This class focuses on academic arguments, and to make academic...

This class focuses on academic arguments, and to make academic arguments, you often have to use research to strengthen your argument. This assignment will help fulfill the outcome of Information Literacy. Years ago finding research was time consuming and hard. These days, you can have thousands of articles at your fingertips in seconds. However, only the best sources should be used as your audience is an academic audience with high expectations. As writers, you must decide what types of research you will use in your papers, what has ethos (credibility and trustworthiness-see ch 1). If you use credible research, your argument becomes more credible; if you use biased or inaccurate research, your audience will see your argument as biased and inaccurate.

This assignment will help you learn how to evaluate a source using the six criteria discussed in Ch 8: Accuracy, Credibility, Objectivity, Currency, Comprehensiveness, and Authority.

Your assignment is to find an article on a topic of interest using the databases from the SUU library. Then, using the criteria, write an argument claiming whether or not this article is a credible source. You are not writing a summary of the article but an evaluation of the article. The main question here is based on these six criteria, should this article be used in an academic paper? 

You are writing an argument making a claim (whether or not your article should be used in academic settings) and using evidence to support this claim.

Your argument should have an introduction, where you introduce the article, the criteria, and your thesis; body, where you evaluate the article using all six of the criteria; and a conclusion. As it is an academic argument, you will want to avoid first and second person and contractions. This paper should be 4-5 pages in length, not including the Works Cited page.

You will want to use the article and the textbook in this paper. In the text, you will again use the parenthetical citations using the last name and page number. The Works Cited list will list both the article and the textbook. The textbook should be cited as a book. As the authors of the book compile and explain the criteria, all the criteria and explanations that you use from the book should be attributed to the authors.