What is it?
You MUST select one of the three articles given to you in the survival guide. You will respond to one of these articles making sure you use several quoted passages for support.
In this type of assignment, you take a stand on a particular topic that is debatable. You present a clear and strong thesis statement in your first paragraph to assert your position on the topic. Remember, you must state a position. You then provide strong, logical evidence that supports the validity of your argument throughout your paper. However, you will not research this topic. Consider your audience! Who is the intended audience of your paper? Knowing your audience is essential to making a strong argument. Ask yourself the following: What does your audience value and believe? For the purposes of this assignment, you are going to assume that the audience disagrees with your stand. Keep this in mind when writing the paper. Your argument is going to be more convincing if you show that you have taken the situation of your audience into account. How will their interests be affected by the issue? In other words, why should your audience care about this issue? This question can also be broader—why should anyone care about this issue? What kind of evidence will be most effective with them? Your evidence will be based on your personal experience and that of one of the articles included in the module. DO NOT RESEARCH or PLAGIARIZE! If you have questions about this, ask! Even short passages taken from an outside source will constitute plagiarism.
For this essay, you may write in either first or third person point of view. However, you will avoid “I feel” or “I believe” or “I think” statements. Do not write in second (you, your, you’re).
What are the requirements?
Your argumentative essay will include the following:
1. You will select one of the articles in the survival guide to respond to in your essay.
2. You will include at least three directly quoted passages from the article you select in your essay as evidence. When using passages from the article, quote them and introduce them fully using the author’s name and the title of the article as shown in the example in the module.
3. You will have a clear thesis with a topic, how you feel about it, and why (see the examples in the module).
4. Include all of the important details—who, what, where, when, and why.
5.. Include evidence from your own experience as well as evidence from the article in the module.
6. Include refutation—what is the opposition likely to say? This is where you will note what those against your argument are likely to counter-argue. You will then refute this argument and state why it is not as strong as your own stand. Remember to make it clear this is refutation and not your stand.
7. Conclude with a summation of the essay and perhaps a question or idea that leaves the reader with something to consider.
The Article is
The Storm We Couldn’t Escape
Surviving the wrath of a tornado is a horrifying experience because we had no way of knowing when and were it was going to strike.
It was in July and the year was 1981. My family had just moved to Oklahoma due to my father’s job transfer. Our new home was a modest one, and not very protective to the elements of a storm.
The day the tornado struck I was in my room watching television. A news report came on saying that severe weather was approaching and that there would be a chance of tornadoes. It was a little hard to believe because outside we were enjoying the most beautiful day since we had moved there. The weather would turn out to be short lived. About two hours later the sun that we had been enjoying seemed to have been swallowed up by the dark gray storm clouds. The color of bright sunshine had been replaced with the eerie feeling of impending doom. The darker it became outside the quieter it became. It was almost as if the animals outside knew what was coming. It started to rain.
As the rain came down it sounded as if someone was beating on our house with a couple of gigantic drumsticks. Every ten minutes we would get an update from the television. According to the weatherman, the severe storm was headed our way. The rain grew more intense. When the next update came on, the weatherman warned that a tornado had touched down ten miles away from our home. It was then that the power went out.
Last name page
Covered in a complete blanket of darkness, my mother fumbled through the house looking for candles. As she did, I could hear the pounding of rain turn into the hammering of hail. Unfortunately, some items were still packed away and this included the candles. The only light we had came from a lighter. Now that we had no electricity, we could not get the updates from the television. We sat there to wait it out. About five minutes later the hail stopped and the howl of the winds picked up. I could see by the change of expression on my parent’s face that this was not a good thing. We needed to take shelter. The house did not have a basement in it so our only option was to go outside and get into the cellar.
When we opened the front door to go outside the wind smacked us in the face. I heard my mother scream, “Oh my God, look!” There it was in the middle of the field heading right toward us. As the funnel cloud ripped through the field it tore up the ground like a giant weed whacker. With the strike of lightning you could see that it was carrying debris of recent victims along with it. We only had a couple of minutes until it would be upon us. The soft and muddied ground gave way with each step as we ran toward the cellar. The cellar doors are bound with a thick metal chain wrapped around the handles. Using the rusted shovel that was laying next to the cellar, my father broke the doors away from their hinges.
Running down the warped stairs I had to catch myself on the railing due to the slippery mold with which the stairs were covered. We huddled in the far corner waiting for the worst. You could tell that the cellar doors had not been open in years because of the thick smell of fungus. The only residents to it now were the spiders that you could feel scurrying across your feet. My back was pressed against the hard concrete wall and I could feel the cold rain slide down into the back of my shirt. The tornado then struck our home. Although I was sitting in complete darkness, I shut my eyes as tight as I could.
The first thing I could hear were the windows shattering as if smashed with one of my baseballs. I was then faced with a sound I could not quite make out. It sounds similar to someone taking bites out of a huge piece of celery. The sound was the house being ripped of its foundation. Then the noise stopped. We sat there for what felt like hours waiting for the tornado to come back, but it never did. A bright beam of light came through the opening left by the cellar doors. The sunshine was back. I now knew what it was like to stand on the threshold of disaster.
The scene outside seemed like something out of a movie. The house was obliterated. The only thing left to show a home even existed there was the torn and mangled water pipes. Our landscaping now consisted of no more than the torn and splintered debris from the storm. All of our accomplishments and dreams had disappeared with the funnel cloud. Even our car was no where to be found. My parent’s assured me that they would buy me all new things, but the only thing I wanted was the innocence lost with that storm.

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