Week 5: Assignment 2: Toulmin Essay | Homework Helper

I’m studying for my English class and don’t understand how to answer this. Can you help me study?

This essay should be between 900 and 1000 words, plus the required annotated bibliography.

The Toulmin essay will help you practice what you have learned so far in this course. First, you will choose a topic of interest. Make sure that you choose a public debate with clear sides and staked. Then, you need to research that debate in order to narrow the topic’s scope, so it can be easily discussed in 1000-word essay. For example, you may be interested in learning more about traffic issues in the United States. However, that topic is too large to cover in a 1000-word essay. After researching peer reviewed articles that discuss US traffic issues in general, you may discover that the metro system in the District of Columbia is underfunded and underutilized. Through your research, you found that you could make a claim that more funds should be made available in order to upgrade the metro system, which would improve traffic issues in the District of Columbia. This would make for a stronger, specific argument. Attached below is a PDF on sides and stakes that can help with this process.

This should be a thesis-driven essay, and it should be in the third person.

This essay must include a minimum of five sources. Three should be peer-reviewed sources, preferably from the APUS databases. From the library welcome page, click on Advanced Search at the bottom of the page and then check the “peer reviewed” sources box filter.

This video will hopefully clarify the term, “peer-reviewed”. You may use eBooks; however, as discussed in your textbook, books generally are not as current as peer-reviewed articles. You may also use primary sources (interviews, statistics, etc); however, these primary sources should be obtained from experts within that field. If you cannot find strong sources for your chosen topic, then change your topic. If you have a question about the validity of a source, please email me, or post your question to the open forum.

Note: You are writing to an audience of fairly smart people who already have general knowledge on the subject, so make sure that you are going beyond common knowledge or basic facts.

Within the body of your essay, make sure to include the following:

I Introduction and thesis

II Recent historical background on how the debate has been unfolding within the past 20 years

III Support for Claim

IV Counterargument

V. Your rebuttal to the counterargument

VI. Conclusion

Allow time for revisions and improvements on your first draft, so you are able to submit a polished, academic argument for review.

Proofreading checklist (the right answer is “yes”:

• Is the thesis statement clear?
• Does each paragraph begin with a clear topic sentence?
• Have I stayed on-topic within each paragraph?
• Are all my claims supported by direct quotes and examples?
• Have I explained the significance of all the quotes and examples, and woven them into my argument?
• Are all quotes and examples (even those in my own words) cited with page references?
• Did I remember to add the annotations?

The Annotated Bibliography

An annotated Bibliography (AB) is due with your Toulmin essay. Using the MLA guide, list each source as it will appear on the Works Cited page of your essay. Summarize each source in two or three grammatically-correct sentences, and indicate how it will be useful to your project. These short discussions are the “annotations.”

The following is a sample of an annotated bibliography entry

Clark, Irene L. The Genre of Argument. Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace, 1998. Print.

Clark’s textbook identifies the major steps to developing a well-researched and well-written argumentative essay. It is older, but still contains much useful material on process. Professional essays are included in the text as models. It will help me mostly with writing and organization, since internet research has changed since 1998.