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Chesapeake College Learning Resource Center
English 081

The following outline for the English 081 persuasive essay lesson is provided to give the LRC staff access to this information when he or she is not in the LRC or does not have access to the shared folder.

When teaching a class, you will only need to display the following links:

Power Point 

Narrowing and Choosing a Topic for Use in a Persuasive Essay

Objectives

Know how to narrow a topic for an appropriate focus.

Have, or be able to find, a source of information to support your viewpoint in your essay.   Leave the LRC with an article for a persuasive essay.


I. Use the Power Point to explain the process of choosing topics.

STEP ONE:  Develop a List of Topics

  • Brainstorm

  • Browse through magazine and newspapers

  •      Look at the Front Page

  •      Read letters to the editor

  • Talk to others

  • Use SIRS Online

STEP TWO:  Narrowing Your Focus

  • Use the Browse feature in SIRS

  • Choose a general topic area.

  • Choose a subtopic area.

Link to SIRS from the Power Point, and show the students how to find Browse and choose a subtopic.  Link to the articles.  Scan an article.

 

STEP THREE:  Choose an article.

  • Scan the titles of the articles in order to find an article of interest to you.

  • Choose an article that you can ise to back up your opinion in your persuasive essay.

STEP FOUR:  Devise a thesis statement.

  • This must be a statement rather than a question.

  • The statement must be arguable.

Read the thesis statement examples given in the Power Point.

 

Have students spend the rest of the class using SIRS Online to find an article for use with their persuasive essay.

 

Handout:

Citing in SIRS

Databases

 

If there is inaccurate information on this page, please send correction or comments to: lrcdesk@chesapeake.edu
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