Assessment activity #2

In my argumentative research paper, U.S Interstate, the language I used reflects a serious and informative tone. Using facts about current highway standards, I was able to paint an unsafe picture and then argue the reasons why this should be changed. Facts like, "93% of all accidents on U.S highways are caused by human error," or "accidents still occur once every 5 seconds, with people being injured once every 10 seconds..." and so on to paint the dangerous picture of our roads.

The argument side of my paper was a bit broad and wasn't put together so that my points were lining up and supporting one another. For a lot of my arguments, I used what I had read and combined that information with the knowledge and experience I already had to formulate my own opinions and arguments. "Our highway system is the backbone of this resilient nation, all it needs is a tune-up to restart the economic growth seen when the interstates began." I think most of my statements were backed up by my sources, but I should have gotten at least one to two more sources to give my opinions a firmer foundation.

I didn't use counterpoint as much as I should have, trying to stick to my points and developing them with the American driver in mind. Most of my counterpoints would have been synonymous with background information, and that was something that I could've done, but didn't.

I really just organized this like a high school paper. To make it more professional I could have found or made some graphs based on the facts and incorporated those, or broken it into different sections, each with its own header, so that my continuity didn't suffer.