Week 2 Discussion   Previous  Next     By the end of the week, comment on at least two of your classmates' submissions. Your replies to classmates should be made with an eye to clarify how one or both of the topics fulfill the following criteria: Is it interesting? Is it of current importance? Is a resolution important? What aspects of it are important to address? Prompt: For the final writing assignment in this course, you will write a researched argumentative essay. As a first step, you will identify some possible topics of interest for research. Begin by reflecting on issues that are important to you and on which reasonable people might disagree. Also, consider areas in which a change could make improvements in a currently difficult situation. Once you have found two possible topics, draft two paragraphs in which you explain your interest in the topics and any challenges you expect to encounter. To help you to generate ideas, you can use the South University Online Library to locate articles that present arguments about controversial issues that interest you. You may reach out to the Reference Librarian by phone, email, or the library chat feature for help in locating articles. This YouTube Video will help you to find information on debatable topics, as mentioned in the lectures this week: Ideas: The following are some ideas to get you started thinking about possibilities: As a parent, you might promote children’s health by advocating for healthy school lunch, mandatory recess activity, or physical education classes. As a military person or veteran, you might argue for services to eradicate veteran homelessness, drug abuse or suicide, or you could advocate for the draft to ensure that military service is expected of all sectors of society. As a student, you might choose to talk about how to revise Federal Student Aid programs to best support students. You could advocate for interest-free student loans and flexible repayment plans. You could make a case for strengthening of environmental protection, for unions in the workplace, for mandatory transition to renewable energy, for developing a mass transit to reduce the numbers of semis on our highways. You could argue to increase taxes to address the poor quality of roads, or to support teen centers, parks, or libraries.