Categories: Help me Write Essay

Petition on Change.org.

Option #1 (Proposal): Writing a Petition on Change.org

Purpose: The objective of this assignment is to practice persuasive writing, which includes the elements of logos, pathos and ethos as well as practice writing a proposal.

Topic: According to Google dictionary, petitions are “a formal written request, typically one signed by many people, appealing to authority with respect to a particular cause.” In order for a petition to be strong, the writing must have strong logos (reason, logic and factual information), convincing ethos (credible sources, ethical ideas, unbiased and unflawed writing) and moving pathos (emotional connection to the writing).

Writing Task: First, open up at Change.org account. Then, browse through some of the trending petitions on the website. There are thousands already published, so please go through a few to get a good idea of what will be expected. Since this website is open to everyone, you will find both strongly and weakly written petitions. Read both to give yourself an idea of what you should aim for and what you should try to avoid. Follow the steps on the website to publish your petition (there are 4 steps total). After publishing your petition, I want you to copy/paste the URL at the bottom of your essay. Once again, our assignment is to:

Publish a petition on Change.org.

Tips:

* Contextualize the problem. Background information will be needed, so make sure to provide it (i.e. who, what, when, where). Be very specific.

* The petition must have a specific recipient, so do your research prior to publishing your it. Ask yourself: who can help you with your request?

* Be respectful and persuasive (try using logos, pathos and ethos to win this argument). Your objective is to get signatures that can lead to a change, so make sure you are not excluding or insulting audiences. Avoid aggressive, offensive

* Do research. Throughout your petition, I would like you to use two credible sources: one source should be a credible media article (preferably from a newspaper or magazine) and one source should be a scholarly article (published in a scholarly journal). Though petitions generally don’t have a Works Cited page, I would like you to still provide one when you submit this

* Your petition should be 4-6 pages. Petitions don’t follow MLA rules; they look more like online newspaper/magazine articles with a title, a picture (which is recommended but not required), and the article itself. For this assignment, you don’t have to follow the MLA format, but I do ask that you double-space to leave me a little bit of room to comment.