Research Questions

Discussion #5: Research Questions for Essay #2

You have been reading a variety of texts about the academic essay. Time to start working on an academic essay of your own. The purposes of this assignment are many. I want you to practice generating a research question, drafting an initial response to your question, and responding to your peers, which provides them with feedback from their audience as it teaches you how to respond to other writers’ work. The ultimate purpose of this assignment is to help you begin developing Essay #2.

There are two parts to this assignment:

1) Write a Research Question, and respond to it (10 points).

Identify an interesting idea from any of the class readings from the Week 3: Argument 101 module that you would like to write about for Essay #2. Please explain at the beginning of your posting how your question was inspired by one or more of the readings.
Generate a Research Question about an idea contained within the reading or readings. If you don’t know what a Research Question is, please read A Pocket Style Manual (PSM) Section 25 Posing a Research Question (pp. 89-92). The goal is to ask a question that will lead to a debatable position for Essay #2.
Answer your own research question in at least 250 words. Take a position on the question. In other words, your response should have a thesis. See the UNC handouts on thesis statements (Links to an external site.) and arguments (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.to help you construct your response. Be sure to use specific evidence (including quotations) from the reading(s), from your experiences, and from the Internet to back up and illustrate your ideas.
Post your research question and response by clicking the “Respond” button just below the instructions.
2) Respond to at least two other student postings (5 points).

Respond to two student postings in postings of 125+ words (each). You can agree with what has been said, building on the argument by adding more reasoning and evidence. You could also disagree with what has been posted, using counterargument to suggest why your position is superior to the other ideas that have been discussed. Another approach would be to suggest an entirely new way of responding to the question. The key is to further the exploration of the idea presented in the research question.
I want you to treat this assignment as the first step of Essay #2. In effect, you are brainstorming (Links to an external site.) and drafting a short version of your essay. Reading and responding to each other’s postings may help you to consider other perspectives and counterarguments that will help you refine your thesis/position.

Make sure that you do the following:

Review the Discussion Guidelines for details about how I will evaluate this assignment.
The assignment (both parts) is due by Wednesday, May 6 at 11:59PM (15 points).