FCL10001 Academic and Communication Skills A

Argumentative Essay Assignment and Guidelines

1. Indicate the topic and stand clearly on your assignment cover sheet.
2. Ensure that your arguments are well developed, with a clear thesis statement.
There must be clear topic sentences for all your arguments. These topic sentences
should be supported by relevant details. There should also be counter-arguments
and refutations.
3. All the points should be well-linked. There should be cohesion within the
paragraph as well as between paragraphs. Use linking words (such as firstly, in
addition, to sum up) to help you.
4. The topic must be investigated through secondary sources. There must be at least
5 references. *You are required to print and submit all sources to the lecturer
(for documents with multiple pages, you may print only the relevant page/s).
5. The checklist for selecting information (references) must be used for evaluating
the validity of each of your sources. *This means you should submit a minimum
of 5 completed checklists. Each checklist should be stapled to the relevant
printed article and submitted with the essay, List of References, Assignment
cover sheet, and mark sheet.
6. Proper in-text referencing in the style of Harvard System must be used. There
should also be a bibliography or a list of references at the end of your essay.
7. The word limit of the essay is approximately 1,400 words [between 1,300 and
1,500 words]. You must indicate the word count at the end of the essay.
8. The font should be either Times New Roman or Arial, its size should be 12 points,
and with 1.5 spacing between the lines.
9. Each page must have footer with the author of the essay in the left corner and the
page number on the right, e.g. Page 1 of 7. The font size for the footer should be
10 points in the font of the same type as the rest of the report.
10. A soft copy of your essay in MS Word format MUST be submitted to the relevant
Safe Assignment before 12:00 noon on Monday, 15 June 2015. [Any students
Safe Assignment that shows 20 - 29% or above will be severely marked down in
Language criterion of the mark sheet, from 30 49% will be marked down by
half of the overall mark, and any that shows 50% or above will receive an
automatic zero for plagiarism.
11. The hard copy of your assignment is also due before 12:00 noon on Monday, 15
June 2015. MORE DETAILS ON THE NEXT PAGE

FCL10001 Academic and Communication Skills A

Submission of Soft copy of Assignment

1. The soft copy of the essay to be submitted should include all the text from the first
word in the Introduction to the last word of the Conclusion.
2. Do NOT include your topic, the List of References or Checklists in the soft copy
submission or else your SafeAssign percentage matching will be extremely high.
Submission of Hard copy of Assignment
1. Be sure to include the question number and topic at the top of the page, e.g. 1.
Online learning is more effective than traditional classroom instruction. Agree.
2. Include a title for your essay, e.g. Education in the 21st Century
3. Be sure to insert a footer with your name, ID number and page number
4. At the end of the essay, type in the word count as given in the example that
follows:
a. Total number of words = 1,643
b. In-text referencing or phrases, e.g. According to Brown (2013) = 217
words
c. Final word count = 1,426 words
5. As stated earlier, the Checklists must be completed and stapled to the printout of
the article
a. This printout must include the bibliographic information including author,
publisher, date published and date viewed so that the marker can check if
you have done the referencing correctly.
b. The area where points have been taken must be highlighted on the
printout.
c. The complete url link must be included in the end of text reference and in
the List of References.
d. All checklists must be typed or written in ink NOT pencil. It is obviously
easier to type the information out because you can then copy and paste the
url links instead of copying them out by hand.
6. Spacing for the essay is 1.5, but for the List of References, it should be singlespaced and the references should be in alphabetical order but NOT numbered.
7. The hard copy of your submission must include the marked outline you
submitted and a complete (corrected) outline this is good practice for the
Final Exam which requires an outline to be completed.

FCL10001 Academic and Communication Skills A