ENG 101 Essay 2: Writing to Inform: Researching in the Pandemic and its Impact on a Discipline
300 points (30% of course grade)
Length: 2,000-2,500 words, about 7-8 typed, double-spaced pages
Purpose: For this paper, you will combine and integrate information from multiple sources to write an informative report that provides your readers with a broad understanding of a debate about how COVID has impacted your field of study or other area of interest. You will need to research a wide variety of sources (e.g. books, periodicals, newspapers, and web sites) that relate directly to the topic and find the similarities and the differences among those sources in terms of the points at issue in the debate. Instead of a direct argument about one side of the topic, your essay should present a more far-reaching perspective, examining many perspectives and branching out into related issues that help shed light on the topic.
As you write about this topic, you will enhance many of the skills introduced earlier in the semester, including the use of summary, paraphrase, and quotation to establish the context of the debate or controversy as well as reinforce the critical thinking skills of analysis, synthesis, and source citation. Try to explore as many different sides of the issue as feasible. In other words, your essay should answer the question, “How has COVID impacted my field of study?” The purpose of this assignment is NOT for you to take a side and argue for it. Importantly, you will need to offer a neutral report on this debate without taking sides, but you must also demonstrate to your audience why they should care about this topic, what’s important and significant about it for our society and your field.
Audience: College-educated adults from ages 19-99 who may not be familiar with your topic.
Developing a Thesis: You will eventually need a thesis, a point, for your essay, and most thesis statements appear somewhere in the introduction portion of a text. However, just because the thesis goes at the beginning of the paper, that does not mean you should narrow in on a thesis at the beginning of your research and writing process. The challenge of synthesis is to wait to develop a thesis until the end of your research and prewriting process. Through your research, you should notice the ways in which your sources agree and disagree: your debate will inevitably be more complicated than it seems at first glance. When those points of agreement and disagreement come up, stated in various ways, in several sources, you should be able to pin down the major points of debate within your overall topic. If you can write down those major points of debate in your own words, you should be able to craft them into a thesis that reflects those major points of debate.
Sources: Use 5-8 sources representing a variety of ideas about the topic. At least 3 of your sources must come from one of the library’s databases of academically-credible sources. No more than two of your sources may be web sites, and any web sites used must meet the standards of credibility presented in class. Be careful about using blog posts, and avoid wikis as sources but feel free to use them to direct you toward other sources. Refer to the LSH section on “Research” (115-149).
Incorporating Sources: Use a combination of summary, paraphrase, and quotation in your paper, but no more than 10% of the paper (about 200 words) should consist of quoted material. Instead, rely on summary and paraphrase. All information from sources must be cited, whether quoted, paraphrased, or summarized, whether words or images. Keep in mind, though, that your voice, not your sources’, should be most prominent in your essay. Please cite sources using MLA, APA, or Chicago format (see LSH).
Make connections among your sources; otherwise, your essay will be nothing more than quotes and paraphrases from your sources strung together. Anyone could go find your sources and read them; your challenge is to make unique connections that make your essay worth reading, connections that help readers consider the topic in a way that they would not if they just read your sources alone. The connections will also help signal to your reader that you are introducing a new point of view. In an essay that requires the steady switching of “voices,” just like a conversation, authors must help readers follow along. Keeping track of who agrees or disagrees with whom is easy for you, because you have done all the necessary background reading.
Structuring the Essay: As in our previous essay, begin the essay by grabbing the attention of your readers, offering useful background information, and making a claim about why your audience should care about this topic. After discussing why this issue is important, move on in a number of paragraphs to summarizing different key perspectives on the debate within your field on COVID’s impact. Organize your article by topic, not by source: group paragraphs into sections based on the points of information or debate, and let several “pro” and “con” sources weigh in on each point before moving onto a new point and repeating the same process. In your last several paragraphs, return to the issue of larger significance, synthesizing the various approaches, discussing how the controversy is more complicated than it at first seems, why you care about it, and why your audience should care about it.
In order to report on all sides of the issue, you will need to maintain as unbiased an approach as possible in your research and presentation of the material. You must use a combination of quotation and paraphrase from your sources to establish the key arguments in the debate for your reader. As always, all information from sources—whether quoted, paraphrased, or summarized, whether words, images, or even ideas—must be cited. Keep in mind, though, that your voice, not your sources, should be most prominent in your drafts. (See LSH: “Synthesizing Ideas” and “Integrating Sources, Avoiding Plagiarism.”)
Final Checklist: Before you submit your final draft, make sure you have:
A clear focus that raises interesting questions for you and your reader about COVID’s impact on your field of study;
A claim that demonstrates the larger significance of your topic, why your audience should care;
An engaging introduction that introduces your topic and ends with a thesis claim;
Body paragraphs that use at least five relevant and credible sources (following the guidelines above) to establish the most important perspectives on your chosen topic;
Accurate summaries of articles that rely on your own paraphrase but that also include a few direct quotations, properly cited;
A concluding section that brings out the larger significance of the topic on which you focus.
A readable and mostly error free copy of your paper that evidences that after finishing your writing you have proofread for typos, grammar errors, and other editing mistakes.
Instructions for Submitting First and Revised Drafts:
Draft your complete essay, including a title, in-text citations, and the Works Cited page. Save your draft as a MS Word document with the following filenames (MS Word will add the .docx suffix automatically when you save the file in that format): YourfirstnameYourlastnameEssay3Draft.docx [e.g., JohnDoeEssay3Draft.docx]
Upload your draft to the File Exchange in your “Peer Review Group” page in Blackboard . You must also upload your draft to the “Paper 2 Rough Draft: Submission Portal” under “Assignments” on Blackboard.
After receiving peer feedback, revise your draft, save it with the following file name, and upload it to the “Paper 2 Final Draft: Submission Portal: Blackboard “Assignments” YourfirstnameYourlastnameEssay2Revised.docx [e.g., JohnDoeEssay2Revised.docx]
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