Case Study Project, First Draft

• Describe a real-life instance of your selected social issue in a professional or a personal setting.
• Discuss your perspective on your selected social issue, including the reasons for your viewpoint.
• Discuss how your core values inform or influence your perspective on your selected social issue.
• Demonstrate that you are really thinking about your issuedont settle for easy answers, dont pretend that conflicting evidence doesnt exist, and dont feel that you have to take an either-or position.
• Discuss the complexities of your selected social issue. For example, do not just conclude that using academic language is always good, or that government surveillance is always bad, or that wealth automatically leads to health. Think about the intricacies of these issues and how they play out in everyday life.

Organization

• Include an introductory paragraph, where you clearly outline a real-life instance of your social issue and you give a thesis statement that indicates your perspective (see Part 2: Writing Your Introduction for an example).
• Include 3-5 body paragraphs where you include details, examples, and quotes from at least three of the course readings and two additional readings to help you develop and support your key points (see Part 3: Writing Your Body Paragraphs for an example). 
• Include one body paragraph where you discuss how your core values inform or influence your perspective on your selected social issue (see Part 3: Writing Your Body Paragraphs for an example).
• End your essay with a concluding paragraph where you restate your thesis, summarize your key points, and leave the reader with the “so what?” ( see Part 4: Writing Your Conclusion for an example).

Language Choices

• As a writer, you are free to decide how you use language, keeping the following in mind:
  • style: your language choices should result in a consistent writing style that is purposeful and aligned with your goals
  • readability: your language choices should ensure that your ideas are clear and easy to follow
• When composing your paper, think about the conventions for academic writing, including:
  • punctuation: this includes things such as recommended use of commas, colons, and apostrophes.
  • word-level accuracy: this includes things such as capitalization, spelling, word-tense, and usage.
  • sentence-level accuracy: this includes things such as sentence boundaries, subject-verb agreement, and pronoun-antecedent agreement.
• Take time to review your language choices after youve written your essay. Think about your goals for the style of this essay and your own writing habits (like using text-speak, omitting capitalization, or writing sentence fragments). Revise as necessary to accomplish your style and readability goals.
• Reading your paper aloud is a helpful technique when reviewing your language choices for style and readability.