Read chapter 6 in your textbook.

Here is the writing assignment from your textbook:

The exploratory essay is an account of inquiry. Your goal is to share the experience of questioning your opinions and the arguments of others on your chosen topic. The paper will be a journey with a starting point, a tour of viewpoints on the issue, and a destination, a claim you can defend. The essay has three parts, one written before inquiry,the other two written after. in this informal paper, you will refer to yourself and your own thoughts and experiences. Write in first person.

Here is an overview of the paper:

In Part 1, you will tell what question or issue interests you most about a given topic and express your initial opinion.

Part 2 will be the exploration itself. The point is to open the question and keep it open, testing your opinions and exploring the issue through conversations and research that connect you to a range of expert opinions. You are not trying to support your initial opinion but to test it. You'll write about readings that confirm and contradict your thinking and evaluate these arguments fairly.

Part 3, the conclusion, will be a statement of your thinking after inquiry, an explanation of the truth as you now see it. Think of exploration as the process of arriving at a claim (Crusius and Channell 147).

Here is the assignment broken down into separate steps:

• Part One
  • Select a topic and then narrow the focus.
    
  • Identify an issue.
    
  • Write your exploratory essay stating your initial ideas.
    
  • Explore the issue and talking (159-160).
    
  • Explore the issue by reading.
    
• Part Two
  • Review your notes from your conversations and reading.
    
  • Write your essay.
    
    • Describe your inquiry.
      
    • Organize essay around your initial opinions and how your research reinforced or changed them.
      
    • Some paragraphs could be devoted to a single research source.
      
    • Other paragraphs could compare an idea across two or more sources.
      
    • Be specific about what you have read.
      
    • Do not just summarize sources -- Evaluate them.
      
    • "The point is to show how your research-inquiry refined, modified, or changed your initial opinions" (182).
• Part Three
  • Revise
  • Edit
  • Proofread

The completed essay must be at least 500 words. To do a good job on this assignment, your essay will need to be longer. There is no limit on length, but all essays should be concise, informative, and correct. Longer essays that multiply errors simply provide more justification for a poor grade. Microsoft Word will tell you how many words there are in a document.

This essay must have a works cited. A works cited is not the same thing as the annotated bibliography that you created in preparation for the essay. The works cited lists all the sources that you actually summarize, paraphrase, or quote in your argument to inquire. Give the complete bibliographic for each source following MLA guidelines. Arrange your sources alphabetically. Do not include any annotations for the sources on your works cited.