Whether you're applying to college, trying to get your
driver's license or waiting for treatment at a hospital,
you will find that the Government and the company's
policy affects almost everything you do. Every political
attempt to do the same: establish rules or guidelines
that lead to equitable and rational results. This is not
always achieved, however, and you can explore these
failures in an argumentative essay. Before you begin to
write your paper, identify a central policy you want to
examine, and then build your argument from the research,
you make.
Developing Ideas
Before you begin to write your paper, you need to
develop general ideas on what topic you would like to
solve. Your teacher can narrow down these topic ideas
for you, but you will still need to develop concrete
ideas though. Start by asking yourself, what type of
policy you are most interested in, and then move on to a
series of questions or arguments about this policy. For
example, if you are interested in foreign policy, can
you wonder why it was United States policy to go to war
in Iraq or, initially, to participate in the UNITED
NATIONS.
Domestic Policy
When you have developed original ideas and asked a few
important questions that you would like to solve, you
can begin to narrow down your ideas by doing some
research. If you are interested in domestic policy,
start with to visit with people that have been affected
by the policy that you are interested in. For example,
if you are wondering what policies must change to
emergency room wait times to fall visit a waiting room
at a hospital and talk to people who are waiting for or
with the hospital's administrators. These people may be
able to identify the most important areas for you to
pursue with the argument. Once you have spoken with the
people concerned, make more specific research, such as
to visit a Government Agency website or read journal
articles and books on politics.
Foreign policy
Unlike the process in order to narrow down your ideas
for a domestic political argument paper, you may not be
able to talk with people who are directly affected by
foreign policy. But you can talk with them, developing
foreign policy, such as State officials and foreign aid
workers. These people may be able to tell you how
foreign policy affects people in other countries and
provide you with vital statistics that will further your
research. As you would with a domestic political
argument paper, use your conversations with foreign
political workers to narrow your focus further. Find
magazines, such as "Foreign Policy", Department
websites, such as the u.s. Department of State, and the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs books to find important data
and sources to cite in your paper.
Organizing Your Argument
Now that you have narrowed your focus to a central
political you are interested in, and a specific question
that you would like to tackle, it's time to generate
ideas about the organizational structure of paper. The
people you have talked to and reading you've done,
should lead this, but you still may need to focus the
idea further. For example, there may be dozens of
policies that need to switch to reduce emergency room
wait times, but you can't tackle them all in your paper.
Use the arguments that you have concrete evidence to
back up, and try to use arguments based off earlier in
your paper. Takes wait times example again, can you
believe that more doctors need to be hired to reduce the
waiting time, but if there are not enough doctors
graduating to fill these roles, the issue of increasing
medical school spaces first in your paper. |