Please find the instructions below as well as some attachments from my work done in Unit 1. Please don’t hesitate to use this work. Please write in a simple English without any complicated vocabulary. The simpler, the better. The 2 sources to synthetize can be found in the attachments. Don’t hesitate to reach out if you need further information.
Overview :
In Unit 1, you focused on reading the published writing of other writers critically in order to begin developing your own “invitations” into topics that interest you. You used textual analysis to break down the context, voice, thesis, and other elements of existing written texts. You also used invention strategies to begin exploring specific issues that interested you as you read and reflected. Finally, you exercised your critical literacy skills in order to evaluate the content and context of sources.
In Unit 2, you have been studying ways to define the context for the issue you are writing about in order to help audiences understand why the issue is relevant to their interests. You also have been learning about synthesis: a rhetorical tool for connecting sources and ideas that may initially seem to be unrelated.
For this Unit 2 Assignment, you will practice both definition and synthesis by writing an essay that helps an audience understand the context for your topic and the ways that other people are already invested in the topic.
Assignment :
Write an essay that defines the topic of your research for this course and synthesizes different perspectives on the issue from sources you have read critically.
Your Definition and Synthesis Essay should
Clearly define the topic of your essay and the specific issue (or issues) you will address
Clarify your position: what exactly are you wanting to say about the issue? Why is it relevant? What is at stake, and for whom?
Connect (synthesize) differing perspectives on this topic and set of issues, and explain how existing perspectives portray the issue in overlapping or contradictory ways
Revise your research question and research proposal in response to the new sources you have found and the new connections you have made
Note: this essay is not asking you to evaluate or make an argument about your chosen issue. We will move on to consider arguments in the next unit. Focus instead on writing that tries to understand and “deepen” your relationship with your chosen issue.
Notes and Tips:
This essay is not asking you to evaluate or make an argument about your chosen issue. We will move on to consider arguments in the next unit. Focus instead on writing that tries to understand and “deepen” your relationship with your chosen issue. Try to explain rather than persuade.
You are not writing two essays here, but rather writing a single essay that focuses on using two rhetorical tools (defining and synthesizing) at the same time.
The form this essay takes is close to the genre of a literature reviewLinks to an external site., which “collects key sources on a topic and discusses those sources in conversation with each other” (from the Purdue Online Writing LabLinks to an external site.). If it helps you, you can think of the Definition and Synthesis essay as a literature review that studies the different perspectives on a particular topic and presents these perspectives as part of the context for a larger social issue.
Objectives :
In this project, you will
Define the context for the issue you are writing about for this course, framing the significance, relevance, and urgency of the issue for one or more audiences
Synthesize existing research perspectives on the topic, making connections between sources and analyzing why these connections are important
Connect the existing conversation to your primary research question and start to identify the threads of the conversation that will be most important to the position you want to take
