CMNS 1811: Business, Professional, and Academic Composition 1

CMNS 1811: Business, Professional, and Academic Composition 1
TRU Open Learning
Assignment 2: Persuasive Essay (100 marks, 10%)
Introduction
Assignment 2 requires you to create an original persuasive argument. The point of
all persuasive writing (perhaps even all writing in general) is to change how readers
view the world around them or elements of the world. This may involve a change of
opinions, attitudes, beliefs, or behaviour. Positive persuasion is aimed at getting
readers to begin or continue doing or thinking something, while negative persuasion
is aimed at stopping or ending such thinking or behaviour.
Three major elements are relevant to persuasion. The classical names for these
elements are logos, ethos, and pathos.
Logos is the classical name for reasonable evidence that prompts an audience to
change in some way. By contrast (though in actual practice evidence often overlaps
the three major categories), ethos names those claims that cause us to believe the
authority or credibility of the writers or their sources of information.
Finally, pathos is information that arouses our emotions in some way that would
cause us to change our beliefs or behaviour.
In this assignment, you will write a short essay (such essays are sometimes called
“five‐paragraph essays” though the actual number of paragraphs is not a key focus
or requirement) in which you persuade your readers concerning your stance on an
issue upon which you and your course instructor have agreed. If you are specializing
in a particular field of study (e.g., philosophy or business), you may want to pick an
issue relevant to that field of study. Also, the issue you pick may have ethical
implications or may be merely informative where the information you have may not
be widely known. While prescriptive persuasion is addressed toward changing
behaviour, persuasion that is merely informative makes readers aware of what they
may not have known before but stops short of advising changes of behaviour.
Here are examples of topics that students have suggested in the past:
 Social media tools that should be widely used by tourism businesses
 Why minority governments are better than majority ones
 How agriculture affects carbon emission statistics
 What you should know about managing your debt
2 Assignment 2
TRU Open Learning
Instructions
 At the beginning of Unit 5, get started by proposing an issue for your essay
and receiving approval from the Open Learning Faculty Member. You must
submit this assignment for marking by the end of Unit 6. Carefully study the
assignment instructions and criteria for evaluation before choosing a topic
and starting work on this essay.
 Plan, write, edit, and submit a short original essay (600–800 words) in which
you argue for a stance regarding an issue. Your essay must have careful
discussion in which you establish credibility and appeal to readers’ reasoning
and concern for the issue. You must articulate your ideas clearly, and your
essay must be well organized in terms of both the individual paragraphs and
of the essay overall. Your must carefully edit your work.
 Select an issue from your relevant field of study on which to present a
persuasive discussion. It is important to your performance on this assignment
that you select an issue where you can see the reasonability for all sides of any
arguments relative to the stand you hope to take.
 Research or reflect on the issue and select a stance to take on the issue.
 Plan the sort of approach you will take in your discussion, including the
reasonable support for your stand, as well as that of any opposing views.
 Use the ARGU structure (see p. 267 of text) to outline your essay.
 Write your persuasive essay. Concentrate on developing the “R” and “G”
sections of your “ARGUment.” You present the “A” and “U” parts in your
introduction and conclusion, respectively.
 Add your introduction and conclusion to the body of your main discussion.
 Edit and revise your work for adherence to your assignment, overall
structure, paragraph coherence and cohesion, sentence structure and variety,
accessibility, and mechanical errors.
CMNS 1811: Business, Professional, and Academic Composition 3
TRU Open Learning
Criteria for Marking
There are four main categories for marks, content, clarity, organization, and
mechanics.
 Content (40 marks): choice and amount of information and evidence and
appropriate choice of issue and stance.
 Clarity (30 marks): ease of grasping your line of argument, creativity of your
thesis and reasoning, and relevance of your supporting evidence.
 Organization (20 marks): proper introduction and conclusion to provide
context for the discussion, proper ordering of sentences in paragraphs, and
proper transitions between sections of the essay, paragraphs, and sentences.
 Mechanics (10 marks): adherence to proper standards of grammar, spelling,
punctuation, capitalization, and proper variety in sentence structure and
vocabulary.
Completion and Submission Guidelines
Before you submit your assignment in accordance with the submission instructions
previously outlined, complete the following checklist:
Did you put your name and student number on the document?
Did you complete all the required elements?
Did you use information and terminology learned in this course?
Did you support your statements with specific examples?
Did you cite references, using a consistent referencing format?
Did you ensure that there are no spelling mistakes?
Is your writing grammatically correct, clear, and well organized?
Have you tried reading it aloud to ensure that it makes sense?