Write an evidence-based argument to your audience that defends your stance and proposes a plan of action the audience should take

ADVOCACY LETTER
OVERVIEW Your work on developing and refining a research question, the Annotated Bibliography, and the Issue, Audience, and Genre Analysis required you to find a current unresolved issue in your field, establish your stance on it, and identify and research a specific, real audience with a vested interest in the issue (decision-making authority) who is opposed to your position (in part or in total).
Armed with the facts, data, and informed opinions you have compiled, it’s now time to write a persuasive, researched argument about that issue, tailor it to your audience’s expectations, and present your argument in a specific genre, the advocacy letter, appropriate for appealing to a resistant audience.
By the time you finish this assignment, you should have a piece of writing that addresses an actual exigence and is timely enough to send to your audience.
ASSIGNMENT Write an evidence-based argument to your audience that defends your stance and proposes a plan of action the audience should take. Your argument should be presented in the genre of an advocacy letter.
AUDIENCE: You must write with an awareness of the audience (stakeholder) you chose. You have already researched and analyzed that stakeholder, and now you must tailor your word choice, evidence, and tone to the expectations of that audience.
EVIDENCE: This is a researched academic argument, so you must use evidence from at least two scholarly articles. Your other sources should come from the most reputable sources you can find. You cannot cite general encyclopedias, dictionaries (unless they are specialized dictionaries), or popular magazines and websites (About.com, TIME Magazine, The Huffington Post, Newsweek, U. S. News & World Report, etc.). You will be writing to sophisticated audiences who will be persuaded only if you use highly credible evidence. Introduce and synthesize the evidence you provide.
GENRE: You will be writing to persuade your audience to accept your proposed response or solution. One of the ways writers present such arguments is through an advocacy letter, a genre of public writing. The final version of your essay should comply with the genre conventions of the advocacy letter, especially in terms of length, documentation, and formatting. Additionally, note how advocacy
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ENGH 302 Advocacy Letter assignment Fall 2021
letters position the writer’s ethos. You will need to do this as well.
STRUCTURE: Advocacy letters have a specific structure, but that structure still requires an introduction and thesis, body (background information, argument, and counterargument), and conclusion. Use good paragraphing techniques to help your audience move easily through your argument.
• THESIS AND ARGUMENT: Since you are writing an argument, you will need an argumentative thesis that contains a claim and a reason. Your thesis must take a stand on the issue, provide reasons for your stance, and propose a solution your audience should take. The thesis is most often the answer to your research question. • COUNTERARGUMENT: In the body of your paper, you must also address the counterarguments to your position in order to persuade your audience. The counterargument should address the audience’s resistance, concerns, or opposition to your position and/or your suggested plan of action. Concede where necessary; refute where you can. DOCUMENTATION STYLE: Though most advocacy letters use footnotes, use the documentation style in your discipline. As you practiced in Issue, Audience, Genre Analysis, continue use the in-text citation method of your discipline’s choice. END PAGE REFLECTION 1.Describe three specific decisions you made to shape the writing of this essay to your audience and in the advocacy letter genre. Identify one or two places in your final essay where a reader could see evidence of these decisions.
2.Explain how your essay contributes to a scholarly or professional conversation about the issue you chose. Does your argument address a gap in that conversation, bring a new solution to it, raise new questions about it, or add something else that enabled you to “join” this conversation?
3.This end-page reflection must be included in the letter as a new page. It takes up 10% of your grade assignment.
This assignment by the George Mason Composition Program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.)