Engineering 100-980
Tech Comm Assignment #2
Contents
Purpose
The purpose of Tech Comm Assignment #2 is for you to practice writing a paragraph that uses a topic sentence to make a specific claim and body sentences as evidence to prove that claim. You will also practice research skills to find appropriate evidence, as well as getting a head start on next week’s summarizing skills. Finally, you will have to reflect on rhetorical appeals (ethos, pathos, logos, kairos) that may help your body sentences be effective.
Task
Your task is to write one paragraph that makes a claim and has evidence to prove that claim. Put another way, your task is to write a paragraph that successfully convinces your audience your claim is true.
Use the U of M library website to find an article on some aspect of science, engineering, technology, space, rockets, etc. that you find interesting. You may struggle to find an article. Remember the tips you learned from the lecture on research!
After you’ve found an article, skim through it. Read the abstract, read the findings, read the conclusions, read the methods. Look at the figures. If the article you found is missing one of these sections, don’t worry. If it’s missing all these sections, I recommend finding a different article.
After you’ve skimmed through the article, practice summarizing it. Write a topic sentence that makes a claim, then write body sentences that function as evidence to prove your claim. Remember to include a single “conclusion” sentence at the end of your paragraph that connects back to your topic sentence.
Don’t worry about citations for any evidence you use from the article. We’ll cover citations next week.
Here are some hints to keep you from doing extra work and to help you earn the highest possible grade:
-
Have the research slide deck open while searching the library website. This will help you make the most of keywords, Boolean search functions, and filters!
-
Have the effective paragraphing slide deck open when writing your paragraph
-
An easy way to format topic and body sentences when summarizing an article is to make your topic sentence a claim about what the article is about and to make your body sentences short descriptions of the article.
-
Please write only a single paragraph. It is not necessary to write more.
-
Don’t include any visuals. We’ll work on these skills in later exercises.
-
Don’t worry about citations. We’ll cover that next week.
Criteria for Success
I’ll grade your paragraph out of twenty points. Criteria for success include:
-
How well you make a clear, specific claim
-
How well your evidence supports the clear, specific claim
-
Whether you’ve adhered to all formatting requirements (including what to avoid)
Your final score will be the average of all three criteria scores and correspond to the table below.
| Full Competency—Work requires few to no revisions | 20 points |
| Moderate Competency—Work requires only lower-order revision to improve clarity | 18 points |
| Some Competency—Work requires significant revision for its argument to be convincing to the audience | 16 points |
| Little Competency—Work requires higher-order revision because it has missed the mark in a key way | 14 points |
| No evidence provided—Partial submissions may receive some points based on completeness | 0-14 points |