Research essays: Supplemental Materials

Topic ideas
MLA Electronic Citation Tips

Logical Fallacies Essay
Political Terms and Positions

Internet Sites

 Evaluating Your Writing Process

Topic ideas

Choosing a semester-long topic should be a thoughtful process. Read carefully the list below for some ideas. If you have an issue of your own that is not on the list, then let me know. The criteria for an argumentative topic should be the following:

there should be 2 or more sides to the issue
the topic lends itself to a more focused question after you have researched it
the topic and question should interest you enough to learn a lot about it.
1) National health care
2) Sexual harassment
3) gay and lesbian rights
4) political correctness
5) copyright and the internet
6) censorship and the internet
7) school integration
8) global warming
9) foreign aid
10) the states and federalism
11) child labor and sweatshops
12) NAFTA
13) year-round schooling
14) easy divorce
15) managed health care
16) juvenile crime
17) preventing juvenile crime
18) effects of welfare cuts
19) sex offenders
20) surrogate motherhood
21) RU 486 - the abortion pill
22) YOUR IDEAS?

Political Terms and Positions
Left wing and right wing:
"The left wing" (adjective: "left-wing" or "leftist") is a broad term that includes a diversity of parties and ideologies (which often disagree among themselves but usually agree in their opposition to the right wing) including liberals, nearest the center of the spectrum, and—progressively toward the left—socialists and communists (the latter two are also sometimes called "radical").
"The right wing" (adjective: "right-wing" or "rightist") is a broad term that includes a diversity of parties and ideologies (which often disagree among themselves but usually agree in their opposition to the left wing) including libertarians, nearest the center of the spectrum, and—progressively toward the right—conservatives, ultra-conservatives, plutocrats, and fascists.
Leftists tend to support:
The poor and working class Labor, consumers, environmental and other controls over business
Equality (economic, racial, sexual) Civil and personal liberties
Cooperation Internationalism
Pacifism (exception: Communists)
Questioning of authority—skepticism (exception: Communism is authoritarian)
Government spending for public services like education, welfare, health care, unemployment insurance
Progressive taxes, i.e., greatest burden on wealthy individuals and corporations
Religious pluralism, skepticism, or atheism
Rightists tend to support:
Middle and upper class Business, management, unregulated enterprise
Inequality (economic, racial, sexual)
Economic liberty: controls on personal liberties (e.g., sexual conduct, abortion, obscenity, drugs)
Competition
Nationalism (primary loyalty to one’s own country)
Strong military and willingness to go to war
Acceptance of authority, especially in military, police, and strong "law and order" policies
Government spending for military, subsidies to business as incentive for profit and growth
Low taxes for wealthy individuals and corporations as incentive for investment ("supply-side economics" or "trickle-down theory")
Religious orthodoxy

MLA Electronic Citation Tips

Your citation of an electronic text should contain the following items:

1. Name of the author (if any)
2. Title of the text (underlined)
3. Publication information for the printed source
4. Publication medium (Online)
5. Name of the repository of the electronic text (e.g., Oxford Text Archive)
6. Name of the computer network
7. Date of access

Hardy, Thomas. Far from the Madding Crowd. Ed. Ronald Blythe. Harmondsworth: Penguin. 1978. Online. Oxford Text Archive. Internet. 24 Jan. 1994.

Octovian. Ed. Frances McSparran. Early English Text Soc. 289. London: Oxford UP. 1986. Online. U of Virginia Lib. Internet. 6 Apr. 1994.

Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. The Works of William Shakespeare. Ed. Arthur H. Bullen. Stratford Town Ed. Stratford-on-Avon: Shakespeare Head. 1911. Online. Dartmouth Coll. Lib. Internet. 26 Dec. 1992.

United States. General Accounting Office. Drug-Exposed Infants: Report to the Chairman, Committee on Finance, U.S. Senate. 6 Nov. 1992. Online. U of Minnesota Lib. Internet. 1 May 1993.

At the end of the entry, you may add as supplementary information the electronic address you used to access the document, precede the address with the word Available. Your instructor may require this information.

Octovian. Ed. Frances McSparran. Early English Text Soc. 289. London: Oxford UP, 1986. Online. U of Virginia Lib. Internet. 6 Apr. 1994. Available FTP: etext.virginia.edu.

Logical Fallacies Essay

See how many logical fallacies you find in the sample essay below. Be prepared to write about what fallacies you found and why they are fallacies.

Unsigned editorial in One Country, One People July 15, 1995

Our good old United States of America is becoming overcrowded with people who are different. After all, our forefathers came here so they could have space and freedom. Now people from all over the world are taking over our country, cities are cramped, violence is rampant, and everyone is forced to celebrate all sorts of wierd holidays. This is an Anglo country and diversity should be curtailed.

One way to cut back on increased difference is to reevaluate the national holidays and other celebrations. Red-blooded Americans don't need all those ethnic fests and holidays. Who are Casimer Polaski and Martin Luther King anyway? Not George Washington or Abraham Lincoln. With only ten national holidays, we are overdoing it to waste so many on historical people who are on the fringe.

Another way is to make sure that every American speaks English and English only. After all, if people who live here can't speak our language, who knows what else they can't do. Certainly they can't be true citizens. Most of the illiterates in this country must have been born some place else. In some California schools the children speak Spanish, and in Detroit some speak black street language. Why do the teachers allow that to happen? If people don't want to speak English, let them go live in another country.

In school, the courses should focus mainly on the traditional Anglo heritage. After all, that's where our history came from. Of course we should know about the immigrants from other countries, but why waste precious school time on so many different types when there's only one group that really made it happen? Even a noted scholar like Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., says that real citizens should shed their other skins and become Americans only.

Finally, the government should place severe limitations on the people they let into this country. When President Bush and President Clinton said no more Haitians, they were right. They have a country of their own, Haiti. Miami has more Cubans than real Americans, and there are so many Mexicans in Los Angeles that it might as well be Mexico. We all know what happens; these people overpopulate, crowd into apartments, don't bother to get jobs, and go on welfare. The government should let only a few of these types into the country. Use quotas to favor white immigrants who will work, get an education, and carry on the traditions of what it really means to be an American!

Evaluating Your Writing Process

Before you hand in your assignment, take 30 minutes or so to reflect on what you did and what you learned during the process of composing—from invention to revision. Review all of your work and then write at least a page and a half responding to at least three of the following points. Your work cannot be evaluated until you complete this task.

1. How I think I would improve on this if I had time for one more draft.
2. What I hope most readers will/won’t notice.
3. A big problem I had in writing.
4. My major large-scale revision and my favorite small-scale change.
5. A risk I took.
6. How the audience I imagined most influenced me.
7. Where readings in the text influenced me.
8. What most intimidated me and how I fought back.
9. When an idea from the text inspired or influenced me.
10. Where my invention writings helped me.
11. What I learned about choosing a topic for this writing situation.
12. A part of the Guide to Writing that especially helped/confused me.
13. What I learned reading other students' drafts.
14. Where I might publish this or to whom I might send it and what I would have to do to adapt it for that place or person.
15. How I tried to integrate an insight from another course I’m taking.
16. Where my gender/family/neighborhood/city/race/century/religion/philosophy helped or interfered.
17. If I had time to write a completely different paper. . .
18. Writing strategies that I rejected and why.
19. How childishness/maturity/sophistication/innocence intruded.
20. How I experimented with imagery, word choice, or syntax.
21. My best claim to originality or creativity in this paper.
22. How I focused and focused and focused until I got it right.
23. Help/hindrance I experienced in gathering evidence.
24. I felt you wanted ... but I wanted ...
25. I tried to resolve ... by....
26. Please don't miss... .

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