Why to argue and persuade?
Our beliefs usually come from four sources: people of authority, recorded references, observed evidence, and personal evidence.

People often continue to believe the same ideas they were brought up with without ever examining and deciding for themselves what to think. Perspectives, or points of view, are what people express when they speak and write and also the vantage points from which they perceive events or issues. So a complex interaction exists between perceptions and perspectives. People's perspectives are formed by beliefs, interests, needs, age, gender, nationality, ethnicity, health, education - the multiple factors of life. These factors of perspective influence perceptions; at the same time, perceptions continuously influence perspective. Various people can be exposed to the same stimuli or events and yet have different perceptions, as if each of us views the world through personal "contact lenses". We are usually aware that we are wearing these lenses. Instead, without our realizing it, our lenses act as filters that select and shape what we perceive. To understand how people perceive the world, we have to understand their individual lenses, which influence how they actively select, organize and interpret the events in their experience.

Effective critical thinkers are aware of the lenses that they - and others - are wearing. People unaware of the nature of their own lenses can often mistake their own perceptions for objective truth, not having examined either the facts or others' perceptions of a given issue.

Instead of simply accepting the views of others, students should gradually develop the ability to identify and evaluate beliefs before accepting them with critical thinking, and, at the same time, they should also know how to persuade readers to accept the well-supported beliefs.

Topic of Essay II:
For Essay II, students are expected to use critical thinking to argue about ONE SAME topic: whether the world is Americanized or America is globalized?

Step 2: Do intensive search for more specific materials for your topic.
Read the collected materials carefully and attentively, while thinking what a specific point your research paper will work on. At this step you have to restrict your topic to one very specific point. A general topic could only make your 10-page research paper stay at a very shallow level.
You have to write annotation bibliography to each of five materials you are going to cite in your paper.
Sample Annotated bibliography

Step 3: Research design
Work out an outline for research paper, with the following aspects:
Research aim: What is your hypothesis of the research? What is the problem you want to solve?
Research methodology:Based on materials or statistics from prior research? Or investigation? Or collecting data through experiment? Survey? Interview? Questionnaire? Or case study?
Structure of research paper
Conclusion

Step 4: Drafting
Outlining and drafting are interwoven with each other, since research design will be revised again and again in the process of drafting. When research paper is finished, it should be accompanied with a well-organized outline, too.
The research paper must be as long as 8-10 pages and should have at least ten reference/bibliography materials, and at least five works cited in the paper. Among five cited works, the sources from internet will be restricted to two. (That means that you can only use two materials from internet, and other 3 should be from other sources, like databases, books, newspapers and magazines, etc.) Make sure all the in-text citation and works cited follow MLA format. Every table, or chart, or diagram should be numbered and attached with proper explanation and source information.

"Writing is a form of personal freedom. It frees us from the mass identity we see all around us. In the end, writers will write not to be outlaw heroes of some underculture but mainly to save themselves, to survive as individuals." (Don DeLillo)

Short Stories

For Essay IV, you are expected to write a 5-page short story based on your own life experience.