Overview: To complete this assignment, you will explore publicly debated issues and choose one to research. The issue you select should be complex - that is, there must be more than two sides to the debate. For instance, while you might not be able to choose abortion as a suitable issue, since it is largely a debate between pro-life and pro-choice advocates, you would be able to choose the issue of reducing the rate of teenage pregnancy, since there are numerous approaches to this issue, including various types of sex education, abstinence training, and distribution of contraceptives. Once you’ve selected an issue, you will begin reading articles on your issue to become familiar with the debate and you will decide on a general focus or direction for your research.
Purposes for this Proposal: To define a clearly debatable issue that you'll want to write about; to explain why this issue is important to you (why you chose to write about it); and to explain why this issue is relevant for a college aged audience (why they should care about it).
Audience: Your primary readers for the proposal are you and your instructor; however, you'll also need to consider college aged readers of Talking Back (http://writing.colostate.edu/gallery/talkingback/) to help you decide which issues are best for this audience.
Proposal Requirements: Your proposal should be between 300 and 400 words in length. In it, you should clearly define your issue and include a research question to help maintain a specific focus within your topic. The research question should be narrow and debatable. It should also lend itself to complicated responses (more than simply pro/con). Also, in your proposal you should briefly describe who is currently debating this issue, and discuss what their general concerns are. Finally, you should explain why you chose to write about this issue, and why you believe it is an important issue for readers of Talking Back to learn about.
Proposal Submission: Post your proposal on the class discussion forum on your SyllaBase class page (http://writing.colostate.edu/syllabase/).