Discuss what you still need to know, reflect upon, and investigate to come to some conclusion about the question you’re asking (somewhere down the road).

The Assignment

This assignment should run about 2,500-3000 words (including works cited and any end notes). Though it won’t do the usual things, its format is not entirely new. It should do the following things:

1. Introduction: In an introduction (which should run no more than a page [approx. 350 words] and include a couple of paragraphs), you should outline the question(s) you want to start asking in response to the reading you’ve been doing. Articulate the question(s), explain how you came to them or what prompted them, and discuss its importance. Unlike the introduction of a traditional essay, this one should not conclude in a thesis statement. But the reader should be able to see clearly what question you’re trying to answer.

1. Body. This section can be approached in a couple of different ways. Perhaps you want to write (at least) two sections, one that takes at one side on a given question and then a second that takes some other perspective that challenges the one that you just took. Perhaps you want to write a single essay that toggles back and forth between 2 perspectives, without finally endorsing either. Perhaps neither of these will work because you feel that the simple pro-con structure is too simple for what you’re trying to do. That’s fine. Bring in multiple perspectives. In addition, you should be bringing in your sources. All the quoting, paraphrasing, and summarizing you’ve been doing in your notes and short assignments should make their way into this piece.

1. Conclusion. Finally, in a page or so or a couple of paragraphs, discuss what you still need to know, reflect upon, and investigate to come to some conclusion about the question you’re asking (somewhere down the road). The idea here is to ask yourself what further research you need to do. However, you may also approach this in a different way: if you feel that your reading and writing has led you to a conclusion—that is, led you to decide on a given perspective—then you should discuss and explain this in your final section. In other words, if, at the end of the essay, you decide on what you yourself think, you should describe this on the final section.

Of course it is not required, nor would it be practical in many cases, to present every possible stance on your question. But you’ve must present at least two; otherwise, you wouldn’t be an argument. To be a controversy, an argument does not need to have a mirror, opposite side. Rather, a controversy is simply a case that case that can be challenged with different perspective that is somehow incompatible.