Day 35: Outlining Argument and Problem Solution Essays

Lesson Objectives:

• Compare and contrast various outline structures for a research paper. 
• Creating an outline (headings and subheadings) for your research paper, based on your literature review and your key topics

Part I: Warm-Up (5-7 min)

Argumentative writing is a skill that is needed not only for academic purposes, but also within business and personal situations. To demonstrate that similar structures are followed in persuasive writing across these domains, I would you to be today's class by reading this SAMPLE ARGUMENT EMAIL and identify the elements at the topic of the page. We will briefly go over the email demonstrating that is contains similar parts to that of argument academic writing. 

Part II: Lecture (30 min)
The main objective of today's class is to introduce students to a variety of different outlines that could serve as partial or complete guidelines in the construction of your own papers. To begin, we will review quickly what are the steps taken prior to creating an outline. Click on this RESEARCH PAPER OUTLINE PPT to get started.

After this brief introduction, we will go over some sample outlines together as a class. Please here on SAMPLE ARGUMENT OUTLINES and SAMPLE PROBLEM SOLUTION OUTLINES to access those documents. 

Part II: Student Sample Outlines (10 min)

Look to the students Sample Argumentative and Problem Solution papers under Unit 4. What outline structure do they employ? How do they use headings and subheadings to signify those parts?  For this paper in my class, I encourage students to divide their topics into headings and subheadings.  

Homework: 
Create an outline of your Argument/Problem Solution Paper. Work to construct appropriate headings and subheadings. Look to journals and/or papers within your field to see what type of headings/subheadings would be appropriate for your topic. Upload your outline to dropbox