1. Week 12, Day 1,
April 7, 2014
English 72(83r)
Professor Elizabeth Buchanan
2. AGENDA
• Please place homework on back table:
• First Paragraph of Research Paper
• Vocabulary 7
• Finish Literature Circle 7
• Give me your group’s decision on the product you
will be using for your Ad Project
• More on Argument
4. The Test of a Good Argument
• As we have learned with fact & opinion, you
need to read in a critical manner to determine if
the author is giving you sound information for
the argument that he/she is presenting.
• In order to present a good argument, the writer
should have expertise in the area; he/she should
be an authority.
5. Test of a Good Argument
• The writer should provide a central claim—the
argument or proposition—should be clearly stated.
• Key words should be defined in a clear manner.
• Supporting evidence should be logically organized,
and it should be relevant to the main idea.
• A persuasive write will provide a refutation, also
known as a counterargument in which he/she
examines one or two of the opposition’s strongest
arguments and disproves them.
6. Taking Claims Apart – Evaluating
the Writer as an Authority
• What does authority mean?
• An accepted source of expert information or advice.
• The persuasive writer should have firsthand
knowledge of and/or experience with the topic.
• The might also be a specialist in the field in
which they are writing about.
• Let’s check out some ―experts.‖
7. • Larry Sabato, professor of political
science at the University of Virginia
of UVA’s Center for Politics,
comments on the presidential race.
8. • Colby Buzzell, who served in the U.S. Army for
several months in Iraq, wrote a well-known blog
about his experiences there:
http://chftw.blogspot.com/. His blog postings
were subsequently published in a book, My War:
Killing Time in Iraq.
9. • Tom Cruise, actor and Scientology member, as a
guest on Oprah pronounced psychiatry to be a
―pseudoscience‖ and said that there is no such
thing as a chemical imbalance in the brain that
would require antidepressants.
10. • Deepak Chopra, author of many self-help
books and consciousness-raising guru,
discussed the child molestation scandals
in the Catholic Church on CNN.
11. • Brett Favre, former NFL quarterback who
played for over 20 years for the Atlanta
Flacons, Green Bay Packers, advertising
the merits of Wrangler’s Jeans.
12. • Former rapper and manufacturer of a line of
men’s clothing, P. Diddy Combs, comments on
fashion trends for black urban males.
13. Identifying Claims
• What is the claim?
• The point of view the author has on an issue.
• For example, you may be for or against gun
control.
• You may favor or oppose lowering the legal
drinking age.
• Often there are several points of view about an
issue.
14. Relevant Evidence
• There must be a sufficient number of reasons of
evidence to support a claim.
• The amount and degree of supporting evidence
will vary with the issue.
• For serious issues, it is not enough to offer a
single reason or piece of evidence.
15. Does this sentence offer enough
evidence?
• ―All oceans are dying due to coastal development.‖
• No, this is not enough evidence because only a
portion of the world’s oceans are affected by
coastal development.
• What would you add to this sentence to give it more
evidence?
• Industrial waste dumping
• Oil drilling
• Rising water temperatures
