Argument

PAPER 3: Argument

Remember, the basic structure of the course is we began with personal/descriptive reflective, moved into exploratory, and now we get to the most important and difficult, persuasive. So this third paper has four aims:

1) to get down to specifics and take action. You must pick a very specific topic (a pending piece of legislation, a controversial project) and a corresponding specific person or group who has the power to directly affect the outcome (your Congressperson, a CEO, the neighbors who would be affected).

2) to learn how to make an effective argument.

3) to learn how to use a dialogue prewriting technique to generate and test arguments and counter-arguments.

4) To practice the library research techniques, and to learn how to choose, integrate and cite research.

In some ways, this is a practice mini-term paper to work out the strategies and kinks. If you do a good enough job, you may be able to get others in the class fired up enough about your topic that they'll join your team for the final group project.

Earlier papers were about gathering data, looking for patterns, and learning how to do analysis; in short, they were exploratory. Now you'll be speaking as an expert who has an opinion that someone else needs to hear. But without supporting evidence any position is open to the charge by those who don't want to believe it as "anecdotal," just one person's opinion, and thus limited and possibly biased. You can counter this by including other researchers who have done larger studies that support your findings. That means research, but it also means evaluating what sources you think are credible; you might want to use Rhetorical analysis to help with this (for basic background see here. How to do rhetorical analysis is also on How to Be Brilliant handout.

Persuasion is essential in doing anything in the world, but it's also the hardest kind of writing to do, since it requires that you predict with great precision what effect your words will have, perhaps on someone that you've never met thousands of miles away. Thus getting good feedback (that is giving hard copies to your partners in advance) will be crucial. However, it builds on skills we've been developing all quarter. Our prewriting strategy here will be especially important: a dialogue with an opponent (to gather arguments, counter-arguments, and understand values at stake/play). This dialogue technique will be described in class and is also on the course website.

The Lunsford EasyWriter has good basic info on rhetoric and argumentation (3c-h), and will be useful in generating arguments, and in organizing them. It also covers how to do research (sections 38-41) and MLA documentation (section 42).

Your argument should at least five pages, and you should have five (at least two scholarly) research sources. This as well as your final research paper will be assessed on how successful it would be with the audience you specify, but you can use these rhetorical analysis questions as you write the paper to make sure it will be effective.

If you have questions or suggestions, let me know [1]

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