In week one, you selected a topic for the Final Persuasive Essay. Now, it is time to formalize your proposal and begin to explore and analyze your topic in order to build a foundation for the essay to come. A strong proposal promises success for the project, while an ill-conceived or incomplete proposal can bring poor results. This proposal is your opportunity to set your sight on success and begin to advance to a higher level of academic writing skills.

Helpful Resources

• Norton Field Guide to WritingChapter 36 Guiding your Reader (pp. 386-391)
• Little Seagull Handbook Section W-3, “Writing Processes”
• Harvard College Writing Center: Counterargument

The proposal should consider all aspects and criteria of the intended project and demonstrate understanding and competence in the ability to complete it. Generally, a research proposal should contain all the key elements involved in the research process and include sufficient information for the reader to evaluate the proposed study.

Generally, the proposal will address the following three areas:

What you plan to accomplish, why it is important and how you are going to persuade you audience.

Remember, your topic must have

• two logical sides to the issue (your viewpoint and an opposing viewpoint),
• must be researched-based
• must be relevant to your career or degree.

Your proposal needs to include the following six paragraphs and a title:

Working Title (Find help on title writing by clicking here by clicking here – Alternative Formats )

Section One

• Introduction
  • Describe the issue (2-3 sentences)
  • Define your position (1-2 sentences)
  • Thesis statement (1 sentence)
    • Follow this example:
      While many feel that defunding the police would endanger society, redistributing funds would increase the number of public health workers, provide more targeted support, and refocus efforts to retrain existing law enforcement personnel.

Section Two

• Counterargument
  • Anticipated questions or resistance (2-3 sentences)
  • Response to questions or resistance (2-3 sentences)

Section Three

• Audience (2-3 sentences) Consider demographics, background, relevance, knowledge of topic and beliefs.
• Goal for your audience (how should the audience think or act differently? 1-2 sentences)

Section Four

• Strategy for convincing your audience including goal, purpose and challenges, Consider tactics (ethos, pathos, logos) (2-3 sentences)

Section Five

• Research (preliminary) describe your approach (refer to your readings thus far)
• Keiser University Library Database(s) you are most likely to use
• Potential articles cited in 7th edition APA (at least 2, final paper will require 4)
  • Be careful to avoid a faulty use of authority, or identifying a source written by author who claims to be an “expert” but is only moderately familiar with the topic.
• Potential key terms (Minimum of 5)