Return to Unit Two:TR

Class Plan -- Unit Two, Day 20

• Collect Arguing Proposal packets
• Introduce Arguing paper assignment
• Discuss key features of academic arguments
• Discuss evidence and appeals

Activities:
Daily - Introduce Arguing Assignment. Discuss what the term "to argue" means. You might want to point out that the etymological meaning is "to make clear" (from the Latin arguere).

Generate a list of what a good written argument should contain. Students are likely to have experience with writing arguments, so they will be able to identify key features such as dealing with opposing viewpoints, providing evidence, avoiding logical fallacies, etc.

Pass out your Arguing paper handout and highlight key aspects.

You will want to connect the Arguing paper to the previous assignments in the course which have led up to it, particularly those in Unit II.

Academic arguments - You will want to introduce key features of academic arguments at this point. Prepare some examples from your example case. You want to emphasize that it is impossible to define "academic writing" as one thing, but that there are some common features across disciplines. These include acknowledging the perspectives and what has been written on the issue and positioning one's argument within those perspectives and positions, privileging logical and character appeals over emotional appeals, and providing evidence for claims.

Choosing appeals and evidence to support your claim - Briefly review the appeals and their use in academic argument. Since we rely most heavily on character and logical appeals, we want to decide how we can use both.

Discuss with students how they can develop their character appeal by:

• citing credible, reliable sources, those that our audience respects
• being correct, getting the facts straight
• acknowledging and respecting the perspectives and positions of other writers
• demonstrating our experience with the issue appropriately

Next discuss logical appeals. These can be seen as a combination of reason and evidence.

Use the Finding Reasons and Evidence handout to review how to choose. Connect choices to audience at all times.

Connect to students' own writing. This activity is designed to get students to think about the evidence they have to choose from in their proposal and what evidence they need to seek.

Students should work on this individually.

Review the sources in your proposal. Make a list of the kinds of evidence each writer uses. What kinds of evidence seem most common? What evidence do you find most convincing? Are there any kinds of evidence that you would like to see that is missing? Then make a list of the evidence you have in your sources that you think you want to use and another list of evidence you need to find.

Collect Arguing Proposal Packets.