Today’s Plan:
- Quick Hits
- Workshopping
- Close Reading for Argument
- Homework
Quick Hits
Character and Actions #1: Let’s trim some prepositions and include an “action” verb:
As for many teachers and students the four day weeks are already in place in districts around Colorado and other states.
Change the subject of the sentence. What is doing the action? Eliminate the prepositions (with, of):
Students’ academic performance is increasing with the new school reform of four day weeks.
Workshopping
There’s two papers I want to work with today. Both papers have real argumentative strengths, but also offer an opportunity to highlight important issues I see in a lot of papers.
Close Reading for Argument
I want to review the parts of an argument. Here’s what I shared in week four:
Let me provide another kind of training wheels–the rhetorician Cicero’s 6 parts of a speech:
- Exordium (Introduction, the hook– something engaging to get the audience’s attention, something that sets a tone or a mood for the discussion, something that acknowledges what they might already believe and opens the space for believing something different)
- Narratio (Narration, background information–who believes what, what aren’t we debating, what do we know, what are the facts)
- Partitio (Partition, division–where the speaker lays out in advance the parts of her argument, gives a “roadmap” of what the listener can expect)
- Confirmatio (Confirmation, evidence–where the speaker walks the listener through her argument step-by-step, providing and explaining evidence)
- Refutatio (Refutation, counter-arguments–where the speaker directly addresses an opponent’s counter-arguments and anticipates other objections the audience might have)
- Peroratio (Peroration, conclusion–where the speaker reviews her case and makes a suggestion for what the audience should do as a result of believing her, either in thought or action. What are the consequences?)
The first three parts above, Narratio, Partitio, and Confirmatio, are part of the introduction–point to an issue, set a tone, assess and shift the audience’s attitude, and lay out the parts of your argument.
Today I want to talk about Confirmatio and Refutation. Specifically, I want to work on what it means to “read” something that you plan on incorporating in a paper. So far this semester, my focus has been on the arrangement of your own writing, now I want to turn and focus attention on how well you engage the writing of others. Very often audiences are attentive to how you handle others–they are sensitive to whether you pay opponents respect or merely sweep over them. Real thought happens via close engagement.
Real engagement means you’ve read something close enough to summarize:
- The problem the author seeks to address
- The evidence she points to as establishing *the problem*
- *All* the evidence she offers in defense of her position
A responsible writer will deal with these things carefully before advancing to a critique or offering a counter-position. You want to acknowledge the thought, and demonstrate that you are the kind of person who carefully acknowledges thought, before offering a rebuttal or contribution. When writing about evidence–one of the key questions concerns methodology; how did the author(s) get their evidence?
I stress this because, as I examine the third set of drafts, I see a lot of “drive-by” engagement, in which folks are reading part of an article but not doing enough work. As you move out of ENG 122 and into other classes, you will be expected to perform more diligent close readings. This is a skill I want to develop the next few weeks.
Proposition 112 sources
- Fox News Denver: Truth Check: Impossible to predict true economic impact of oil and gas measure right now
- ABC News Denver: Proposition 112: Will it Protect or Harm Colorado?
- Outdoor Journal.com: “Frack”-tured Community: Colorado Plans to Alter the Future of Natural Gas Drilling
- CommonSense Policy Roundtable (“non-partisan” / conservative think tank): Increasing the Oil and Gas Setback Requirement to 2,500-feet in Colorado
Homework
Go back to your drafts and expand on how you are dealing with sources. Make sure, for each source you reference, that you are thoroughly answering all three questions above.
