What are the causes and consequences of the declining marriage rate?
1. Introduction and thesis: The purpose of the introduction is to get the reader’s attention so you should provide some ‘shocking’ data that gets his or her attention. At the end of the introduction, you should provide your provisional thesis—provisional because you are still researching this topic, so you will possibly modify your these before turning in the final draft a few weeks from now.
2. Evidence to prove that the problem exists: In this section, you should provide statistics that prove that the problem exists. Your goal should be to paint a picture of the extent of the problem.
Example: Ask yourself the following questions:
How many people are affected by the problem?
Who are these people? Rich, poor? White, African-Americans and so on. Children or adults?
Is the problem geographically isolated or is it prevalent all over the country?
Again, your goal should be to make sure the reader understands the WHAT regarding the problem.
IN THIS SECTION YOU WILL PROVIDE AS MUCH CREDIBLE AND RECENT (IDEALLY LAST 5 YEARS) DATA–GRAPHS, TABLES AND SO ON ARE FINE BUT CITE THEM–AS YOU CAN FIND. Please make sure so that there are no concerns about plagiarism.
3. Opposing Viewpoint: In some cases, there may be an opposing viewpoint, and if that’s the case, then you must tell the reader what the opposing viewpoint is and argue against it. For the topic I’ve used—the growing obesity rate—there isn’t a credible obesity viewpoint because no one is arguing that the growing obesity rate is a problem. There are those who might argue that using BMI to gauge obesity is not effective for X and Y reasons. So, make a judgment regarding your topic: Ask yourself whether there are people out there who think that the problem you’ve chosen is not a problem, and then debunk their position.
4. Three causes for the problem:
Cause 1 and evidence
Cause 2 and evidence
Cause 3 and evidence
5. Three consequences of the problem:
Consequence 1 and evidence
Consequence 2 and evidence
Consequence 3 and evidence
6. At least two pragmatic solutions
