.

Essay 4: Argument/Persuasive Assignment

Objective:

Write an essay that effectively argues your position on the prompt and presents evidence from the texts as support. Evaluate and utilize outside sources, effective quoting and clear analysis. Use and apply rhetorical strategies learned in your own argument.

Required Research/Readings:

This essay will require a minimum of four (4) outside sources, which you will need to find. These source need to be reliable, credible and correctly cited in MLA. You need to introduce these sources as you use them in the essay and correctly cite them in a Works Cited page.

Length: 6-7 pages (not including Works Cited)

Background: If you have ever had to convince your parents to let you borrow the car or stay out late, or convince a friend or a partner that you should get pizza tonight and not sushi, you have (possibly subconsciously) used argumentative/persuasion tactics to convince the other person to agree with you. One of the greatest tools that we have as writers is the power to persuade others, a skill that will be useful to you far beyond English class.

The main purpose of an argument/persuasive essay is to convince your audience to take your side on an issue by presenting a logical idea and supporting it with specific and appropriate researched evidence.

Prompt:

For this assignment, you will develop an argumentative essay that establishes a clear claim, supports it with researched sources and refutes at least one counter argument.

You will have two options:

• Choose a controversial local (San Diego County) issue and argue in favor of one side.
• Choose a California based educational issue.These issues can deal with budgets, student populations, classroom practices or anything else that impacts education in statewide California classrooms.

Previous topics have included issues such as:

What should be done with Children’s Pool in La Jolla?

Should a new Chargers stadium be built? (over now)

How should the pollution in San Diego be controlled?

Should there be a casino in Jamul? (over now)

• When choosing a topic for this option, a good idea would be to turn on your local nightly news or open the newspaper to the local news section.
• With either option, you must argue for a specific course of action, meaning you shouldn’t only say it is a problem. You should argue what we should do about it/what changes should be made.
• Your essay must also include a minimum of four (4) reliable scholarly sources used with proper MLA citation and a Works Cited page.
• Your essay should consider and refute at least one counter argument. You can address the counter argument anywhere in the essay. Remember to present a possible counter and respond to it with a logical refutation.