INTRO TO DRAMA – MASK: DIRECTOR DIRECTORIAL CONCEPT SHEET Student Name:       Dramatic Interlude/Play Title:       INSPIRATION What thematic “buzz words” come to mind as you read and analyze this scene? (These can be anything, from verbs to nouns…just a list of random words that come to you when you study the scene.) What words might you use to describe the mood, feel, or “vibe” of this scene? CASTING If you could cast any actors in the history of the world to play the characters in this scene, who would you cast in each part? (These can be famous people you’ve never met…as long as they fit the part.) IDEAS In this scene, what is the playwright trying to say about this world, the people, and the situation he/she has written about? State the major idea of the scene (as you see it) in ONE complete sentence. Remember that theme is NOT the plot, but rather a larger universal vision of the play’s meaning. Summarize what the scene is about in ONE word. PRODUCTION Think about producing this scene. What would be challenging about putting together this production? Which technical element of production do you feel is the most important for this scene – lighting, sound, scenery, or costumes? Why? (Be specific.) YOUR CONCEPT, APPROACH, AND STYLE Here, insert a few “power quotes” from the script that you think would be important to you as you directed the script – these should be words/lines that you believe to capture the “heart” of the scene. (Be sure to put them in quotation marks.) Here, insert several images/pictures that you find (online) that provide inspiration for the way YOU would direct this play. (These should be images of all sorts of things that you feel are connected to the script – you might share these with your design team to give them ideas, or you might use them for yourself to determine the way you’ll approach the acting, etc. These can be pictures of buildings, nature-related things, animals, pieces of artwork, etc.) Don't Blame the Eater By David Zinczenko Published: November 23, 2002Sign In to E-MailPrint If ever there were a newspaper headline custom-made for Jay Leno's monologue, this was it. Kids taking on McDonald's this week, suing the company for making them fat. Isn't that like middle-aged men suing Porsche for making them get speeding tickets? Whatever happened to personal responsibility? I tend to sympathize with these portly fast-food patrons, though. Maybe that's because I used to be one of them. I grew up as a typical mid-1980's latchkey kid. My parents were split up, my dad off trying to rebuild his life, my mom working long hours to make the monthly bills. Lunch and dinner, for me, was a daily choice between McDonald's, Taco Bell, Kentucky Fried Chicken or Pizza Hut. Then as now, these were the only available options for an American kid to get an affordable meal. By age 15, I had packed 212 pounds of torpid teenage tallow on my once lanky 5-foot-10 frame. Then I got lucky. I went .

1. INTRO TO DRAMA – MASK: DIRECTOR
DIRECTORIAL CONCEPT SHEET
Student Name:
Dramatic Interlude/Play Title:
INSPIRATION
What thematic “buzz words” come to mind as you read and
analyze this scene? (These can be anything, from verbs to
nouns…just a list of random words that come to you when you
study the scene.)
What words might you use to describe the mood, feel, or “vibe”
of this scene?
CASTING
If you could cast any actors in the history of the world to play
the characters in this scene, who would you cast in each part?
(These can be famous people you’ve never met…as long as they
fit the part.)
IDEAS
In this scene, what is the playwright trying to say about this
world, the people, and the situation he/she has written about?
State the major idea of the scene (as you see it) in ONE
complete sentence. Remember that theme is NOT the plot, but
rather a larger universal vision of the play’s meaning.
Summarize what the scene is about in ONE word.

2. PRODUCTION
Think about producing this scene. What would be challenging
about putting together this production?
Which technical element of production do you feel is the most
important for this scene – lighting, sound, scenery, or
costumes? Why? (Be specific.)
YOUR CONCEPT, APPROACH, AND STYLE
Here, insert a few “power quotes” from the script that you think
would be important to you as you directed the script – these
should be words/lines that you believe to capture the “heart” of
the scene. (Be sure to put them in quotation marks.)
Here, insert several images/pictures that you find (online) that
provide inspiration for the way YOU would direct this play.
(These should be images of all sorts of things that you feel are
connected to the script – you might share these with your design
team to give them ideas, or you might use them for yourself to
determine the way you’ll approach the acting, etc. These can be
pictures of buildings, nature-related things, animals, pieces of
artwork, etc.)
Don't Blame the Eater
By David Zinczenko
Published: November 23, 2002Sign In to E-MailPrint
If ever there were a newspaper headline custom-made for Jay
Leno's monologue, this was it. Kids taking on McDonald's this

3. week, suing the company for making them fat. Isn't that like
middle-aged men suing Porsche for making them get speeding
tickets? Whatever happened to personal responsibility?
I tend to sympathize with these portly fast-food patrons, though.
Maybe that's because I used to be one of them.
I grew up as a typical mid-1980's latchkey kid. My parents were
split up, my dad off trying to rebuild his life, my mom working
long hours to make the monthly bills. Lunch and dinner, for me,
was a daily choice between McDonald's, Taco Bell, Kentucky
Fried Chicken or Pizza Hut. Then as now, these were the only
available options for an American kid to get an affordable meal.
By age 15, I had packed 212 pounds of torpid teenage tallow on
my once lanky 5-foot-10 frame.
Then I got lucky. I went to college, joined the Navy Reserves
and got involved with a health magazine. I learned how to
manage my diet. But most of the teenagers who live, as I once
did, on a fast-food diet won't turn their lives around: They've
crossed under the golden arches to a likely fate of lifetime
obesity. And the problem isn't just theirs -- it's all of ours.
Before 1994, diabetes in children was generally caused by a
genetic disorder -- only about 5 percent of childhood cases were
obesity-related, or Type 2, diabetes. Today, according to the
National Institutes of Health, Type 2 diabetes accounts for at
least 30 percent of all new childhood cases of diabetes in this
country.
Not surprisingly, money spent to treat diabetes has skyrocketed,
too. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate
that diabetes accounted for $2.6 billion in health care costs in
1969. Today's number is an unbelievable $100 billion a year.
Shouldn't we know better than to eat two meals a day in fast-
food restaurants? That's one argument. But where, exactly, are
consumers -- particularly teenagers -- supposed to find
alternatives? Drive down any thoroughfare in America, and I
guarantee you'll see one of our country's more than 13,000

4. McDonald's restaurants. Now, drive back up the block and try to
find someplace to buy a grapefruit.
Complicating the lack of alternatives is the lack of information
about what, exactly, we're consuming. There are no calorie
information charts on fast-food packaging, the way there are on
grocery items. Advertisements don't carry warning labels the
way tobacco ads do. Prepared foods aren't covered under Food
and Drug Administration labeling laws. Some fast-food
purveyors will provide calorie information on request, but even
that can be hard to understand.
For example, one company's Web site lists its chicken salad as
containing 150 calories; the almonds and noodles that come
with it (an additional 190 calories) are listed separately. Add a
serving of the 280-calorie dressing, and you've got a healthy
lunch alternative that comes in at 620 calories. But that's not
all. Read the small print on the back of the dressing packet and
you'll realize it actually contains 2.5 servings. If you pour what
you've been served, you're suddenly up around 1,040 calories,
which is half of the government's recommended daily calorie
intake. And that doesn't take into account that 450-calorie
super-size Coke.
Make fun if you will of these kids launching lawsuits against
the fast-food industry, but don't be surprised if you're the next
plaintiff. As with the tobacco industry, it may be only a matter
of time before state governments begin to see a direct line
between the $1 billion that McDonald's and Burger King spend
each year on advertising and their own swelling health care
costs.
And I'd say the industry is vulnerable. Fast-food companies are
marketing to children a product with proven health hazards and
no warning labels. They would do well to protect themselves,
and their customers, by providing the nutrition information
people need to make informed choices about their products.
Without such warnings, we'll see more sick, obese children and
more angry, litigious parents. I say, let the deep-fried chips fall
where they may.

5. What You Eat Is Your Business
by Radley Balko
This June, Time magazine and ABC News will host a three-day
summit on obesity. ABC News anchor Peter Jennings, who last
December anchored the prime time special "How to Get Fat
Without Really Trying," will host. Judging by the scheduled
program, the summit promises to be pep rally for media,
nutrition activists, and policy makers -- all agitating for a
panoply of government anti-obesity initiatives, including
prohibiting junk food in school vending machines, federal
funding for new bike trails and sidewalks, more demanding
labels on foodstuffs, restrictive food marketing to children, and
prodding the food industry into more "responsible" behavior. In
other words, bringing government between you and your
waistline.
Politicians have already climbed aboard. President Bush
earmarked $200 million in his budget for anti-obesity measures.
State legislatures and school boards across the country have
begun banning snacks and soda from school campuses and
vending machines. Sen. Joe Lieberman and Oakland Mayor
Jerry Brown, among others, have called for a "fat tax" on high-
calorie foods. Congress is now considering menu-labeling
legislation, which would force restaurants to send every menu
item to the laboratory for nutritional testing.
This is the wrong way to fight obesity. Instead of manipulating
or intervening in the array of food options available to
American consumers, our government ought to be working to
foster a sense of responsibility in and ownership of our own
health and well-being. But we're doing just the opposite.
For decades now, America's health care system has been
migrating toward socialism. Your well-being, shape, and
condition have increasingly been deemed matters of "public
health," instead of matters of personal responsibility. Our
lawmakers just enacted a huge entitlement that requires some
people to pay for other people's medicine. Sen. Hillary Clinton

6. just penned a lengthy article in the New York Times Magazine
calling for yet more federal control of health care. All of the
Democrat candidates for president boasted plans to push health
care further into the public sector. More and more, states are
preventing private health insurers from charging overweight and
obese clients higher premiums, which effectively removes any
financial incentive for maintaining a healthy lifestyle.
We're becoming less responsible for our own health, and more
responsible for everyone else's. Your heart attack drives up the
cost of my premiums and office visits. And if the government is
paying for my anti-cholesterol medication, what incentive is
there for me to put down the cheeseburger?
This collective ownership of private health then paves the way
for even more federal restrictions on consumer choice and civil
liberties. A society where everyone is responsible for everyone
else's well-being is a society more apt to accept government
restrictions, for example -- on what McDonalds can put on its
menu, what Safeway or Kroger can put on grocery shelves, or
holding food companies responsible for the bad habits of
unhealthy consumers.
A growing army of nutritionist activists and food industry foes
are egging the process on. Margo Wootan of the Center for
Science in the Public Interest has said, "we've got to move
beyond `personal responsibility.'" The largest organization of
trial lawyers now encourages its members to weed jury pools of
candidates who show "personal responsibility bias." The title of
Jennings special from last December -- "How to Get Fat
Without Really Trying" -- reveals his intent, which is to relieve
viewers of responsibility for their own condition. Indeed,
Jennings ended the program with an impassioned plea for
government intervention to fight obesity.
The best way to alleviate the obesity "public health" crisis is to
remove obesity from the realm of public health. It doesn't
belong there anyway. It's difficult to think of anything more
private and of less public concern than what we choose to put
into our bodies. It only becomes a public matter when we force

7. the public to pay for the consequences of those choices. If
policymakers want to fight obesity, they'll halt the creeping
socialization of medicine, and move to return individual
Americans' ownership of their own health and well-being back
to individual Americans.
That means freeing insurance companies to reward healthy
lifestyles, and penalize poor ones. It means halting plans to
further socialize medicine and health care. Congress should also
increase access to medical and health savings accounts, which
give consumers the option of rolling money reserved for health
care into a retirement account. These accounts introduce
accountability into the health care system, and encourage
caution with one's health care dollar. When money we spend on
health care doesn't belong to our employer or the government,
but is money we could devote to our own retirement, we're less
likely to run to the doctor at the first sign of a cold.
We'll all make better choices about diet, exercise, and personal
health when someone else isn't paying for the consequences of
those choices.
Escape from the Western Diet
Tools
"Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.”
That's the underlying advice offered in the book “In
Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto,” the latest from
best-selling author and national food guru, Michael Pollan.
That and don't eat anything your grandmother
wouldn't recognize.
It's not that the author wants to dictate what people
should eat, it's just that our heavily processed Western
diet has been making us increasingly sick, and Pollan wants to
challenge the prevailing nutrient-by-nutrient, reductionist view
of food for a broader approach that looks at the health of our
entire food chain, the politics beneath it, as well as our personal
relationships with food.
Style spoke with Pollan, a longtime contributor to The New
York Times Magazine and the Knight professor of journalism at

8. the University of California at Berkeley, from his home in
Northern California.
Style: So many people simply can't afford to eat organic
or grass-fed animals, so how do we make quality food more
affordable?
Pollan: We need changes in policy. Right now, we have a set of
government policies that favor the production of industrial food.
Most organic farmers receive no subsidies. … if you look at the
food system we have, it's the result of the incentives
we've set up, basically encouraging farmers to grow a lot
of corn and soy, which are the building blocks of fast food. I
think if we level the playing field so that farmers are rewarded
for growing healthy food, the price will come down. It may
never be as cheap as conventional food. …
[But] I also think when you get Wal-Mart involved in organic,
for better or worse, they're very good at getting prices
down. I just hope it doesn't come at the expense of the
farmers.
How would you grade the Obama administration so far?
The moves so far have been mixed. There was an attempt to go
after subsidies that was really handled badly and backfired. The
idea was to cut direct payment to farmers and use that money to
go straight to child-nutrition programs. I think it was a mistaken
approach, a zero-sum approach that pitted farmers against
hungry children, which is not the way to win over House or
Senate Agriculture committees.
The appointment of the number two woman at the Department
of Agriculture, Kathleen Merrigan, who started the organic food
movement within government, was very encouraging. [Tom]
Vilsak was a surprising choice [for Secretary of agriculture] but
his moves so far indicate he has an appetite for reform.
In a way, I think the most important thing that happened so far
was the organic garden on the south lawn of the White House.
It's symbolic, but in this political world symbol and
substance are not so different. As soon as that happens you have
a conversation in the mainstream media about what real food is,

9. growing your own food, eating fruits and vegetables. I got calls
from mainstream television networks saying, “We want to do a
series on this food Michelle is talking about — what is this
stuff?” I actually think first ladies have enormous influence and
they can drive change without attracting attack from the farm
lobby.
CSAs are hot right now [Community Supported Agriculture is a
socio-economic model in which you buy shares of seasonal
fresh food from local farmers]. What do people need to look for
when choosing a CSA?
The right question is not “Are you organic or not?” because
there are a lot of really good farmers who are not certified
because they don't want to deal with the paperwork, or
there's some corner they need to cut in order to survive. I
don't rule them out.
The questions to ask: How do you deal with fertility or how are
you fertilizing your crops? Are they using chemicals, or
composting, or animal waste or whatever? If they're using
synthetic nitrogen that's something to consider, because
foods grown with lots of synthetic nitrogen tend to be less
nutritious and the soil tends to die. It's hard to believe
you're really sustainable if you're putting fossil
fuel fertilizer on your crops — which is what that is. I would
ask the farmers how they deal with pests. Are they using clever
crop rotations or spraying pesticide and what kind? Those are
key questions.
In your latest book, one of the big themes involves time, and
how people can find the time in today's fast-food culture
to increase the quality of their food. How do we combat this
perception of foodies as effete liberals with too much time on
their hands?
Well, the food movement is not a left or liberal movement. It
has a lot of support on the right. There is a traditional segment
of the right, on the evangelical side, that recognizes that
cooking for your children and eating a family meal is an
important traditional family value and ceding all that

10. responsibility to corporations is not conservative at all,
it's an erosion of traditional values. Rod Dreher of the
Dallas Morning News is conservative and a member of this
movement. Former speechwriter to President Bush, Matthew
Scully, wrote one of the most powerful indictments of animal
agriculture we have from a Christian point of view [“Dominion:
The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals and the Call to
Mercy”].
I think you're right that time is a big issue for people.
With both men and women in the work force there is less time
to cook. The goal should not be to put women back in the
kitchen, it's to put both men and women in the kitchen
working together. … to reconstruct a nonsexist culture of
cooking. And to recognize that cooking for your children is a
really important part of good parenthood in the same way that
reading to them is.
The fact is we find time for the things we value. In the last five
years we found two hours a day for Internet, where did we get
that time? It was important, so we took a little away from
television, we took some from our employers. I think the job of
storytellers like ourselves is to convince people of the value and
satisfaction of taking back control of food choices and food
preparation. It's not easy because you're up against
$32 billion in marketing messages telling you you're too
busy and you should just go enjoy fast food. But there's a
feedback loop happening as people realize fast food is making
them unhealthy. That's what this food movement is about:
It's a dawning recognition that eating this way, even
though it's easy and cheap and superficially satisfying, is
a public-health disaster.
You're speaking here with Marion Nestle — what does
she bring to the table and what will you likely discuss?
Marion has a deep knowledge of both nutrition science and
nutrition policy. She has been on the inside when government
was writing nutritional guidelines, so she knows how that
process works and the roles of corporations in influencing those

11. guidelines. She also understands how difficult it is to study
impact of certain foods on diet.
She's been a great teacher of mine — I learned a lot about
food marketing and nutritional health. I look forward to
engaging with her about the food industry and how it might be
part of the solution. We're at this very interesting
moment where we have a government that seems sympathetic to
the food movement. There are opportunities for reform, so
we'll talk about the state of the food movement and
whether we stand at a moment where we can change the system.
What do you think will happen to investigative journalism over
the next five years?
I'm really worried about the future of journalism. I think
when society stops supporting its newspapers it will also have a
feedback loop in the form of rampant political corruption. No
one is going to look over the shoulders of our state or local
governments the way newspapers do. TV simply does not do it.
Internet simply doesn't. So I think we're going to
have tremendous abuses and will then recognize the supreme
value to a free republic of newspapers and of a free press with
resources. Then I think you'll see the rebuilding of that
capacity. It may be nonprofits. … We have the nonprofit model
in radio that has been very successful although I don't
think NPR does nearly enough original reporting — to a
remarkable extent they're dependent on newspaper
reporting. It's amazing how much the rest of media is
parasitic on newspapers.
Micropayments are interesting too: I think we could move to a
system where we painlessly pay pennies for many things on
Internet if we didn't have to give a password every time it
happens. … If you look at the New York Times for example,
who have tremendous Web traffic, it's not an audience
problem — it's a business model problem.
November 25, 2010
Junking Junk Food

12. By JUDITH WARNER
Earlier this month,Sarah Palin showed up in Bucks County, Pa.,
with “dozens and dozens” of cookies, suggesting that the state’s
schoolchildren risked losing the right to the occasional
classroom treat because of a high-minded anti-sugar edict from
the board of education. Pretty much everything about the setup
was wrong. Pennsylvania wasn’t, as Palin tweeted, in the midst
of a “school cookie ban” debate. And the school she turned into
a photo op wouldn’t have been subject to such a ban had one
existed; it wasn’t a public school but a private Christian
academy. And while Palin might have been seizing an
opportunity to “intro kids 2 beauty of laissez-faire,” she wasn’t
just visiting with schoolchildren but was delivering a paid
speech at a fund-raiser.
Still, however shaky its factual foundations, Palin’s highly
mediatized cookie showdown was a big rhetorical win. With her
unerring feel for the message that travels straight to the
American gut, she had come up with new and vivid imagery to
make the case that the Obama “nanny state” is, essentially,
snatching cookies — i.e., the pursuit of happiness — from the
mouths of babes. Suddenly, Pennsylvania’s suggestion that
schools encourage alternatives to high-sugar sweets became an
assault on the American way of life. On freedom and simple
pleasures. On wholesome childhood delights and, of course, the
integrity of the family.
Glenn Beck, too, has found a winning formula in mocking
government efforts to lead Americans to live less fattening
lives. His compendium of outrage on the topic waxes long — it
includes reports of government health inspectors shutting down
a 7-year-old’s lemonade stand, for example — and his
argument, like Palin’s, is clear: the “choice architects” of the
Obama administration, he says, believe “you’re incapable of
making decisions. . . . Left to your own devices, you’re going to
eat too much, you’re going to be a big fat fatty.”
At a time when more than two-thirds of American adults are
indeed fat (overweight or obese) and 17 percent of children and

13. adolescents are obese, declaring war on unhealthful eating, as
the Obama administration has done to an unprecedented extent,
could be fraught with political liability. Yet the administration
has essentially tackled the problem as if it were a political no-
brainer. Teaching Americans, and children in particular,
healthier eating habits seemed so commonsensical a venture, so
wholesome and safe, that Michelle Obama chose it for her
apolitical personal project as first lady. She has succeeded in
enlisting some bipartisan support, and some much-hyped
cooperation from the food industry. But now, with
antigovernment sentiment resurgent, the cookies are pushing
back, like the return of the repressed. And as any homeowner
who has ever been advised to bake cookies before showing a
house for sale knows, their influence is irrational but real.
For in waging war on fat and sugar, what the administration is
doing is taking on central aspects of the American lifestyle.
Eating too much, indiscriminately, anywhere, at any time, in
response to any and all stimuli, is as central to our
freewheeling, mavericky way of being as car cupholders and
drive-throughs. You can’t change specific eating behavior
without addressing that way of life — without changing our
culture of food. You need to present healthful eating as a new,
desirable, freely chosen expression of the American way.
Perhaps the most successful government effort to regulate what
and how much Americans consume — the food rationing
programs of World War II — recognized this political-cultural-
emotional scheme. Needing a number of foods, meat in
particular, for the boys overseas, the government realized that it
could successfully spread its message of “eat differently” only
if it fought on two fronts: the nutritional and the psychological.
And so it pursued a two-pronged campaign, with the Food and
Nutrition Board handling the nutrition, and the psychology
tasked to the Committee on Food Habits, led by the
anthropologist Margaret Mead and charged by the National
Research Council with “mobilizing anthropological and
psychological insights as they bear upon the whole problem of

14. changing food habits in order to raise the nutritional status of
the people of the United States.” Eating the way the government
wanted you to eat — healthfully and with a mind to greater
public welfare — was a way of displaying patriotism, adding to
the war effort.
After the war, however, the work of the Committee on Food
Habits was discontinued. But the government kept
disseminating nutritional advice, with the departments of
agriculture and health and human services issuing nutritional
guidelines that, in recent decades, have been revised every five
years to reflect new and evolving scientific developments.
There has, however, been no concerted parallel attempt to create
more pointed and sophisticated approaches to changing how
Americans think and feel about food. So we ended up with a
wealth of knowledge about best nutritional practices but no
cultural change to back it up.
And cultural change is what offers the best hope for
transforming how and what Americans eat. As noted by David
Kessler, the former U.S. Food and Drug Administration
commissioner and author of the 2009 book “The End of
Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American
Appetite,” it was a shift in cultural attitudes, not laws or
regulations, that led Americans to quit smoking. In the space of
a generation, he says, cigarettes stopped being portrayed as
“sexy and cool” and started to be seen as “a terribly disgusting,
addictive product.” Because of the unique emotional power of
food, it’s hard, if not impossible, to similarly stigmatize
unhealthful eating. But it’s not inconceivable, Kessler says, that
social norms could change: that huge portions, or eating
processed foods loaded with sugar, salt and fat, for example,
could come to be seen as socially unacceptable.
The task is huge — and not just because of the predictable
resistance there would be from the food industry. Largely, it’s a
question, Kessler says, of breaking old cycles of association:
melt-in-the-mouth baked goods with home-safe happiness, for
example, or fries with fulfillment — and replacing them with a

15. new circuitry in which, somehow, eating healthfully is self-
reinforcing. Can Michelle Obama make field greens and
strawberries as comforting, satisfying, and heartwarmingly
American as apple pie? She has her work cut out for her.
Judith Warner is the author, most recently, of “We’ve Got
Issues: Children and Parents in the Age of Medication.”
ENGLISH 101—Essay #6
Argumentation
LENGTH: 1000 words
DUE DATE: December 11th
For your argumentative essay, you will use the readings in They
Say, I Say, Chapter 16 entitled “Is Fast Food the New
Tobacco?” We have already used some of the readings in this
chapter for the Annotated Bibliography, and we will discuss the
remaining essays in class. You will be required to use a
minimum of four of the essays listed below for your chosen
topic, meaning that you have quoted, used correct
documentation, and prepared the Works Cited. Once you have
chosen your readings, you will also need to select which
position you will take on a defined issue.
READINGS:
David Zinczenko, “Don’t Blame the Eater” Page 391
Radly Balko, “What You Eat is Your Business” Page 395
Judith Warner, “Junking Junk Food” Page 400
Wil Haygood, “Kentucky Town of Manchester Illustrates
National Obesity Crisis” Page 406
Michelle Obama, “ Remarks to the NAACP” Page 417
Michael Pollan, “Escape From the Western Diet” Page 434
Mary Maxfield, “Resisting the Moralization of Eating” Page

16. 442
Susie Orbach, “Fat Is a Feminist Issue” Page 448
Carrie Packwood Freeman and Debra Merskin, “Having it His
Way” Page 454
READING SUPPORT:
Norton Field Guide, Chapter 9: Arguing a Position; review
Chapter 31: Analyzing Causes and Effects and Quick Access
Concise, Chapter 5: Writing Arguments
PLAN:
Here is a sample for a basic structure, which is close to the
classical and explains the introduction and conclusion in more
detail:
I.Introduction
A.Briefly discuss the nature of the controversy. You will have
read a variety of views on the problem. Don’t go into detail at
this point, but state the main issues. You do not need to be
naming authors or works, and you should also hold off quoting
until you are writing the body paragraphs.
B.Finish the introduction with your claim, which is an
argumentative thesis. This statement will explicitly state your
proposed position. You must take a stand. I should clearly be
able to tell your position after reading the first paragraph.
II.Explain the Problem—Use the items you read to identify the
major contributing factors. Use at least two or three of the
sources for explaining the problem.
III.The

17. Solution
—State the main points of your solution, using more supporting
items. Try organizing in climactic order, from least to most
important.
IV.The Rebuttal—Respond to any differing views, again citing
specific quotes, as if you were actually answering your
opposition. Therefore, you should be saying why their views
are incorrect. Use evidence from any supporting readings. This
section should be brief.
V.Conclusion
A.Restate your claim and your main supporting points, but not
word for word. Use a final vivid example or illustration to
enhance your argument. You want to leave the reader with your
position in mind.
B.Finish with a final appeal in your favor.
VI.Works Cited—MLA Style, separate page.