Table of Contents
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Chapter 1: Why do we argue?
Two interrelated functions:
- To create knowledge
- To Communicate
How well-educated people think:
- They are careful and take their time making decisions
- They explain and support their conclusion
- They know that everyone's perspective is limited, including their own
- Scholars reshape their ideas by drafting, revising, and getting peer feedback
- They improve and focus their ideas by
- finding potential gaps in their argument
- imagining different audiences and purposes
- To develop your writing ability, you need four things
- Knowledge
- Practice
- Feedback
- Motivation
Elements of everyday arguments can be found in scholarly arguments
- Scholarly arguments have real purposes based in problems that interest the participants
- Scholarly arguments address a specific audience
- Scholarly arguments belong to larger conversations, histories, and contexts that determine the rules for what counts as a good argument
The differences between scholarly arguments and everyday arguments
- Scholarly arguments pursue ideal purposes
- scholarly arguments address sophisticated, demanding audiences
To be an effective communicator:
- Pay attention to:
- The author
- His audience
- His purpose
- Investigative questions:
- Who? (Author and audience)
- What? and How? (Subject matter, argument and style)
- When? and Where?(Context)
- Why?(Writer's motivation)
To successfully demonstrate learning:
- Refer to key terms in the textbook
- Mention important theories or topics during class
Three basic question:
- How do we know what we know?
- Why do we believe what we believe?
- How can we improve what we know and believe?
Chapter 2: How do we argue?
Arguments can be defined in two different ways:
- By their function, or what they do
- By their form, or how they're structured
Where do we find arguments?
Catalyst: A gap or imperfection, an unknown answer, or an unsolved problem that matters to the writer
- All arguments (whether they intend to solve practical problems or simply deepen our understanding of an issue) begin with a question or uncertainty and use some method of investigation and care building to arrive at a conclusion
How do we build arguments?
- Thesis: an argument's central claim (a debatable or controversial idea that's proposed to an audience)
- Supporting Claims: claims are controversial or open to question, so they are paired with some kind of support that can be trusted
- Linkage: an explanation of how a support holds up a claim
- Implications: the consequences, effects, or larger significance of an argument
- Evidence: includes anything observable (primary source; something you can collect and analyze yourself)
- Empirical date
- Personal experience
- Textual evidence
- Verification: includes things that can be looked up (secondary source; someone else has already analyzed of interpreted the evidence)
- Previous research
- Law or precedence
- Established theory
- Illustrations: involve things imaginable (original source; one you create or borrow for a particular argument)
- Fictional narrative
- Hypothetical example
- Analogy or metaphor
An Everyday Argument
- Effective arguments always build on some basis of acceptance or agreement
- Assumptions make up the build of the total argument
- Arguments that anticipate disconnects - that is, objections and unshared assumptions - have the best chance for changing our audience's mind.
- Increased controversy requires increased explanation
Three common mistakes and how to avoid them:
- Arguing the obvious:
- Read more
- Ask an expert
- Arguing without support:
- Highlight your argument
- Consult a reader
- Supporting without arguing:
- Use topic sentences
- Search for stranded support
Chapter 3: How do we read arguments?
Why Read?
- Reading provides most of the information that you write about
- Reading provides models
Reading Strategies
- Have a clear specific purpose in mind every time you read
- You shouldn't read everything the same way
- Repetition enhances memory
The Reading Process:
- Previewing
- Before you read something, scan the table of contents, headings, tables, images and key words
- What are the main ideas?
- What is the writer trying to accomplish?
- How does this reading connect to the course I'm taking?
- Then, skim quickly through the whole text
- Find the main ideas
- Before you read something, scan the table of contents, headings, tables, images and key words
- Reading
- If you encounter a confusing paragraph, stop.
- Take notes while reading
- Write down your reactions to the argument
- Reviewing
- Stop reading and recall what you just read
- Repetition needs to happen in fairly quick succession after you first learn new material
- improve concentration by limiting distractions
Reading Rhetorically: Reading to discover how it says
- Guiding questions of analysis are as follows:
- How is the argument designed?
- What choices did the author make in designing the argument?
- Why did she make those choices?
- The Catalyst
- What happened? What is the author responding to? Where did the idea originate? Why did this topic matter to the author?
- The Purpose
- Modify the knowledge, beliefs, or behavior of the reader
- Implications
- The consequences of an argument
Identifying the controversy
- Controversy Categories:
- Existence or fact
- Definition or interpretation
- Cause, consequence, or circumstance
- Evaluation
- Jurisdiction, procedure, policy, or action to be taken
Guided reading of a scholarly argument
- Identify the catalyst
- Identify the central claim
- Identify the support
- Identify the linkages
- Identify the implications
Responding to arguments
- Play the believing and doubting game
- Mind and mine the gaps
Chapter 4: What's a good source?
- Sources help us:
- Verify whether our work will yield something new
- Begin collective information to answer our research questions
- Provide context for our investigation by relating our study to another scholar's work
- Borrow methods of investigation or theories that worked for other scholars
- Identify views, assumptions, or conclusions to build on or diverge from
Writing that follows research
- Begin with a very specific problem or question
- Review scholarly publications
- Design and conduct some kind of investigation
- Report results of the research
- Writing typically follows research for experience scholars
Sifting through Sources
- How do we know which sources are the best?
- Stability
- Credibility
- Reliability
- Credibility depends on the particular audience and situation
- How do we find credible scholarly sources?
- Ask other scholars
- Explore research databases
- Search online
- We ask ourselves:
- Who wrote this? What makes them credible?
- What are the authors trying to achieve?
- How do they support their claims?
- Is anyone profiting from this? Who? How might money-making efforts influence the content?
- When was this written?
- Will this still be here next month?
- We ask ourselves:
- Big topics need big research containers
- Broad subject
- Narrowed topic
- Research question
How do we summarize?
- Read the text
- Create a "reverse outline," or Schematic, of the text's layout
- Select the most relevant points
- Write a summary
- Revise the summary
How do we Paraphrase?
- Read carefully
- Think about what it's saying
- Rewrite the gist of what the source says
- Double check the original
- Cite the author
Managing the research process
- Take good notes
- Keep meticulous records
Using sources to generate ideas
- Play the believing and doubting game
- Find a source with which you strongly disagree
- Create a table that compares and contrasts your sources
- Pair two sources in conversation with each other
- Look at one source through the "lens" of another source
Chapter 5: Where Can We Find a Compelling Thesis?
Within every great thesis is a stimulating question
- How can you develop and argument that experienced scholars don't already know?
- Keep reading
- Applying your perspective
- Making your own luck
- Challenge yourself
- Talk with others
- Try freewriting
Preliminary lists
- Controversies about existence or fact
- Controversies about definition or interpretation
- Controversies about cause, consequence, or circumstance
- Controversies about evaluation
- Controversies about jurisdiction, procedure, policy, or action to be taken
The three C's
- Challenging
- Compelling
- Controversial
- Dig narrow and deep, rather than broad and shallow
Can I change my thesis?
- Your thesis will ultimately evolve
- Why would I change my thesis?
- Settling on a thesis before writing closes off opportunities to learn
- Writing an evolving thesis
- To show readers your evolving thoughts
- To build a complicated argument
- To develop a controversial argument
- To keep the reader interested or surprised
- Bottom line: Wherever you place it, the best thesis is somewhere you arrive, not a place to begin
- Stay away from Cliched arguments and "interesting" arguments
Infuse a little style
- We aim for thesis statements that are both provocative and clear
- Try something unexpected
- Checklist for thesis statements:
- Answers a challenging, compelling, and/or controversial question
- Gets at the heart of controversy
- Breathes new life into an issue and avoids overused, common wisdom
- Is appropriate for the arguments audience, purpose, and context
- Engages readers with specific and interesting content and style
Chapter 6: How Do We Support Arguments?
Kinds of support:
- Evidence
- Empirical data
- Personal experience
- Textual evience
- Verification
- Previous research
- Law or precedence
- Established theory
- Illustration
- Hypothetical example
- Analogy or metaphor
- Fictional narrative
Building Credibility
- Verification
- Reputation
- Presentation
Activating Reasoning or Logic with Evidence
- Audience respond to evidence more reliably than they respond to credible and emotional appeals
- Quantitative Evidence
- Qualitative Evidence
- Link Evidence to Claims
- Linkages provide the bridge that connects the claim with the evidence
- Helps readers see the logical pathway that guides our thinking
Research Methods
- Interviews
- Surveys
- Observations
- Charts:
- Line charts
- Pie charts
- Bubble charts
- Your claim can only be as strong as your evidence
Narrating
- You can't Forget the audience
- Why should the readers care?
- What's the larger significance here?
- You need evidence
- What story elements illustrate my message?
- What details can serve as evidence to prove my point?
Chapter 7: What About Faults and Gaps in Arguments?
Fallacies in Arguments
- Arguments typically break down in one of three main ways.
- Through faulty uses of:
- Reasoning or logic (activated by evidence)
- Credibility (built with verification, reputation, or presentation), or
- Emotion (evoked by illustration)
- Fallacies do not build the best possible case
- A qualification is a stated restriction that limits a claim's strength
- A common kind of relevance fallacy confuses correlation with causation
- Scholars and others who have been well educated about quantitative methods habitually scrutinize scientific findings by asking questions like:
- How large was the sample size?
- What is the margin of error?
- What other variables may be involved?
- Scholars avoid extraneous information that might distract or mislead their audiences
- Another relevance fallacy occurs when writers create "straw man arguments" - oversimplified, exaggerated, or simply inacurate versions of opposing arguments to make the alternative perspectives seem weak, foolish, and easily refutable
The Usefulness of Fallacies
- Fallacies aren't necessarily false
- You might think of a hasty generalization as a hypothesis worth testing
- You might notice red herrings as potential issues to investigate further
- You might use evidence to support an argument that typically evokes only emotion
- You might search for credible sources to replace the false authorities that a weak argument relies on
Anticipate and Respond to Opposing Views
- Anticipate objections
- Walk in the Readers shoes, by asking ourselves:
- What elements of support are weakest and most vulnerable?
- What might readers have to say in response? If I were reading this aloud to another person, where might they stop me and say, "Wait a minute! What about _?"
- Identify potential controversies
- Play the Devil's (or Angel's) Advocate
- The believing and doubting game
- Respond to objections
- We can concede
- We can refute
- Walk in the Readers shoes, by asking ourselves:
Elaborate to Fill Gaps
- Incorporate more examples
- Respond to more objections
- Relate the argument to real-life contexts
- Discuss the larger implications of your argument
- Make connections to other related issues
Chapter 8: How do we develop and organize arguments?
- Put everything in its place for a reason
Organizing Rhetorically
- Before drafting, we anayze out rhetorical situation and ask ourselves:
- What is my purpose?
- What kind of audience will read this?
- How are the arguments that I've read in this discipline typically organized?
- Am I conducting original research, such as collecting data or conducting experiments?
Techniques for Organizing You Thoughts
- Visualize Your Organization
- Experiement with Maps, Graphics, and Software
- Create a Reverse Outline
Developing Your Arguments
- Arguments about Existence and Fact
- Arguments about definition
- Arguments about Cause and Consequence
- Arguments about Evaluation
- The structure we choose can help promote syhtesis
- Arguments about Policy
- Describes a problem
- presents solutions, and
- Justifies a course of action
Select Scholarly Arrangements
- The Scholarly Model
- This structure is a useful starting point that we approach creatively, adapting the template to out rhetorical situation
- Introductions
- Background
- Support
- Consideration of alternative arguments
- Conclusion
- Scholarly moves
- Move 1: Start with what others have said
- to familiarize readers with context
- to verify our assumptions
- to demonstrate that we've done our homework
- Scholars rarely assert their own position before they've first acknowledged what others have said
- Move 2: Highlight Agreement before Disagreement
- Try to build some common ground with our readers
- Move 3: Put Your Best Foot Forward
- Move 1: Start with what others have said
Organize Your Revision
- Add transitions
- These markers tell readers, either explicitly or implicitely:
- What's coming next
- How ideas are connected
- When a change in subject or tone will occur, or
- How to interpret the argument
- To be precise we ask ourselves:
- How are these claims related? What is their relationship?
- Are these ideas equal, or is one a subpoint of another?
- These markers tell readers, either explicitly or implicitely:
- Unify your argument
- Design your document
Structure Your Writing Process
- Break the assignment into a series of manageable tasks; then assign a deadline for each task
- Break long assignment into chunks
- Get feedback along the way
- Don't insist on following a fixed or linear plan
Chapter 9: How Do WeUse Sources Responsibly?
- For Scholars, nearly every paper is a research paper
Write with integrity
* Copying from others denies you the opportunity to learn
* Plagiarism
* Unauthorized collaboration
* Always ask your instructor, in advance, about what kinds of collaboration she allows
* Recycled writing
* You can't learn something new if you don't do the work
* Tips for avoiding plagiarism
* Get to know your honor code
* As you read, pay careful attention to how writers use their sources
* Maintain careful notes as you read and conduct research
* Don't be tempted to write your paper and then go back to fill in the citations
* Don't procrastinate
Quote and Integrate sources
* an introduction
* an explaination
- Create a conversation
- Create linkages for the reading by:
- Why a quote is there
- What it means, and
- How it's related to , or supports, our argument
- Interpret the source
- Explain how the quotation relates to our argument
- Tell readers what makes the quotation significant
- Consider ways to make a source our own
- Create linkages for the reading by:
- Paraphrasing
- Patchwriting: you can't resuse old papers for other classes
Citing sources
- Scholars value accurate citations because they illustrate the genealogy of our work
- How do we know when we need to cite something?
- Here is the easy answer:
- Always cite quotations and paraphrases
- Cite summaries, too
- Cite statistics, dates, and other details
- Here is the easy answer:
- Citation Fundamentals
- A bibliographic citation includes everything that a reader would need to know to find the exact sources that you used
- In-text citations appear right next to where you summarize, paraphrase, or quote from your source
- Author's name(s), Titles, Publication information
- Keep track of whatever details you or your reader would need to retrace your steps to find each source again
Chapter 10: What About Style?
- Writing is a series of strategic choices
- Writing with style
- thoughtful flexibility: the ability to adapt our voice, word choice, sentence structure, rhetorical effects, and documental design to different situations, expectations, or demands
- Scholarly style
- Write compelling prose that cannot possibly be misunderstood
- Higher order and later order concerns
- Perfectionism can cause writers block
- polishing can waste time and energy
- editing while drafting is less effective
- Mechanics
- Errors
- Errors add confusion
- Errors deminish credibility
- Errors
Voice
- Passive Voice: reverse the sentence order, placing object before the verb and subject
- Many readers prefer active voice because it's usually clearer and easier to read
Clarity and vividness
- use strong verbs
- less can be more
- vivid and precise language
Creative choices we make to improve style
- Imitation
- Sentence variation
- rhetorical variation
- amplification
- linguistic variation
- genre translation
- figures of speech
- using them can cause risks like:
- Reference failure
- inappropriate style
- misinterpretation
- cliches
- False comparison
- using them can cause risks like:
Writing in digital spaces
- how is online different?
- it is hypertextual
- Online writing is always public
- audiences move quickly
- web is big and noisy
Emails
- Choose appropriate style
- explicit greetings
- some introduction
- an expicit question or statement of what you want or need
- a polite closing
- write like it's official
proofreading and editing
- reading your writing aloud
- review with others
- invite a trusted friend, classmate, or writing center tutor to read your work aloud
- using technology
- think carefully before you take your word processor's advice
- be very careful with your word processor's thesaurus
- use the 'find' function