Argumentative Essay

Annotated Bibliography
150 points
Purpose: Academic writing is a conversation. When you approach a topic, you are entering a discussion among scholars, and your research should reflect where your contribution fits within that conversation. An annotated bibliography presents a topic and a collection of resources related to that topic. For this project, you will present a topic and five secondary sources that are relevant to that topic. At least three of those sources must be peer-reviewed scholarly articles. A peer-reviewed article is published in a professional academic journal, and it has gone through an editorial process in which scholars evaluate the article’s quality before publishing it. The other two required sources may be from scholarly journals or popular sources like newspapers or magazines. You will need to use the LIBRARY’s databases and holdings to find appropriate sources—do not rely solely on Google!

Topic: Your topic should be an issue that affects people today. Choose wisely as the topic you write about in the annotated bibliography will be the same topic you use in your argumentative essay.
Language: You are expected to use proper grammar and language within this essay. Do not deviate from Standard American English. Use scholarly language to appeal to your audience.
Audience: Your audience for the annotated bibliography are scholars of the subject you choose. Keep in mind their interest and level of intellect on the subject. If they are scholars of the subject, they are probably well read in it!
Evidence: Introduction: Your introduction should define your topic and your particular area of interest within that topic. You should then offer some justification for your selection of sources: Why did you choose the sources that you selected? How do the arguments of the authors relate to one another? How do these sources amplify your understanding of the topic? In other words, what kind of conversation are writers having about the topic?

Sources: You must have three sources from either the library or the e-resources that are books by qualified experts of scholarly, peer-reviewed journals. Your other two sources must come from reliable sources (sites like WebMD or About.com don’t qualify!) Feel free to ask me any questions you might have about the validity of sources.

Discussion of sources: For each of your five sources, give a full bibliographic entry (these will be within your essay, not in a Works Cited page at the end) and write a paragraph that summarizes the central argument and comments on the value of the article. What is the rhetorical situation of the article? Was it published in an academic journal for a specialized audience? Is it a piece of investigative journalism published in a national magazine? If it was published several years ago, how is it still relevant? Why should the reader know about the article? What does it add to your understanding of the topic? How does it fit in the conversation with your other sources? How might this source be useful in your project? Quote and paraphrase from the sources to illustrate your points. You should expect each entry to be a paragraph—that is, at least 5-8 sentences long, and clearly and explicitly summarize the source.

Evaluation Standards: I will be evaluating your essay based on the following criteria:
• You chose a topic that is an issue that affects people today that is narrowed enough to write an argument about for the next essay.
• You use e-resources or the library to find scholarly, peer-reviewed articles for three out of the five sources.
• Your other two sources come from valid and reliable sources.
• Your essay is 3-5 pages long.
• You use MLA formatting for the paper, including heading, header and font.
• You include an introduction to your topic.
• You include five annotations with a properly formatted works cited entry for each source.
• Your annotated bibliography only includes sources that are pertinent to your topic and narrow enough to write an essay using them.