How to Write an Enduring Issues Essay

An enduring issue essay is a significant part of the Global History and Geography II Regents Examination in the New York State. How do you prepare for it and make sure you’ll do your best?

One good way is practice. Learn how to write an enduring issue essay from this guide. It gives step-by-step instructions on working with documents and analyzing the evidence to elicit the issue. Another way is to read as many examples as you can – luckily, your friendly free essay writer is always there to help.

Let’s Start With The Enduring Issue Definition

Before we talk in detail about the essay’s format and structure, let us first understand the unique subject of it. What is an enduring issue?

An enduring issue is a lasting problem or challenge that has been manifesting itself in various forms throughout history. Different societies faced it and dealt with it with varying degrees of success, but it persists thought time. The conflict of new ideas and beliefs with custom and tradition or the scarcity of natural resources can serve as examples of enduring issues.

How to Work with the Enduring Issues List

The enduring issues essay rubric is the most important in the Global History and Geography II exam. It will consist of five excerpts from historical documents and a pre-planning worksheet with an enduring issues chart to help you identify the underlying issue that is common for all five documents.

To identify the issue quickly and successfully under time pressure and in a stressful environment of the examination, you should start preparing for it today. The first thing you should do is familiarizing yourself with the list of topics that might come up. The list of enduring issues varies, but here are some of the potential ones:

• conflict
• traditional culture vs. modernization
• discrimination and inequality
• human rights violation
• impact of the environment of humans
• human impact on the environment
• technology
• industrialization
• urbanization
• desire for power
• trade
• cooperation
• security
• imperialism/expansionism
• nationalism
• colonization
• cultural diffusion
• population growth
• scarcity

To talk about the issue raised by the set of documents, you can (and are encouraged to) use any outside knowledge that you have learned from other courses, such as Social Studies or US History, or personal experience and observations. However, you must include the evidence from at least three of the documents presented in the examination worksheet.

Here is an exercise you can do to feel more comfortable with identifying the issues. Make three columns in your notebook or word processor, put the enduring issues from the list above into the first column. Think about any related words or events that are associated with each issue. For example, for Technology, you can put innovations and the industrial revolution, and for Conflict, write French Revolution and Civil War.

Then, in the third column, try to look for less obvious connections – the accompanying issues that emerge when the bigger one is in motion. For example, for Revolution and War, these would be mass killings, reign of terror, new visions being discredited by the horrors of conflict, scarcity of resources, poverty, diseases.

The documents you will receive for analysis during the examination will most likely deal with some of the accompanying issues, a neutral or even a positive phenomenon that emerged from a bigger, underlying issue you must unpack. That means, during the exam, you will have to go through this process in reverse. That is why it is important to exercise in seeing these connections.

Enduring Issue Essay: Introduction to Writing

To have a 5 score on your Enduring Issues Rubric, you should:

• accurately identify and define one enduring issue common for at least three of the five documents
• build an in-depth argument about how this issued affected people, how it persists or has changed over time
• not only describe the issue but analyze it, create new information from evidence
• support your argument with details and evidence from at least three documents
• support your argument with relevant outside knowledge
• organize your essay logically with a clear plan: the introduction paragraph, the body, and the conclusion.

As you can see, the basic requirements are not that different from any other essay, however, the key to success is to identify the enduring issue and support it with the evidence from the documents you will not see until the exam itself. However, here are the good ways to identify an enduring issue, whichever it might be:

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1. Always base the issue on the evidence

   Instead of an issue you know a lot about or an issue you would like to write about, look for challenges and problems in the documents.

2. Be very specific

   Instead of settling on a general name, try to narrow the issue down to be as specific, as possible (it must still cover at least three documents). For example, instead of just “discrimination” you can identify an issue as racism, sexism, xenophobia, or prejudice against LGBTQI+.

3. Identify causes and effects

   If possible, try to expand on your core enduring issue by analyzing its causes or identifying the effects. For example, “Racial discrimination that led to marginalization and economic disadvantage of the discriminated group”.

4. Go beyond the list

   You don’t have to limit yourself to the issues we provided as examples. If in the documents you clearly see an enduring issue that is not on the list above, go for it. For example, the generation gap or pollution aren’t given as examples, but they are enduring issues nonetheless.

   Let’s suppose that you have identified the issue and have chosen the evidence from the documents. Now let us look into how to start an enduring issues essay and write it on time.

How to Prepare an Enduring Issues Essay Outline

The 5-paragraph essay format you have probably been using for your high school essays will be appropriate for the enduring issues essay as well. Here is how to apply it for your enduring issue essay outline.

Introductory paragraph

Remember that your exam is timed. You should spend about 8 minutes or less on writing your introduction, so keep it short and sweet – 5 or 6 sentences will be enough. Best way to outline it is:

1. A short definition of an enduring issue, followed by an example of the issue you are writing about. For example, “An enduring issue is a challenge that persists throughout human history. One example of such challenge is the scarcity of freshwater”.
2. Define your chosen issue and provide some examples that you will later expand on in the body of your essay (remember about the documents).
3. Close the introduction with a generalization that affirms that the issue you’ve chosen is indeed an enduring one. For example, “From ancient times to nowadays people continue struggling with water shortage”.

Outlining the body

In this part of your essay, you will analyze the evidence according to the requirements of the prompt. The number of paragraphs in an enduring issues essay depends on the number of documents you cite and the additional external evidence you may want to provide. Three paragraphs are the minimum. Here is how you should organize each of them:

1. A short and simple topic sentence introducing the subject of the paragraph and providing a smooth transition from the previous one.
2. Evidence from the document, rephrased and properly cited (Doc. 4)
3. Explanation of the evidence: how has it affected people, how it persists or changes through time.

To write an engaging and coherent essay, assume your audience knows nothing about the topic:

• Write in short, straightforward sentences
• Explain your point in detail
• Use linking expressions (accordingly, as a result, meanwhile, afterward, furthermore) and signal words (to illustrate, specifically, because of, however, consequently) to help your reader navigate the essay
• Use only the essential parts of the documents to illustrate your point

Concluding paragraph

In the concluding paragraph, you should summarize your essay, generalize it, and provide a wider context for the issue you’ve analyzed in the main part of your essay. For a short and effective conclusion, stick to the following plan:

1. Restate your selected enduring issue
2. Sum up the body of your essay. List key ideas – one for each paragraph. You don’t need to repeat the details here, only the gist.
3. Finish with a though-provoking generalization about enduring issues (For example, how these issues stem from the flaws/strengths inherent to human nature or how they cannot be solved forever but must be addressed by each new generation).

Remember, you must not include any new facts or evidence here. Also, avoid unsupported opinions that do not follow from the evidence.

How to Get an Enduring Issues Essay Example

If you are still confused about writing this particular type of essay, you can search our sample essays collection for the enduring essays or papers on similar topics. Read and learn from the examples – they are absolutely free!

Another way to get a perfect customized enduring issues essay sample is to send us your enduring issues essay prompt and let us write it for you! Our writers have vast experience with all formats of academic writing and great expertise in various research fields. They will provide an in-depth analysis, expert insight, and a perfectly formatted paper that adheres to the requirements.