Incorporating two to five credible sources, write a 750-1,000 word argument on an issue of your choice. Your topic must be rhetorically appropriate for your audience, worth paying attention to, and debatable. In addition to supporting your own claim with sound reasons and quality evidence, you must acknowledge and refute at least one significant objection (counterargument) to your claim.
Your purpose is to persuade an audience of educated, ideologically diverse adults that your claim is reasonable and worth adopting or supporting. Show your readers that you can think clearly and treat the ideas of others fairly. Avoid combative rhetoric, since it rarely leads to shared understanding.
Format your manuscript and document your sources in 8th edition MLA style. Do not use the first or second person, contractions, slang, or colloquial expressions.
For this paper, students in the past have often used a website called ProCon.org. Here’s the problem with that source: it dumps together lots of data and content from other sources, sometimes with attribution, sometimes without. Students often have trouble citing this information. If you consult ProCon.org or another website that functions in the same way, you must track down the original source of the material provided. To do this, follow the footnotes to the original source. Then, rather than cite ProCon.org, you’ll now be working with and citing the original source itself, making ProCon.org an irrelevant middle-man. If there is no footnote provided and you cannot track down the original source for the information you see, you should not use that material, since you have no criteria by which to assess the content’s credibility.
Recommended Basic Outline
The outline below models one way to structure your paper. See Bullock and Weinberg on page 178 for another option. Review the Harvard resource for other places to put the refutation section.
Introduction
General introduction to the topic that explains the context of your claim and shows readers the topic is timely and worth exploring.
Thesis statement. At the very least, your thesis should state your position and provide your reasons: “X should/not Y because 1, 2, and 3.”
Reason #1
Support with clear reasoning and persuasive evidence.
Reason #2
Support with clear reasoning and persuasive evidence.
Reason #3
Support with clear reasoning and persuasive evidence.
Acknowledge and refute at least one major objection to your argument.
Clearly present the view as an objection, e.g. “Some people may object that . . .”
Demonstrate you understand the objection by explaining it.
Concede valid points where possible.
Refute the argument based on its logical inconsistency or some other problem.
Conclusion
Review main ideas presented in the essay.
Reflect on the implications of your ideas in the bigger picture.
The topic of this argumentative essay the drinking age should be lowered from the age of 21 to 18. In this paper argue for the age to be lowered but also give good reasons against it, please.