Writing an Academic Essay Rough Draft

Purpose of assignment: To compose a rough draft of an academic paper, using exigence, audience, purpose, and research.

Procedure: In previous assignments and discussions, you selected a topic to write about, explored its exigence, audience, purpose, and researched the topic using credible, scholarly sources. Now you will put it all together into a rough draft.

The purpose of your essay (to define, to evaluate, or to propose) will be up to you, but your essay must demonstrate a clear purpose.

The audience for your essay can be any group of readers who are affected by or interested in your topic. However, there must be a clear and specific sense of addressed and invoked audiences.

The purpose of this essay is not to prove whether you are right or wrong, but to represent in a fair manner different views of your topic and contribute in a meaningful way to an ongoing conversation about the topic. You may think of your essay as an “argument of inquiry”; intended to lead your audience to a deeper understanding of an issue that affects them.

Your rough draft should meet the following guidelines:

1.Between 900 and 1200 words

2.Include quotations, paraphrases, and summaries from four or more scholarly sources representing more than one side of the issue

3.Qualifies authors (i.e., shows why your sources are credible)

4.Withholds personal opinion

5.Is written in third person

6.Multimodal elements, such as photos or graphics, may be included at your discretion

7.Includes APA Style in-text citations and a References page

8.Has been closely edited so it contains few or no mechanical errors

You will have a chance to revise this essay for Week 8; however, writing is a process that no one “gets right” on the first draft. Allow yourself plenty of time to work on this paper and even write a few drafts before you submit one for peer review and grading. For more on peer review, see below.