Sample Instructions for Essay 4 Cover Page

Remember that your Essay 4 will be evaluated based on the rhetorical situation you’ve defined for writing about your educational issue. Your workshop group and I need to know the specifics of the context, audience, and purpose you’ve set up for your paper in order to effectively respond to and evaluate your paper. Therefore, on your cover page provide a detailed description of the context, audience, and purpose for your Essay 4 as well as how you’ve shaped your argument for this situation:

- Define some personal background for writing your argument on this issue. Why did you choose this particular issue/debate? What is your “personal connection” to it? (That is, what personal interests and/or investments do you have in this issue?)

- What do you see as your exigence in writing to others about this particular educational issue? That is, why is there a “social need” for others to know about this issue?

- Define your audience, including an “audience profile” in which you the main values and concerns that inform your audience’s position. Also, explain where your audience’s values and concerns are similar and different from your own.

- What is your purpose—what do you hope to accomplish in writing to these particular readers?

- Discuss your strategies or approaches in shaping your argument for this context, audience and purpose. Why did you choose the type of approach you did (for instance, a more traditional or more Rogerian-style approach, or a blend)? What specific concerns or interests you’ve identified above do you think this approach (including your structure) has helped to address?