The academic essay Assignment in this unit will be a written, cohesive argument for a specific change in your community or workplace. The Assignment should take the form of a persuasive essay, in which you will provide reliable evidence from at least four sources to support the argument for change that you are advocating. You will also need to address a counter-argument or misconception about your topic within the essay, as the ability to do so is a key component of a strong argument. Essentially, the essay will reflect what you have learned about writing effectively, using research, and creating a logical argument to influence an audience.

As long as your topic meets the Assignment requirements, there are no specific restrictions on the topic of an argument for change, unless noted otherwise by your instructor.

In accordance with Kaplan University’s plagiarism policy, students must not self-plagiarize by submitting an Assignment for two different grades; therefore, you must not submit a paper for this Assignment that has been graded in whole or in part for another class, whether at Kaplan or another institution. For further insights on self-plagiarism, please review KUWC’s resource, “Self-Plagiarism” (podcast or transcript).

Podcast: http://www.screencast.com/users/KUWC/folders/Effective%20Writing%20Podcasts%20%282011%29/media/fcf54eb3-d161-421a-b200-ed0fb98d96e5

Transcript: https://kucampus.kaplan.edu/DocumentStore/Docs11/pdf/WC/Self_plagiarism_podcast_draft.pdf

Your persuasive essay will need to meet the following criteria:

• APA 6th Edition format for the document, including an appropriately formatted title page and References page
• A thesis statement at the end of the introduction paragraph
• Well-developed paragraphs that include evidence from sources to support your argument for a specific change in your community or workplace
• Four reliable sources should be cited within the text of the Assignment; at least one of the cited sources should be either a book/ebook or a periodical article
• All cited sources need to have full citations on a References page (except for any interviews you conduct, which only require in-text citations)
• Standard American English and a formal tone throughout the writing
• Only the third person point of view should be used

Achieving the above criteria should be your main goal with your academic essay. A strong and well-supported argument will be at least 4 pages (1,000 words long), not including the title page and references page.

If you are interested in receiving feedback on a draft version of your persuasive essay, reach out to Kaplan University Writing Center for tutoring services. You can find further information about the available services on the KUWC website: Paper Review and Q&A Services. Also, review the following KUWC resources for guidance on APA manuscript formatting, APA citation formatting, using evidence from sources, and revising:

• KUWC: “Common Citations in APA Format”
• KUWC: “Citing Sources Tutorial” (video)
• KUWC: “APA Sample Title Page” (video or PDF)
• KUWC: “What is Plagiarism?” (podcast or transcript)
• KUWC: “80/20 Principle” (podcast or transcript)
• KUWC: “Revision Strategies: Post-Draft Outlining” (podcast or transcript)

Click the following link to access the grading rubric your instructor will use when assessing your Assignment: Unit 8 Assignment Rubric.

Click the following link to see a sample Assignment: Unit 8 Assignment Sample.

Turnitin Analysis

A special feature is available to help you with reviewing your Unit 8 Assignment for plagiarism. When you submit your Assignment to the Unit 8 Dropbox, it will automatically be analyzed by the plagiarism detection tool, Turnitin. Soon after you submit your Assignment, you will be able to view the Turnitin Originality Report. Originality Reports provide a summary of matching or highly similar text found in a submitted paper. When an Originality Report is available for viewing, an icon will appear in the report column of the Assignment Inbox. Originality Reports are only available in the Inbox. For this reason, you will need to download the report prior to the grading of the Unit 8 Assignment. To do this, click on the print icon at the bottom of the Originality Report. This will prepare a readable, PDF version of the Originality Report that you can save to your computer.