Week 12 — Make the Sources Serve the Claim — Traditional alternative (no AI)

Instructors: publish this instead of the adaptive version if you prefer, and unpublish or delete the adaptive one.

Assignment 11 of the term — turn a paragraph that reports sources into one that argues, integrate every source with all four parts, answer the other side with evidence, check the works-cited list both ways, and explain the difference to someone outside the course.

This week you learned to tell an argument from a report, to put sources in conversation, to bring each source in with the four-part integration move, to cite every paraphrase, to answer the other side with real evidence, and to check that the works-cited list and the page match both ways. In Week 7 you learned to build an argument from a claim, grounds, and a warrant and to answer a counterargument; this week your grounds come from sources. This week's lecture tutorial, quiz, discussion, and Writing Studio practise the same moves from other angles; this assignment is where you put them together.

The task

This week you make sources support a claim instead of replacing it. Your material is an illustrative student draft arguing for a free evening shuttle on a commuter campus, written for this course and attributed to no one. Its sources are illustrative too. The draft's works-cited list has five entries: a campus transit survey, a city news article, a city parking report, a book about commuting, and a bus-schedule web page. In the full draft, the survey, the news article, and the parking report are cited; the book and the bus-schedule page are never cited.

Here is the draft's body paragraph, one sentence per line. The survey is cited by page; its quoted words are on page 6.

1. "The transit survey asked students how they travel in the evening."
2. "'Most students who leave campus after dark said they would ride a free shuttle if it ran until ten' (6)."
3. "The news article reports that the city cut two evening bus routes last year."
4. "Students who walk to the far parking lots at night feel less safe than students who leave before dark."
5. "'A shuttle that stopped at the far lots would carry the riders who now walk the longest distances' (6)."

Sentence 4 restates a finding from the survey in the writer's own words, but it names no source.

Part A — turn the report into an argument. The draft paragraph has 81 words, not counting its citations, and 37 of them sit inside quotation marks; say how many of its words sit outside quotation marks and how you got that number. Then explain in 2–3 sentences why this paragraph reads as a report rather than an argument: look at how each sentence opens and at whether any sentence states the writer's claim. Finally, rewrite the paragraph as an argument. Open with a claim of your own, keep at most one short quotation, paraphrase the rest with credit, and end on your own sentence about what the evidence means.

Part B — integrate, answer the other side, and check the list. The draft's works-cited list has 5 entries, and the draft's in-text citations and signal phrases point to 3 of them; say how many entries are never cited and how you got that number. Name the uncited entries and say, for each one, the fix you would make. Then do three things in your rewritten paragraph or right after it:

• rebuild one of the two dropped quotations so it has all four parts: a signal phrase, the quotation copied exactly, the page in parentheses, and your own analysis;
• give sentence 4 a signal phrase or a citation, because a paraphrased finding is still the survey's idea; and
• write a counterargument with sources, 3–4 sentences. The parking report, an illustrative source with its finding on page 3, says that few cars remain in the far lots after dark, so an evening shuttle might carry few riders. State that objection at its strongest, then answer it with the survey's evidence or a stated limit on your claim, and end on your own sentence.

Explain it to a non-expert

A cousin is writing a grant request for a youth soccer league. They pasted five statistics from five reports into one paragraph, one after another, and the reviewer wrote back, "Where is your argument?" Write a 3–5 sentence message that explains, in everyday words, the difference between listing sources and using them to make a case, and what your cousin should do instead. Use your Part A rewrite as your example. Name one honest limit — for example, that a strong argument still needs real evidence, so cutting sources is not the cure. Explain any term your cousin might not know.

For a different, ungraded example, imagine a neighbor writing to the city about a dangerous crosswalk who listed three news stories about crashes and stopped. Model answer: "Start with what you want the city to do, like 'put a stoplight at Oak and Fifth,' in your first sentence. Then use each news story to back that up, and after each one say in your own words why it matters for this crosswalk. End with your own sentence, not a news quote, so the city hears your request last. The stories still matter; they now work for your point instead of standing in for it."

Use that pattern for your cousin, with your own explanation of your rewrite.

Reflect on your revision

Before you submit, audit your first draft: underline the first sentence of your rewrite and check that it states your claim, label the four parts of your rebuilt quotation, circle every sentence that carries a source's idea and confirm each one is credited, count the quoted words in your rewrite, check that your last sentence is your own, and revise. Then answer one of these two options in 2–4 sentences; they carry the same weight:

• (a) Which change did the most to make your paragraph argue instead of report, and what did a reader gain from it?
• (b) How did writing the parking report's objection at its strongest change your own claim or the way you supported it?

Deliverables

Submit in the assignment entry: the Part A count and how you got it, your explanation, and your rewritten paragraph; the Part B count and how you got it, the uncited entries and your fix for each, your rebuilt quotation, your cited paraphrase, and your counterargument; your message to your cousin; and your reflection. Each part may be written, or recorded as audio or video with a transcript; every form is graded by the same scoring criteria.

Submit in any accessible file type or as a link; a recorded response may be submitted as audio or video with a transcript, or as text.

How you'll be graded

The full analytic rubric is attached to this assignment in Canvas.

Academic integrity and AI use

The explanation, the rewrite, the rebuilt quotation, the counterargument, the message, and the reflection must be your own words. This version of the assignment asks for no chatbot at any step. Quote only words you can find in the draft material above, copied exactly, and never from memory.

Built with The Course Maker · samples.thecoursemaker.com