4.1 | Prompt for Project 3, “Composing a Compassionate Argument” Introduction This is a big project. Refer back to this page often as you work on it. In this module we will read a variety of chapters from Logic and Contemporary Rhetoric and Language as Symbolic Action about logical and rhetorical theory and strategies that will help us join the genre of argument. Broadly speaking, you will be identifying, reading, and writing about a topic and issue of your choice which will involve compassionately summarizing multiple perspectives around an issue, digging in to the specific merits and flaws of the arguments, and adding your own argumentative contribution to the conversation. CoS Tree Logo Rhetorical Situation Purpose Why We’re Doing This Being an educated member of society brings with it a responsibility for civic community participation, and one element of this is knowing what the current issues are, knowing where you stand on those issues, and being willing and able to participate in conversations about these issues. This is a shared value across college in general. This courses more specific approach to civic community participation builds upon the idea that logically and rhetorically-driven thinking and writing is driven by a desire to achieve peace. With that, you will research a current social, cultural, or political issue and apply many of the logical and rhetorical moves you have learned and will continue to learn throughout the rest of the course. What You Need to Do Process You may have written research-driven argument papers before, so you know that this is no small task. This is a lengthy process that involves at a minimum all of the following steps: Finding a topic that interests you Finding an issue within that topic (something up for debate, some challenge, some problem, etc.) Figuring out what people are saying about this issue (lots of reading & research here) Carefully document and cite sources all along the way Figuring out why this issue is important to begin with and figuring out how to communicate that to your audience Finding and analyzing argumentative merits and flaws in multiple perspectives Figuring out your stance on the issue (in light of what you’ve read, being open to change) Outlining your essay Writing a draft Getting feedback (at any stage of the process but especially here) Revising (read your feedback, read more texts, continue figuring out your thesis and how to best support it) Editing (re-writing sentences and words to achieve the tone and style you believe will be most effective) Proof-reading (error correction) You cannot do all of this the night before the draft is due. Common Ground In addition to the usual process enumerated above, you are also tasked with adopting a specific rhetorical framework where you fully acknowledge the merits of multiple points of view and work to find a common ground between them. This means that you cannot dismiss counterarguments simply out of hand (or, worse, ignore them altogether). Audience As usual, consider as your real audience for this project yourself, your colleagues and me, people in your life who might be interested in what you think and have to say, writing center consultants, etc., and consider as your ideal audience people who are interested and concerned with the topic and issue that youve identified and are responding to. It is imperative that you understand that not everyone in your real and ideal audiences will start off by agreeing with your stance, so you will need to work with the rhetorical concepts from the course in order to have any chance at affecting your real and ideal audience (see “common ground” above).. Genre This project is scholarly in nature and will ask you to incorporate sources and voices from other scholars and reputable writers. More specifically, a matured draft of this project will be a thesis-driven argument with claims, evidence, deductive reasoning, inductive reasoning, and an awareness of logical fallacies in order to support the thesis. CoS Tree Logo Our Core Tasks To prepare for your own paper, you need to choose a current issue you want to write about. In this context, we define a social/cultural/political issue as at least one of the following: a public conversation about a local/national incident/event or an ongoing issue that you can find on the news or in newspapers that has affected a portion of our population in the state and/or in the US; a policy or set of policies or laws that the president or other political leader is proposing or that the state or federal government is voting on; laws created by state or federal governments or rulings by a state or by the supreme court that affect citizens in our society. something you see as a large scale problem that you believe people should be concerned about If you take on a social/cultural/political issue that doesnt fit within this framework, you can discuss the issue with me individually. In general, I am looking for you to choose an issue that is current, debatable, and that affects people in your state or nation, where there are many different views about the issue. Choose an issue that you care about. The topic should be broad enough for you to research and find more information. Once you have identified a particular social/cultural/political issue, you need to write a researched argument about this issue. This means that you will need to define the issue from a primary source describe the conversation about this issue: What are people saying? How does the issue affect different groups in different ways? Do your best to approach the conversation as a peace-maker. That is, help your readers understand the wide variety of perspectives that surround the issue youre exploring. Cite directly from outside sources, and put those sources in a written conversation with each other. analyze the language and assumptions that people are using to talk about the issue so you can understand the bias that is brought to discussions about this issue. take a stand on this issue. develop a nuanced argument by examining the ideas of those who are on different sides of the issue, carefully avoiding any straw man logical fallacies here think and write in a way that is both fair and balanced: you need not argue 100% in favor or 100% against something. CoS Tree Logo Bottom Line Requirements Length California Community Colleges require 6000 words of formal writing in this English course. This essay should account for around 2100-2400 words of that requirement. Formatted according to MLA style guidelines, that would be around 7-8 pages. You also need to generate list of Works Cited in MLA style (which, itself, does not count as a part of the page length or word count requirement). You must incorporate at least 4 sources (cited as per MLA style guidelines): one should be a primary text about the issue, one should be an academic source from a peer-reviewed journal, and two or more can come from newspapers or from reputable/trustworthy websites. You cannot count dictionaries or encyclopedias as any of the four sources (you can certainly use these in your paper if you need to, but they will be in addition to the four sources required above). For writing projects of this scale, I recommend not exceeding a 1:1 ratio of sources to pages (so dont use any more than 7 sources here). CoS Tree Logo Tips for Success Absolutely, 100%, avoid procrastinating. This is a challenging project, and you will likely be very tempted to put it off a day here, a day there but it is impossible to do well on a project like this if you put it off until the last minute. It takes time to think about a topic and issue. It takes time to find good sources. It takes time to read those sources thoroughly. It takes time to analyze sources. It takes time to write about those sources. It takes times to figure out where you stand on an issue. It takes time to figure out how to convince your audience that your topic and thesis should matter to them and that your stance has merit. It takes time to draft an essay. It takes time to get feedback. It takes time to revise. It takes time to edit. It takes time to proofread. It takes time to format and produce your work. Get feedback often. Utilize your colleagues in the course and the writing center. Form a study group. Help each other understand the rhetorical concepts that this project is asking you to apply. Choose a topic that youre interested in and care about. CoS Tree Logo Writing Assessment Dimensions Supported by This Assignment Logical and Rhetorical Strategies Throughout the reading and writing process, students will practice cogent thinking and writing skills, reading to identify cogent thinking in primary and secondary sources and writing to generate their own cogent thinking as a response to what theyve read. This will include validating forms of deductive and inductive reasoning and identifying, critiquing, and avoiding in their own writing logical fallacies. Students will also become aware of psychological impediments to cogent thinking and work toward resolving those psychological conflicts within themselves and their audience. Summary / Conversation Students will enter into a debate on a social, cultural, or political topic and issue that interests them. They will summarize the key points and features of the existing conversation on the issue, including analyzing arguments from varying perspectives. They will also contribute to that conversation with their own thinking and conclusions. Students will consider the They Say, I Say method of creating a conversation where they first cite what others are saying and then articulate their ideas as a response to what others have said. Students will practice MLA style citation and documentation of sources, citing everywhere they use language and ideas from other sources. Rhetoricality Students will practice both reading and writing from a rhetorical perspective. They will read to discern rhetorical strategies that other writers have used, and they will incorporate similar strategies in their own writing. Students will also practice writing with audience and genre awareness thereby making rhetorical decisions in their reading and writing processes. This project also emphasizes a Rogerian style approach to argument which invites writers to take on a compassionate persona in relation to differing points of view rather than an antagonistic one. Language Use and Coherence Particularly since this essay will undergo a process of writing, students will practice revising and editing for rhetorical and stylistic effectiveness and grammatical correctness. Students will work toward writing that is reader-friendly; that is, thesis-driven with paragraphs that have topic sentences that both connect to the thesis and define the scope of the paragraph that follows. Students will also practice transitions between paragraphs and ideas, aiming for a logical flow of ideas throughout. Media/Design Students will practice appropriate media/design elements within the overall genre of academic, college-level writing (including practicing MLA style formatting standards).
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