Open Letter English and Literature Paper

Open Letter English and Literature Paper

 
76-101: Open Letter Assignment Guidelines
Overview: You will write an open letter (1000-1200 words) to address a problem related to inequality and potentially argue for some solutions to solve the problem. An open letter is a letter that is intended to be read by a wide audience, or a letter intended for an individual, but that is nonetheless widely distributed intentionally through newspapers and other media. A letter to the editor, an opinion editorial (op-ed), or a blog posts are examples of open letters.



Open letters:
•bring attention to/or clarify an issue facing a specific population by explaining the issue in depth.
•request a call for action/solution/response (through proposed solutions).
•provide support/reasons for the urgency of the problem or the proposed solution(s) using personal experience and /or primary/secondary sources.
• are written for a specific audience, but anyone can see it.
• are formatted like a letter with appropriate formatting to make it easy to read.
Adopted from Ferris & Ferrando, 2015



From academic to public arguments: The purpose, context, and audience for your synthesis and problem analysis was an academic one: You wrote the synthesis and problem analysis for schooling/learning purposes in the context of our class to demonstrate your knowledge to your professor and your peers. The purpose, context, and audience for the open letter is a public one: You will imagine that you are writing your open letter to be published in a university newspaper or online publication geared to QF students, faculty, and staff but that can be read by a wider audience.



Choosing a topic: You may write an open letter about the case or related issues addressed in your problem analysis by recontextualizing your previous argument to a public audience and in some cases by shifting from problem to solution. You may also choose to write about a different topic.



Whatever topic you choose to write about, the topic has to be focused and narrow enough. If you are writing about the same topic as your problem analysis, you can’t write about all the supporting claims. Your open letter needs to be more focused.



In addition to being focused, your topic should be specific. So rather than write a very generic open letter about gender inequality in Pakistan or migrant worker issues in Qatar, write about something related to inequality that you've seen, heard, observed, and/or experienced, and that caused you concern, discomfort, confusion, anger, and/or sadness and that you'd like to convince someone or an institution or a society about why this is a problem and about can be done about it.



Rationale: The open letter is aimed to help you to develop skills for writing for an audience outside of school. As a student, you will need to become aware of the different audiences you may be writing for. In introductory courses in your major, your audience is your professor and your job is often to display and apply disciplinary knowledge. In more advanced courses, you are often asked to imagine a real audience or you may write to a real client, investor, or funding agency, as when you write a proposal. In a proposal, you may propose a solution to an organization’s problem, a business idea for investors to fund, or a research project to be funded. In most of these contexts, you are expected to write a document that makes and supports an argument and that is easy to read for a busy, often non-expert, audience. Thus, the document needs to be adequately written and formatted. The open letter assignment aims to help you to develop these skills.
An evidence-based open letter: It is very important that you provide strong support for the arguments you will be making about the problem and the proposed solution(s). To provide a well-supported argument, you will need to spend time researching the problem and potential solutions. Therefore, the legwork that you do for your open letter is of great significant to the success of your open letter. Support for your arguments may come in the form of information from course readings and outside secondary sources, primary data from databases, benchmarking, and/or primary sources that you can develop through testimonials and observations. The type of legwork will depend on your topic and the kinds of arguments you will make. Your research should be integrated into your document following the guidelines for writing public arguments, as discussed in class.



The features of public arguments: An open letter is an example of a public argument which has specific features that are distinct from academic arguments. In order to prepare for your open letter, in groups of three students, you will conduct a comparative genre analysis (CGA) in order to identify key features of public arguments that you may then use in your open letter. Each group will be assigned a set of texts, including texts written by a specific author for an expert audience such as a journal article, texts written by the same author for a public non-expert audience, and texts reporting on the research by the same author in a more public context such as a newspaper article. The texts focus on issues related to inequality and they encompass different genres (journal articles, newspaper articles, blogs, open letters, op-eds, news videos, and TED talks). As a group, you are to compare the different genres in order to come up with a list of features of public arguments that you will then be able to use in your own open letter. When you submit your draft and final draft of your open letter, you will need to include a list and explanation of the features of public arguments that you are using in your open letter.



Deadlines & Grade
Follow the deadlines for the submission of the different parts of your public argument on canvas including your draft, peer review, and individual meeting with your instructor.



Your public argument is worth 25% of your grade and will be evaluated using a rubric posted on canvas.



Each of the following will result in an automatic lowering of the paper’s grade by one mark (e.g., A- B+; C C-):
failure to submit a complete draft to Canvas on time;
failure to meet with your instructor;
failure to complete your assigned peer reviews on time;
failure to meet with ARC if required;
failure to submit a final version to Canvas on time (one mark for each day late)