The Rough Draft
By now you should have a solid opinion on a topic, a list of sources with information you plan to use to support your opinion, an outline of your paper, and a Works Cited page. Now, it is time to write your rough draft.
Clear some time in your schedule to write the rough draft with as few interruptions as possible. Make sure you do not wait too long before it is due because you want to allow yourself enough time to make any corrections. It is best to write your rough draft in one sitting; then, give yourself some time away from it before returning to read and edit it with fresh eyes. In addition, consider having someone else read your rough draft and give you comments on it. Even though it is the first draft of your persuasive research paper, you should place as much care into it as you can in order to produce your best work. That can make revising it into your final paper much easier.
It is recommended that you type your rough draft using the following guidelines:
Use your outline as a guide in order to keep your ideas in a logical and coherent order. Each Roman numeral is a new paragraph.- The first paragraph is the introduction and should contain a hook to grab the reader's attention. The hook could be a relevant quotation from a well-known person, a short narrative, a revealing or startling statistic or fact, a thought-provoking image, or a rhetorical question, just to name a few. Below are some examples.
- Relevant Quotation: "Prolonged lack of sleep has the same effect on the body as being intoxicated. It's unhealthy and it's dangerous," says sleep researcher Dr. Lee.
- Short Narrative: Emily took out her pen and started copying notes into her notebook. As she finished, she listened to the teacher review the differences between eukaryotic and prokaryotic cells. Within minutes, Emily's eyelids became droopy. The next thing she knew was that students were rising from their seats and moving to the lab stations. Emily had lines imprinted on her forehead from where she had rested her head on her sleeve while she slept—yet another lesson that she missed and would struggle with to catch up.
- Revealing Statistic/Fact: One out of every three students suffers from severe sleep deprivation.
- Relevant Quotation: "Prolonged lack of sleep has the same effect on the body as being intoxicated. It's unhealthy and it's dangerous," says sleep researcher Dr. Lee.
- The body of the paper should follow the prewriting plan or outline you have created. You should present the counterargument to your opinion in order to refute it. You also need to address each point of your argument in a separate paragraph with cited information from your sources, explanation, and commentary to support your argument. Make sure to give credit to information cited in direct quotations and paraphrases using parenthetical citations in MLA format.
- The paper should be written using your own thoughts to generate the greater balance of ideas. Citations should not be relied upon solely or predominantly to prove the thesis.
- The conclusion of the paper should reflect the relevance of the topic, briefly review the points of the argument, restate the essence of the thesis, and recommend a solution or call to action.
- Include your Works Cited page at the end of the paper as a separate page. The heading Works Cited should be centered at the top of the page in the same size font with no use of bold, italics, or underlining. The list is alphabetized by authors' last names (or by title when a work has no author). The first line of each entry is aligned to the left margin; extra lines are indented one-half inch. Each entry contains all the citation information needed for a reader to look up the source. Refer to the module titled English Essentials for details on writing a Works Cited page.
- The entire paper should be formatted following MLA guidelines. The basics include one-inch margins, page numbers preceded by your last name in the upper right corner, and double-spacing throughout the paper. Refer to the module titled English Essentials for details on formatting your paper following MLA style.
The Rough Draft Review
Now that you have explored how to write a rough draft, review your knowledge in this non-graded activity. Read the statement about writing a rough draft and decide whether it is true or false. Click on the player button to get started.