ENGL 101 - English Composition I - Allen Gleed

For your final essay, you will research a topic of your choice and present a well-supported, researched argument for one side or the other of that particular subject. Although you have the freedom to choose what you’ll write about, I strongly urge you to avoid the “hot topics..." Think about choosing a smaller, more manageable topic, for example, something going on in your local community. Maybe the continuing Harrisburg debt or sinkhole problem is something on your mind lately, or the Carlisle Tire and Wheel building being converted into an upscale apartment complex with high-end restaurants and shops. Or maybe you’ve heard a little about cyber schools in PA but want to know more about them and their overall effectiveness. Perhaps you or a family member has a chronic illness or disorder and you have heard about new treatments for this that have yet to be fully tested and explored. You could also explore more national and international topics such as voter registration/fraud, immigration policy, civil wars and American diplomacy, and global climate change, just to name a small few. This is your chance to do a bit of research and write about that topic. You need to take a position on the topic, however, so please be sure to choose something that is debatable.

Your research essay should be about five pages in length. It must incorporate at least two appropriately scholarly outside sources, one of which must come from one of the HACC databases. Additional outside sources can be of any variety (book, magazine, newspaper, interview website), but they must be academic in nature (not Wikipedia!). Please try to adhere to the page limit and choose a subject that you can explain in that amount of space. Please choose a topic you care about and want to explore—your enthusiasm (or lack thereof!) will come through in your writing.

We will use MLA format for this essay, and all research must be documented correctly, in-text and in a works cited, using this format.