Position Paper 2 : What is a Position Paper?

• A position paper presents an arguable opinion about an issue.

• The goal of a position paper is to convince the audience that your opinion is valid and worth listening to.

• Ideas that you are considering need to be carefully examined in choosing a topic, developing your argument, and organizing your paper.

• It is very important to ensure that you are addressing all sides of the issue and presenting it in a manner that is easy for your audience to understand.

• Your job is to take one side of the argument and persuade your audience that you have well-founded knowledge of the topic being presented.

• It is important to support your argument with evidence to ensure the validity of your claims, as well as to address the counterclaims to show that you are well informed about both sides.

(note from me: position papers can be written for any field and discipline. In your case, you'll be working on your chosen literary text and will come up with a stand/a belief/a position/a thesis statement based on the text. The purpose of the position paper is to defend that stand/belief/position/TS)

Note: a stand/a belief/a position/a thesis statement - all refer to the same thing!

Issue Criteria

To take a side on a subject, you should first establish the arguability of a topic that interests you.

· Are you personally interested in advocating one of these positions?

· Is the issue narrow enough to be manageable?

(Eg. if you're working on the short story A Great Injustice by Heah Chwee Sian which deals with teenage preganancy your stand may sound something like "Ah Nya is not to be blamed for the abortion"- that is if you really believe that society is at fault for what happened to Ah Nya)


In considering the audience, ask yourself the following questions:

· Who is your audience?

· What do they believe?

· Where do they stand on the issue?

· How are their interests involved?

· What evidence is likely to be effective with them?

(talk to friends to gauge what the general beliefs are about your stand. No use having a stand that everybody agrees about. It's just like saying an orange is orange in colour. Everyone knows that)

In determining your viewpoint, ask yourself the following:


Is your topic interesting?

Do you have enough material to support your opinion? (Use textual evidences found in the text to back up your stand)

Organization

Your introduction should lead up to a thesis that organizes the rest of your paper. There are three advantages to leading with the thesis:

1. The audience knows where you stand.

2. The thesis is located in the two strongest places, first and last.

3. It is the most common form of academic argument used.


This is a general idea of what a position paper is. The next posting will be on the format. Don't start writiing yet. You have to understand more on how to start doing this.

Thank you.