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 offour (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.
Length6-7 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.
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.