One
of my favorite writing classes in undergrad was during my freshman year and focused
primarily on writing arguments. Our textbook, Writing Arguments by Ramage, Bean, & Johnson, was a great
reference for me throughout the rest of my college career. Perhaps the reason
that I loved the class so much was because of how much time we spent learning
how to craft incredibly effective arguments while developing our own. I loved
learning about the different strategies to present my argument because I feel
as if this was something I never learned in high school.
That semester I needed to write a twenty
page research paper which would argue anything of my choosing. At first I was
overwhelmed by the prospect of writing twenty pages about anything, let alone
imagining and researching any topic. After a lot of prodding by my teacher to
write about something I cared about, I finally settled on a topic: basketball. It
didn’t take long for me to come up with the idea that I would write about the
positive benefits that participating in basketball had on youth. Because I was so
interested in the topic, the research I had to do for this project was actually
fun for me. It didn’t hurt that I was also able to quote His Airness, Michael
Jordan, as a role model in my research paper; “I can accept failure, everyone
fails at something. But I can't accept not trying.” I also focused on the
positive health and physical benefits as well as the social aspects of the
sport. I found evidence stating that basketball was responsible for most of the
injuries in high school athletics as a counter argument, but still argued that
the benefits outweighed the negative aspects. With such an intense interest in the
topic, the twenty pages became a limitation rather than a goal to meet.
Researching and writing this
argument paper about basketball made me realize that when I was truly
interested in what I was writing, I enjoyed it a lot more and put more effort
into it. Hillocks (2011) states that, when coming up with problems for students
to write arguments about, “the best problems for younger students are those in
which they have some stake and therefore are more likely to take an interest in
collecting and studying the data” (p. 69). Although my argument about the
positive benefits of participating in basketball programs was not addressing
the needs to change policy, it clearly demonstrated how much more invested I
was in my writing because it was about a topic which interested me. When I
think about teaching argument writing in my own classroom, I hope that I can
provide my students with engaging examples and activities that will help them
to hone their skills in order to clearly support their claims with relevant
evidence, as Hillocks suggests.
One way to approach teaching
argument writing in classrooms is through the use of mystery stories, or “whodunits.”
Hillocks claims that by using these mystery stories he “can encourage students
to begin with the evidence and use it to determine what claims they can
legitimately make in an argument” (p. 15). This way of teaching is not only fun
and engaging for the students, but also teaches them the importance of using
evidence to support their claims. By finding the evidence first, it ensures
that students will not make unsupportable claims. Using “whodunit” mysteries by
showing students an image filled with possible evidence and giving them a backstory
also makes finding evidence into more of a game instead of another assignment. I
see this as an extremely valuable way for me to teach my students how to think
through the different steps of making an argument. One of the final steps is to
consider the audience after having gathered the evidence and making the claims.
This consideration of audience is another important key that students must
understand when they are writing arguments because they must know to whom they
are appealing.
Writing
arguments in a digital format, then, even further encourages students to
recognize their audience as well as take advantage of multimodal opportunities
to strengthen their arguments. When discussing the affordances of online
role-play as a way to encourage students to argue from different perspectives,
Beach claims that “online role-play hones the practices of argumentation that extend
beyond the classroom or static debate forums to discussing issues at the dinner
table or in coffee shops, the blogosphere, or social networks (p. 466). Writing
arguments online forces students to consider their direct audience as well as
others who may be able to see their comments. This will help students to
develop their ability to effectively argue their points while considering how
to best appeal to their audience. Arguing online also allows students to use
images and videos to strengthen their claims. Because I see the value of
teaching my students these skills, I will gladly implement this type of online
role-play argument in my classroom. I want my students to be able to
intelligently discuss and argue about current affairs and policies that affect
them. With communication moving to a more digital platform, it will be
important for my students to be able to express their ideas clearly in digital
space.
References
Beach,
R., & Doerr-Stevens, C. (2009). Learning argument practices through online
role-play: Toward a rhetoric of significance and transformation. Journal of
adolescent and adult literacy, 52(6), 460-468.
Hillocks,
G. (2011). Teaching argument writing. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Bean,
J., Ramage, J., & Johnson, J. (2004). Writing arguments: A rhetoric with
readings. (6th ed.). New York: Pearson Education.
Other Resources
Purdue Owl demonstrates how to use logic effectively when writing an argument. This could be useful for more advanced argument writing and could be a helpful resource for students when developing their arguments.
This is the companion website for the above mentioned Writing Arguments: A Rhetoric with Readings. This website offers many helpful tools for developing an argument.
http://www.corestandards.org/about-the-standards/key-points-in-english-language-arts
This website briefly outlines the key points of the common core state standards which include the ability to write logical arguments.
