ssues rarely?if ever?have only two sides. This assignment asks you to explore, explain, and analyze the multiple perspectives on the issue you have chosen to research.

Your Exploratory Essay should cover the same topic you explored in your Issue Proposal and Annotated Bibliography. In order to develop your Exploratory Essay, begin by utilizing the sources you identified in your Annotated Bibliography. As you have gathered, read, and annotated a significant number of sources, you are ready to begin your Exploratory Essay (Note: You may need to uncover more sources to fulfill the requirements of this assignment).

As you did in your Issue Proposal, begin by analyzing the rhetorical situation of your chosen issue. Ask the following questions about your issue: What caused the issue? What prompted past and present interest and concern with it? Who is interested in the issue and why? What are the various views in the ongoing conversation about this issue?

Identify the multiple perspectives on the issue. Summarize at least three of those perspectives, noting how people who identify with each perspective support their arguments. (Note: you should not reveal your own perspective on the issue until the end of the paper).

Your audience is a group of readers who are interested in your topic and who hold firm opinions about it. Make sure to represent each side of the issue in such a way that readers from all three ? sides? of the debate could agree with your description of their perspectives on the issue.

In the final paragraph of your essay, explain your interest in the issue and make a claim that states your position.

Note: Your FYW textbook includes a sample Exploratory Essay on pgs. P63-65.

For this assignment you must:

Identify an issue for readers.
Explain the rhetorical situation and describe at least three perspectives on the issue.
Explain your interest in the issue and make a claim that states your position.
Integrate and cite your sources correctly.