Category: English

What You Will Learn: In this Touchstone, you will apply what youve learned about planning the structure of an argumentative essay by developing a clear thesis and organizing your ideas into a structured outline.

Why It Matters: A strong thesis statement helps narrow the focus of your essay, and an outline aids the writing process by providing a structure for your essay. These foundational elements will help you stay focused, clarify your thinking, and improve your argumentative essay.

What You Will Hand In:

• A complete 12-page outline for your argumentative essay.
• This outline should include your thesis statement, at least three main points with subpoints for each, and a conclusion.
• Answers to two reflection questions.

Keys to Success:

• Your thesis statement takes a clear position on a debatable topic that is appropriate in scope for a 68-page essay.
• Your outline provides a structure for your argument with at least three supporting points and subpoints for each, and a conclusion.
• You answer the reflection questions thoughtfully and completely.

Helpful Links:

Instructions

Step 1: Formulate Your Topic Scope and Thesis Statement

• Choose a debatable topic appropriate for an academic argumentative essay. You may choose any topic you wish, as long as the stance is arguable, and the supporting reasons are defensible with evidence.
• Your topic should be current, appropriate for an academic context, and should have a focus suitable for a 68-page essay.
• You can use the same topic from Touchstone 1.1 and 1.2, or you can choose a new topic. Either way, the topic you choose on this Touchstone is the one you will also need to use in Touchstones 2.2, 3.2, and 4.
• Draft a clear, specific, and supportable working thesis that takes a stand on your topic.
• Your working thesis should be a single focused sentence, framed as an actionable statement that takes a clear position on the research question and includes 34 main supporting points for holding that position.
• Remember that your thesis establishes your papers main claim and previews the points or reasons that youll explore in the paper to support that claim.

Review the tutorial on .

Step 2: Create Your Outline

Your detailed outline provides a map of your final argumentative research essay, including your key claims and the sources that support them. You might not have the five to seven required sources yet, and that is fine, but at least three credible sources are required at this stage. The outline is a way to organize your essay and determine which areas (e.g., your subclaims) will require researched evidence as support.

• An outline gives you a blueprint for your paper that ensures you are staying focused and building a strong argument. Review the tutorials on and .
• Organize your argument with a clear structure that includes:
• Introduction and thesis statement
• At least three main points, each with supporting subpoints
• A conclusion that restates your thesis and wraps up your outline
• As you research and create your outline, come back to add the main points of your argument to the thesis statement.

Step 3: Answer the Reflection Questions

At the end of your outline document, include a short paragraph (46 sentences each) answering:

• What challenges did you face while narrowing your topic or writing your thesis?
• How did outlining help clarify your thinking or your position?

Step 4: Review and Submit

• Review the rubric to confirm that you have met all the requirements of the Touchstone. Once you are happy with it, you can submit it as a Microsoft Word (.doc or .docx) file. Your submission must include your name, the name of the course, the date, and the title of your assignment.

Good luck! This first step is your road map to a strong essay!

Write an MLA style expository essay on he impact of standardized testing on creativity

writing a 1-page Focus Paper to help us to explore and identify answers to our working research question about AI.

• Our research source for this paper will be Empire of AI: Author’s Note – Chapter 2 and we will be using templates from They Say I Say Chapters 1-3 & 7 to help us to craft our argument.
• No additional sources are needed.
• You may quote or paraphrase from Introduction to College Research if desired, but you are not required to include this text as a research source.

Crafting the Focus Paper

Writing a 1-page Focus Paper requires us to not only focus our analysis on one argument posited in the text, but also to practice writing concisely.

Structure

Former students in this class have found it helpful to think of the one-page Focus Paper as structured like a body paragraph in a research paper with:

• An introductory sentence: providing context for the topic (subject) of your Focus Paper
• A topic sentence in which you state the subject of the paper clearly and make your point about your chosen topic.
• 2-4 supporting sentences in which you clarify your point and provide evidence both from your personal experience and the text: Empire of AI
• A concluding sentence that provides a “statement of findings” as a result of your research (in other words, what did you learn/discover that is helping you to explore/answer your research question).

Templates

In this Focus Paper, we will be putting what we have learned from Chapters 1- 3 & 7 of They Say I Say into practice, including:

• Analyzing and Summarizing the author’s argument
• Integrating research: quotes/paraphrases from Empire of AI into our writing
• including MLA in text citations.
• Using your experience to support and clarify, in concert with the text (Empire of AI) to clarify and support your point.

Please use the templates from Chapters 1- 3 & 7 They Say I Say to structure your writing, to clearly state your position on one of the author’s arguments in Chapter 1, 2 or 3, to integrate research [quote(s)/paraphrase(s)] from your primary source (Empire of AI), and to incorporate your personal experience with AI.

• You must include at least one template in each Focus Paper.
• Type all templates used in bold font.

Focus Paper Topic

To begin your Focus Paper, you will first need to:

• Review your Working Research Question
• Review your chapter summary notes and reflections — Reading Annotation & Reflection assignments for the Author’s Note – Chapter 6.
• Look for Hao’s points/supports, along with your personal reflections, that help you to explore further and even answer aspects of your Working Research Question.
• Review your journal entries and Share-Outs.
• Journals and Share-Outs can help you to identify those topics that are engaging and important to you.
• Choose a topic that fits within the scope of a one-page paper (think: body paragraph of a research paper).

Writing Process

Please demonstrate your use of a writing process that enables you to generate, organize, develop, and communicate your ideas.

Include in your assignment submission your use of the following writing process stages and strategies:

• Use an Invention Strategy to generate ideas and a Planning strategy to organize and order your ideas.
• Write a freewriting draft guided by your invention and plan that allows for your ideas to take shape.
• Revise your draft to further develop your ideas and communicate them as clearly and concisely as possible:
• Ensure your topic sentence has a clear point and your research/personal experience supports this point clearly and concisely.
• Edit your Focus Paper to:
• Format your paper using MLA 9, including heading, margins, and font.
• Remove any obvious spelling, grammar, and/or punctuation errors
• Check all quotes and paraphrases for accuracy and fidelity to the original
• Include MLA in text citations with all quotes and paraphrases
• Complete your paper with an MLA Works Cited page that includes all sources quoted or paraphrased.

need to 2 Pages, Double Spaced, 12 pt font, Times New Roman, Heading Single Spaced

Due Midnight 2/20 via Brightspace (as a .docx file, no PDFs)

Write an interpretive essay on any poem we have reviewed in class. If you want, you can choose a different poem from one of the authors we have reviewed (or from the course book), but if you do so you must include the poem as your third page. I recommend reviewing some of the notes from class to help generate ideas. A successful essay will include:

-A clear introduction that includes an interpretive thesis statement. Your intro should be no more than half a page.

-Cohesive paragraphs that provide effective support and analysis of your thesis.

-Clear and effective analysis of textual references in every paragraph.

-Quotes that are fully elaborated and clearly relate to your interpretation.

-A strong conclusion.

The Lightning is a Yellow Fork

-Emily Dickinson

The Lightning is a yellow Fork

From Tables in the sky

By inadvertent fingers dropt

The awful Cutlery

Of mansion never quite disclosed

And never quite concealed

The Apparatus of the Dark

To ignorance revealed. I wanna use this poem to do the assignment and can you write it but dont go overboard like with the words im a freshman in college and I want to make it sound like I actually wrote it

That’s the poem I need to use Im a freshman in college and I want to get at least a 90 on this assignment but I dont wanna go overboard with the complicated words making it seem impossible for me to have wrote and I just can’t get flagged by ai

ADVOCACY TEXT: Your work in the third unit of this course builds to an Advocacy Text project: the Advocacy Text is a text that has a rhetorical purpose of creating positive, productive change for a cause in the world, with an audience that reaches beyond your instructor and classmates. Remember that a text can take many shapes, but to give you a guideline to work with, please create a document that could fit onto a one-sided, standard 8.5 by 11 sheet of paper (or smaller). The text can involve any combination of message elements that fit your rhetorical purpose: these elements may include the mode or channel you use to share the text with your intended audience, the conventions or genre of the document, and graphic, visual, or design elements. You may need to conduct outside research to learn more about your cause or to find up-to-date information to include in your Advocacy Text (and keep in mind that if you use any information thats not yours and is not common knowledge, you will need to find a way to communicate the source of your information to consumers of your text). Youre encouraged to let your text advocate for a cause that suits your personal interests and passions. It might, for instance, seek to do one of the following: to raise awareness about an issue, to inform or educate an audience about an issue, to persuade for a particular perspective on an issue, or to make a call to action (to encourage an audience to take a concrete step to help). To identify an opportunity that might fit this project well, you could consider either: creating a text that you have the authority to share with your intended audience (such as a postcard you could send to members of an organization you lead, an infographic you could share on your social media account, or a letter to a government representative) … or… creating a text that you can propose to an existing organization, group, or individual outside our class who is already advocating for your cause and might be able to use your text (for instance, you could propose a new poster to a local nonprofit that they could use to advertise their hours and services or you could propose an informational sign to your employer that they could add to the recycling bins to educate coworkers on what materials can be recycled) The Advocacy Text must be shared with the intended audience or shared with the organization, group, or individual youre proposing it to before the project is due: this is an important requirement of the project because it gives you as a student the opportunity to exercise your power as a writer-citizen. When you submit your final project, you must include evidence that you’ve shared your Advocacy Text with your intended audience or audience you proposed it to, such as a photograph of the text wherever youve posted it or a screenshot of a sent timestamped email in which you proposed the text to the audience you proposed it to. If you propose your text to an existing organization, group, or individual, whether or not that audience chooses to use your text is beyond your control and will not affect your grade.