How to Teach Students to Argue

            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

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/659/01/ 

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. 

http://cwabacon.pearsoned.com/bookbind/pubbooks/ramage2_ab/chapter18/deluxe.html

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.