English 1A Essay

Electronic copy due to www.turnitin.com and a paper copy due to me by the beginning of the first class meeting during the week of February 4.

Format: Strict MLA; 12 point font, 1” margins, double spaced

Length: 800-1000 words, no less, no more. Include a word count in your heading.

The following are questions at issue that rise from the readings we discussed in Path #1:

1. Are outdoor smoking bans, like the ones in Santa Rosa, Calabasas, Dublin, and Belmont, unfairly discriminatory to smokers?

2. Should the state of California enact an outdoor smoking ban, similar to the bans in Santa Rosa, Calabasas, Dublin, and Belmont, statewide?

3. Should College of the Redwoods follow the lead of Santa Rosa Junior College by banning smoking on campus?

5. Should parents who smoke in confined spaces, like automobiles and houses, around children be charged with child abuse?

6. Should people who smoke in confined spaces, like automobiles and houses, around children be charged with endangering the welfare of minors?

7. What kinds of legal restrictions, if any, should apply to car stereo use on public roadways?

8. Should the cities of Fort Bragg/Mendocino pass noise ordinances that limit the volume of home stereo use?

9. Are policies that allow public libraries to evict "offensive" smelling patrons unfairly discriminatory?

10. Should other public institutions (e.g. courtrooms, DMV offices, post offices, etc.) adopt policies that allow them to legally evict "offensive" smelling patrons/customers?

11. Should College of the Redwoods adopt a policy that allows faculty and staff to evict from campus "offensive" smelling students?

12. What kinds of smells/body odors constitute reasonable grounds for evicting someone from a public building?

13. Should the use of nudity in political protest (e.g. Breasts Not Bombs) be considered constitutionally protected free speech?

14. Are laws that prohibit women, but not men, from going shirtless in public unfairly discriminatory?

15. Should the cities of Fort Bragg/Mendocino pass a law that allows women to go shirtless in public where it legal for men to do so?

This essay will be graded largely according to how well it makes the six moves of argument we've discussed. Focus on the following:

1. Set up/contextualize the conflict (i.e. question at issue). Writers need to make sure they begin by orienting readers to the conflict by describing the specific issue they will explore. Begin by giving them a sense of the controversy and the specific question at issue you will engage.

2. Offer a focused, clearly-worded, arguable thesis. Writers need to make sure they are precise about what they are setting out to prove, and a good thesis statement will help you do this. The easiest way to generate a good thesis is to think about, talk about, and explore one of the questions at issue and then generate a specifically worded answer to the question. The answer is your thesis.

3. Focus and arrange your ideas. Writers need to make sure they carefully and strategically arrange ideas so that readers who don't know what the writer knows can easily follow the ideas and make important connections (i.e. the "train of thought"). Think about what your readers need to know before they can know other things.

4. Present yourself as someone an intelligent audience should take seriously. Writers need to deal with their subjects in the mature, intelligent, intellectually honest manner an academic audience expects. This means no slang, no lying, no unfair slanting or misrepresenting information.

5. Offer reasons to support the judgment expressed in the thesis. You know what you know, but your readers don't. Writers use specific detail, examples, and clear explanations to help readers understand how writers see what they do.

6. Use evidence. Academic audiences expect writers to show that their ideas and insights are "grounded" in reality--i.e. that their ideas and insights are based on facts and verifiable knowledge and not on just made up or assumed information.

7. Use logic and critical thinking. Readers expect writers to make connections between ideas and connections between facts and interpretations clear. Readers need to see clearly why the writer believes as he or she does.

8. Clearly and correctly express ideas. Unclear or illogical wording and grammar and spelling errors seriously undermine a writer's credibility. Readers may assume that a writer who does not take the time and care to eliminate errors in writing is probably incapable of taking the time and care to eliminate errors in thinking.

To review the specific criteria sheet your essay will be evaluated by click here.