Purpose and Learning Outcomes
For your second written assignment, you will be making a strong argument in an advocacy letter. The topic is up to you, but you must write to an actual person, institution, organization, etc. If you don’t have a specific address for your audience, it is not narrowed enough. For example (“parents” or “teens” or “students” are not specific audiences you can actually reach with your letter). We will brainstorm ideas in the Module 3 Wiki.
The reason you must choose an actual audience is that it will require you to write in the “real world” (as opposed to academia, where your only audience is your professor). Writing is communication that happens in various contexts; it is something that we use for many different reasons in our personal, professional, and academic lives. For this assignment, you will consider your purpose for writing, and you will need to tailor your paper to reach the audience that you’ve chosen. Remember that advocating means arguing for a specific cause or purpose, so you will want to find an audience that has some power or interest to shift or change in support of your cause.
If you are willing, please send your letter once you have finished, or after you have received feedback on the assignment and revised your work. The more your writing is shared, the more chances you have to advocate for yourself and others, increase awareness of something that matters to you, and communicate with your community.
This assignment is related to the following course outcomes:
Compose texts appropriate to various audiences, purposes, and genres.
Revise texts to achieve focus, development, and organization appropriate to the purpose or genre.
Edit for sentence clarity, using appropriate conventions of grammar and mechanics.
Instructions
Because this is a letter, you will want to think about that genre and its characteristics. In the Resources below, I will link to some information on writing strong letters. Be sure to include the name and address of the person, group, organization, etc. that you are addressing.
Remember that your introduction should generally introduce your topic, hook your readers, and state your purpose or thesis (let them know why you are writing). This is a good place to build ethos by explaining your connection to the topic and/or audience, and showing why you care. Remember to gear your letter towards your audience and what you know of their character, values, interests, etc.
The body of your paper should be made up of coherent paragraphs that focus on a single topic. Please make use of transitions to help guide readers and make connections between your ideas.
You should use techniques you are learning from the course readings; your argument must contain at least two of the three appeals (logos, ethos, and pathos).
You are not required to use outside sources for this paper, but you may use them sparingly if you like. If you do, you will be responsible for maintaining academic integrity by using quotation marks around any direct quotes, and clearly citing your sources.
Your paper should be 1 – 3 pages long (around 400-800 words), with one-inch margins. It should be typed in 12 pt Times New Roman or Calibri font (or another font that is clear and easy to read). It should be proofread carefully, with attention paid to clarity.
Be sure you save your work in .doc, .docx, .rtf, . odt, or another compatible format.
Please get in touch with any questions or concerns as they arise during the writing process. I look forward to reading your work!
Resources
How to Write a Powerful and Influential Letter That Will Change Your Life (Links to an external site.), by Charles Bohannan
Creating an Effective Advocacy Message (Links to an external site.) by consumervoice.org
MLA Style and Formatting Guide, the OWL at Purdue (Links to an external site.)
