Essay 2—Problem/Solution Essay
Rough Draft Due May 3
Final Draft Due May 9
Assignment:
Write about an issue or problem that affects you and/or your peers in a community to
which you belong—your home, family, work, school, neighborhood, or cultural group. You
should spend the majority of the essay describing and analyzing the problem itself
and working to convince your reader that it is a significant area of concern. The essay
should avoid offering potential solutions until you reach your conclusion.
The goal of this essay is to explore a problem in detail before trying to find a solution.
When we are confronted with problems, we often look immediately towards a solution—it
feels better to be able to fix things as soon as possible. However, if we jump directly to
finding a solution, the complexity of the problem itself can be lost. You will need to
convince your readers that the problem you discuss is indeed a problem. Explain what the
problem is, what may have caused it, and why it matters. Your audience needs to care
about the problem before it can consider a proposed solution.
Through tone, information, recognition of opposing ideas, and personal experience and
connection with the problem, you need to establish your credibility and believability as a
writer. You can support your proposal with personal experience, observation, examples,
and/or interviews. Please draw on personal experience and knowledge for this essay.
Avoid finding internet or outside sources!
Expectations:
The essay will be 3-4 pages, double-spaced, in Times New Roman font with 1” margins.
Purpose:
The purpose of the assignment is to
 help you to define a problem affecting a community or group to which you belong.
 give you practice developing your argumentative skills in an applied and immediate
way.
 provide you with a method to more actively and effectively engage in shaping your
individual lives and communities.
Criteria:
The essay should
 demonstrate that a specific problem exists;
 have a central focus/thesis;
 have a clear, logical structure with smooth transitions between ideas, sentences, and
paragraphs;
 use well-chosen illustrations or examples that support and develop the thesis in the
body of the essay;
 define an appropriate audience for the proposal and use evidence and claims that
will appeal to that audience. In thinking about your audience, you may want to

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consider the following questions: what are their values? What does this audience
know about the problem? What kind of personal or emotional responses might
members of this audience have to the problem?
anticipate counter-arguments to your analysis of the problem
propose a solution or solutions to the defined problem that is based in a careful and
detailed analysis of the problem facing the community (Conclusion!)