Argumentative Essay
Final Essay Due: December 21 (Monday) 2 PM EST (25% of your final grade)
NOTE: See the next page for the topics you can choose.
This assignment asks you to produce an argumentative essay (1000-1250 words) that makes and
supports a claim related to a topic from one of the readings we read for this class. In other
words, unlike the critical response assignment, your job this time is to express an opinion about
the subject matter, not to explain and examine the efficiency of the rhetorical strategies used in
a certain article.
Since this paper focuses on the persuasive nature of writing, during the process of drafting and
revising, you will need to develop a specific thesis statement and support for it based on the
kinds of sources you find. Use at least three outside sources to develop your argument, one of
which must be a scholarly source.
1 A part of your job is to discover the kinds of arguments that
are possible to make. Another part of your job is to figure out how to develop a claim that can be
supported with the resources you find. Whenever necessary, you can use direct quotations to
elucidate your point; however, do NOT use block quotations (an indented quotation that is more
than 4 lines) in your essay.
All the outside sources must be documented in MLA style, with in-text citations and a Works
Cited page. The Works Cited page does NOT count toward the word count. All pages should be
numbered and your name should be printed on each page. On the top of the first page, put your
name, my name, the course number (ENG 1100), and the date of submission. Your essay should
be word-processed in 2.0 line spacing and 12-point Times New Roman, with 1″ margin.
Please feel free to e-mail me (pclavin@ccm.edu) if you have any questions.
1 Academic sources, also called scholarly sources, are sources which can include books, academic journal articles,
and published expert reports. The content in academic sources has usually been peer-reviewed, which means that
it’s been reviewed by experts on its topic for accuracy and quality before being published.
ENG 111 2
Topics You Can Choose for This Assignment
NOTE: These articles can be used as outside sources. These are not scholarly sources.
1) Blue-collar intelligence
➔ The topic is related to Mike Rose’s “Blue-Collar Brilliance”
2) Bilingual education
➔ The topic is related to Maxine Hong Kingston’s “Tongue-Tied, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s
“Decolonizing the Mind,” and Richard Rodriguez’s “Aria”
3) Objectivity in writing (e.g. legal/historical writing, the use of “I”)
➔ The topic is related to Patricia Williams’s “The Death of the Profane”
4) English as the official language of the U.S.
➔ The topic is related to Dennis Baron’s “Lingua Blanka”
5) Linguistic purism in English (i.e. using “plain English”)
➔ The topic is related to George Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language”
6) The effects of race, class, and/or gender on language use
➔ The topic is related to Jaswinder Bolina’s “Writing like a White Guy”
7) Digital literacy (e.g. cognitive changes in reading, technology in learning, computer literacy)
➔ The topic is related to Nicholas Carr’s “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Judith Newman’s
“To Siri, with Love,” and Tasneem Raja’s “Is Coding the New Literacy?”