Week 5 Discussion Forum: Brainstorming Your Persuasive Essay Topic

1. Share the topic you’ve chosen to write about for your Week 6 Rough Draft. The topic I chose is: Dieting makes people fat

2. Exigence: What has prompted you to respond to this topic? (Other than the exigence of having to write a paper to earn a grade. This is a given.)

3. Identify three potential audiences who might be interested in or affected by this topic. Your audience cannot be “everyone,” “the general public” or any other broad or vague audience. Be as specific as possible in defining potential audiences.)

4. Generate a research question for your paper. A research question differs from a thesis statement (which is the answer to a question). Instead of deciding in advance what position you want to argue, a research question is open-ended and allows you to search for and examine sources related to your topic.

You might want to structure your response in a table:

Essay Topic

Exigence

Three potential audiences

Research question

pur-new-sol

Related Questions