1: Audience/Context Analysis
Requirements: Skilled researchers and scholars know that an essential part of argument lies in knowing the context of your issues and in addressing specific audiences who share an interest or have stakes in your issue. Our first assignment aims at helping us to articulate the audience and context of the theme of our course.
Our course theme is Cultural Conflicts and Clashes Within and Between Societies in Chinua Achebe’s novel Things Fall Apart and in the modern world.
This assignment asks you to:
- Identify relevant historical, intellectual, or social context
- Identify interested audiences both beyond and including your classmates
- Identify key issues and arguments related to our theme that we should build on
- Eliminate areas of binary thinking: very few arguments have only two sides
- Articulate your own area of interest in the theme.
In a short essay of approximately 3 typed, double-spaced pages (roughly 750 words), answer the following question: What information do we need to know about the historical, intellectual, or social context and interested audiences related to our theme? Your thesis statement should clearly state what the theme of the course is and indicate what information you will cover in your essay. The Classical Model of Argumentation will help you here. Think about having numbers 1-3 above as your confirmation paragraphs, number 4 as your confutation paragraph/ refutation paragraph (before your conclusion), and number 5 as part of your peroration (conclusion)
Any source material must be attributed and cited properly in MLA format, including in-text citations and a separate Work Cited page.