Advocacy Essay
3-4 pages + 1 page of article summaries.
Your Advocacy Essay is worth 25 points, total.
10 points for first draft; 10 points for fully revised final paper; 5 points for article summaries.
First draft of essay due in class on: Thursday, 4/30
FINAL essay due in class on: Thursday, 5/7
Directions for Advocacy Essay: Choose a cause or issue you care about. It could be mental health, immigration, or fixing potholes in the city of Providence. In your advocacy essay, you will ADVOCATE for the side of a cause or issue that prefer. If you think the mayor of Providence should spend more money on fixing potholes, you would advocate for increased spending on roads. You must find evidence to support your side and evidence that represents the opposing side of your issue. In your essay, you will support your side by citing evidence that supports your view AND by persuasively responding to those who disagree with you.
Directions for Article Summary: Find two articles—one that supports your side and one that opposes your side—using the Opposing Viewpoints database. Summarize each article. Your TWO articles must be from magazines or news sources about a specific cause or issue that people are working on to make change. Write a one-paragraph summary of each article. Be sure to use appropriate citation in your summary. TIP: You may want to re-read the “Information Literacy” chapter in Langan.
Why are we doing this?
The very first line on your syllabus for this class reads: “Becoming a writer is about becoming conscious.” Anne Lamott, who wrote that incredible sentence, meant that to write and especially to write well you need to know something about what you’re writing about. You need a reason to write. Above all, good writing needs to be animated and motivated by ideas that you care about. Otherwise, what’s the point of writing? Your readers aren’t going to care about your writing if you don’t care.
It is with Anne Lamott’s central insight in mind that for the last 10 weeks we have been reading about, discussing, analyzing, and writing about issues that matter to us. Issues such as the Syrian refugee crisis, free speech in schools, the limits of religious tolerance, how to solve the problem of pollution, citizen journalism, and the relationship of visual art to reporting the news.
In our discussions, we have primarily focused on two main topics of social justice and the use of writing in making personal, political, and social change. By social justice, we mean that everyone deserves the same social, economic, and political rights, and those rights should not be influenced by race, gender, disabilities, or other factors. We have also noticed how good writers have gotten us to think and feel more deeply about the crises and problems that face our respective communities. This assignment gives you the chance to do the same for your audience!
How will you do this?
Just as you summarized articles for use in your Investigative Essay, you will do the same thing for your Advocacy Essay. This time, though, you’ll use articles from the Opposing Viewpoints database.
