Sue G in PA wrote:Help! Dd is writing her first argumentative essay in AHL. Does she need to do any research for this to find facts to support her assertion? It would make sense, but the guide doesn't say anything about that. Her topic is texting while driving and her thesis is that texting while driving should be illegal. Thanks.
When writing the supports for her opinion, it can be helpful to include references to something. So if she has any statistics to back up her point of view, she might have to look online for a little bit. But, it isn't supposed to be a research assignment. she can include other reasons that support why she believes what she believes. For example, maybe one of her friends was hit in a crash and the other driver was distracted while texting. But she will need specifics to back up her reasons. She has reasons that she think it should be illegal. Where and how did she form that opinion and on what reasons? If it came from personal experiences (watching other idiots on the road), or from reading something that influenced her, she should be able to reference that in some support.
My daughter went with the topic of "Should Christian High School Students Avoid Reading
Harry Potter series?"
Then, she pulled specific examples from the book to support her opinion. But she didn't research what other people think on the matter. She used specifics from the book, talked about her just completed experience with the reading the entire series as a high schooler (she read with alongside her dad at age 14. MFW does not recommend the book. it was just something that my dh wanted to read at some point and then my dd wanted to read it with him. just wanted to make sure that was understood), and was writing the essay to let me know what she thought about the series after the fact and if I should or should not have let her read it with her dad.
But we didn't research anything about the topic.
If you look a few lessons later in the Lit/Comp supplement, you'll see that the sample essay is a book discussion and lessons learned from reading it.
So, pick something that is important to the student, don't over research to support an opinion.
just one way to do that assignment
-crystal