WRITING FOUNDATIONS:
THE PERSUASIVE ESSAY
IDEAS
STEP 1 create a logical argument to persuade people that your idea or position is more reasonable or sound than another one. Try to write things in a way that gets people to believe your idea, or take action.
STEP 2 follow the TRAAP test roadmap to ensure your sources are reliable, accurate, and you understand the author's POV
STEP 3 persuade your audience by appealing to reason or emotion, and most importantly by stating facts, evidence, and examples from research, case histories, and testimony or quotes from experts, legal cases, scientific experiments, or people with first hand knowledge.
SEARCH TIPS
" "
quotes around a search term keeps terms together; search engine won't search for each term separately (ex. "vegetarian diet")
~
tilda's before search terms search for like terms (ex. ~vegetarian diet will search for vegetarian, vegetarians, vegetarianism, veggie diet, and beyond...)
LIBRARY RESOURCES
*EBSCO for background information, books, scholarly secondary sources, news, videos. *you likely won't need to use this resource based on the guidelines for the assignment but it's here for more ambitious researchers
PROQUEST HISTORICAL NEWSPAPERS for primary source articles from the archives of The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Chicago Tribune--trust me, you'll hit a paywall on the web.
NY TIMES (on campus access to all articles without needing to log in to an account)
WEBSITES
ALL SIDES to see how a current issue is written from the left, the right, and center. Consider the ISSUES section for guided topic areas.
OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES
OASIS (use by subject search feature)
SMART HISTORY (art history focused)
Other examples include: Course Syllabi and readings posted online; Khan Academy; open source books like Google Books.
REMINDERS
REMEMBER: Doing research at home? You will need to log into the database. Refer to the username and password here.
REMEMBER: You need to cite your sources in MLA style. Here are the citation managers we have available.