LUE1002
Assessment 2 Task Sheet (Writing)
Take-Home Argumentative Essay
Comprises 25% of your final course grade
Your final written assignment due for this course is an Argumentative Essay of 900 – 1,100 words.
This is an individual task.
Your work will be graded for its preliminary planning, paraphrasing, content, organisation & cohesion, citation & referencing, and task achievement. For more details about grading, see the marking scheme on pages 5-7.
Details of the assessment areas follows:
The Scenario
To encourage critical thinking about issues of global concern and the development of excellent skills of oral and written expression among students, the Office of Student Affairs is organising an essay contest with linked mini-presentation and viva. As a Lingnan University student, you want to bean entrant in the contest to express your views on the given topic.
Essay Topic
The topic for the essay contest is social media. You need to explore the topic from an academic and interdisciplinary perspective, and present your thoughts in the form of an argumentative essay that addresses a debateable question about social media. This genre of writing requires you to develop a specific/novel/interesting question related to the topic; investigate the issue; collect, generate, and evaluate evidence; and establish a position on the topic in writing of a formal academic style.
Here are some questions that may help you brainstorm possible issues related to the topic:
• Has the role of social media had a positive or negative impact on one area of life or society in which you’re interested?
• In what way(s) has social media changed the way we see the world and/or communicate with others?
• Are social media making our lives (as individuals or as societies) better or worse?
Please note that these are only some of the possible questions you may explore in relation to social media. If you have other ideas, you are free to explore them – as long as the question remains argumentative and ‘debatable’. Remember that your GENERAL ideas need to be narrowed down into a more manageable, specific, original and debatable question for your essay. For example, you may choose to focus on one specific type of social media and explore its impact on the lives (e.g. learning, politics, health, business) of aparticular group of people (e.g. elderly people in Hong Kong).
Students are reminded that ‘originality’ is rewarded in the ‘content’ marking criteria (30% of criteria). You will lose marks if you use a debatable question presented in other LUE1002 course materials or assessments without changing the focus somehow or adding a ‘twist’ to the question (focussing on a more specific question or issue). The most original essays which add a unique contribution are likely to be best received (and achieve higher grades).
Essay Requirements
You need to:
• write an essay of between five and six paragraphs (you should NOT use section headings)
• show your awareness of different arguments on the issue.
• express your stance with a clear thesis statement highlighting all the supporting arguments
• explain your ‘pro-arguments’ with support from both your own logical explanations and reference to the literature (sources).
• include at least one counterargument and refutation.
• cite at least 3 English written sources which should come from at least 2 different disciplines (for example, education + history).
o You may use any sources in the sources found through Lingnan library portal searches or any other sources that are appropriate for the genre.
o If your chosen article has an interdisciplinary focus, treat it as ONE discipline and choose your second article from a different discipline or a different combination of disciplines.
o Your in-text citations and reference list should be in APA style.
o You should put your reference list (name it “References”) on anew page.
o You should type in the discipline for each source you have used in bracketed italics, e.g. (Psychology) at the end of each reference entry. For examples, see the Research Readings list on Moodle.
o You should mainly use paraphrases/summaries from the literature (with citation) to support your arguments. Where appropriate, you may also use quotations (but you are discouraged from excessive use of quotations which do not count towards the word count and must not exceed 10% of the overall essay). Students must read and reference the original literature, not summaries generated by AI (no citations to Gen AI should be made).
The research and writing process
You should keep a folder of your preparation work, known as the “Work in progress folder”. This should include screenshots of interactions with GenAI, drafts, plans and anything you do in preparation for the assessment. You will submit all of this as a zip file alongside the final submission of your essay. This will not be assessed and there is no penalty for non-assessment. However, if there is a question over the authorship of your essay this folder can be considered.
There are three stages of submission of this essay assignment:
1. Plan (question, thesis and outline)
You must write and submit a plan that includes: your chosen essay question, your thesis statement and an outline of your essay organisation.
2. Paraphrase table
You will submit a ‘Paraphrase Table’ that showshow you plan to paraphrase, cite and reference some of the sources for your essay.
3. Final Submission
You will submit a final version of your argumentative essay in two parts: 1) the full essay and 2) a zipped file of your“Work in progress folder”.
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Suggested process of researching and writing the essay
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Think about the Social Media topics that interest you and conduct some general reading around the topic to understand the key terms and issues. Check that there are academic readings and sources of information
related to the topic.
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Identify a topic for the essay and aska classmate to give you feedback on your title and thesis.
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Search for more academic source materials to support your argument.
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Revise your essay question (if necessary), write a thesis statement and outline
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Use any feedback from your peers and tutor to make sure your counterarguments and any refutations are aligned to your thesis.
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Take notes from sources and begin paraphrasing some pro-arguments and counterarguments from the sources. Complete the paraphrase table and submit to Moodle.
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Complete your first draft. Make sure you have convincing refutations for your counterarguments.
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Conduct a self-review, peer review and edit your final draft.
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Submit your final essay (along with your ‘Work in progress folder’ through Turnitin on Moodle.
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