ENG 106: Composition 2 |
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By the end of this lesson, you should be able to do each of the following:
Read Chapter
18 of Everything’s an Argument before you come to class on Tuesday. Write a draft
of your interview questions, survey, or observation plan and bring it to
class on Tuesday. Conduct your interview, survey, or observation and insert your findings into your outline. Bring this outline to class next week. Think Fast (5 minutes): Review the interview questions, survey, or observation plan you
brought to class. Make necessary
changes. Cooperative Learning
(20 minutes):
Pair up with someone and discuss this material. Offer suggestions for expanding, condensing,
or revising this material. If
your partner has drafted some interview questions, for example, you might
suggest additional questions. If
your partner has an observation plan, discuss possible problems that may
occur during the observation. in
any case, take care to offer detailed, constructive suggestions for
improvement. Workshop (20 minutes): If possible, try out your questions, survey, or observation on a
classmate. Identify potential
problems and devise a plan for overcoming them. Bring this material to class on Thursday. Workshop (30 minutes):
Work on your outline for your proposal.
Make sure that it contains a working claim, a discussion of the
problem, some tentative ideas for a solution or solutions, and some tentative
discussion of feasibility. Bring
this outline to class on Thursday. Presentation:
Evidence (Professor Canada) Discussion: During
this time, we will discuss the insights and questions that have emerged
during our “Think Fast” exercise, my presentation, and cooperative learning. Workshop: Trade
your list of interview questions, survey, or observation plan with a partner
and evaluate one another’s work. Think Again: Using
what you have learned or reviewed in this lesson, begin revising your list of
interview questions, survey, or observation plan. Conferences: During
these one-on-one conferences, I will review some of your writing, orally quiz
you on lesson objectives, and field your questions. Announcements: We
will wrap up this lesson with announcements regarding upcoming lessons, as
well as other relevant subjects. Terms
Make sure you know the meaning and significance of each of the following terms:
Everything’s an Argument
contains tips on conducting interviews, surveys, and observations. Updated March 3, 2003
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IntroductionIn our last lesson, we looked at a type of argument called a proposal. In this lesson, we examine a variety of ways to develop evidence for a proposal—or, indeed, any other kind of argument. You also will have the opportunity to draw up a plan for collecting data to support your claim through interviews, surveys, and observations. DiscussionEvidence
Imagine that you have been chosen to sit on a jury for a robbery trial. On the first day of the trail, the prosecuting attorney stands up and says: “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I am going to show that the defendant committed this robbery.” Over the next three hours, the attorney interviews eight eyewitnesses who identified the defendant in a police lineup, presents several pieces of physical evidence placing the defendant at the scene of the crime, and shows that police recovered stolen merchandise from the defendant’s car. Finally, after this attorney sits down, the defense counsel stands up and says: “The defendant is not guilty. The defense rests.” When it comes time to decide the case, how are you going to vote? More than likely, you and your fellow jurors are going to convict the defendant. Why? Both sides of the argument offered claims. Only the prosecution, however, offered evidence.
Since arguments are by their very nature contestable, audiences—whether they be jurors or readers—need evidence to make sensible decisions. In other words, speakers and writers must not only tell by stating claims, but also show by adducing compelling evidence. This evidence can take a variety of forms, including both primary and secondary sources. Let’s take a close look at each. Primary and Secondary SourcesWhen you work with primary sources, you are looking at raw data—that is, factual material with little or no interpretation. Many researchers, including psychologists and political scientists, actually generate this data by setting up their own studies. You, too, can generate data to test your working claim. In an observation, for example, you use your own five senses to collect information—by watching drivers’ behavior at an intersection, perhaps, or by listening to conversations between children and their parents. You also may choose to interview people close to your subject by orally asking them questions about it. Similarly, you can create a survey, a series of questions or statements soliciting responses from people. You also may look at existing primary sources. Both historians and literary scholars, for example, collect most of their evidence from documents, such as letters, diaries, nonfiction narratives, novels, poems, newspaper accounts, and government documents. Historians, including those who specialize in art history or music history, also make extensive use of artifacts, including architecture, paintings, sheet music, recordings of songs and symphonies, and other preserved objects. Evidence collected from primary sources is crucial because it shows originality on the part of the author, demonstrating that he or she is not merely repeating what others have said. We will discuss ways to locate existing primary sources in our next lesson. Secondary sources contain interpretations of raw data. The authors of secondary sources, often university professors and other scholars, analyze factual material and draw conclusions about causes, effects, and meanings. Others may disagree with their conclusions and offer their own interpretations in separate secondary sources. In any case, these scholars generally publish their work in two types of sources: monographs and periodicals. Although you will have a stronger argument if you focus on primary sources, secondary sources are also valuable. By drawing on the interpretations of others, particularly acknowledged experts in the field, you build the credibility of your own argument. Audiences are more likely to believe an author who has surveyed the field of existing research than one who is “going it alone.” In our next lesson, we will look at ways to locate secondary sources. Using EvidenceWhen presenting evidence from either a primary source or a secondary source, make sure to interpret this evidence in the context of your argument. That is, in addition to quoting a survey respondent or paraphrasing a scholarly monograph, go on and explain exactly how this evidence supports your particular claim. In your outline, follow up each piece of evidence with a sentence that begins with “This shows that . . .” or some similar phrase. Later, when writing your rough draft, you can smooth out the wording, but make sure that you connect the evidence with your claim. How much evidence do you need? In general, more evidence means a better argument, so pile it on. In a typical paragraph, you might include three or four pieces of evidence. For example, if you are arguing that social activists help to bring out government action on some issue, you might summarize some pamphlets from the period, quote an activist, and paraphrase a historian who has studied the subject and written about it in a scholarly monograph. Since you also will be interpreting each of these pieces of evidence in a sentence or two and, of course, setting everything up with a topic sentence that links the paragraph to your overall claim, this paragraph in the body of your argument will probably consist of at least seven sentences, perhaps more. Finally, make sure that you organize all of your evidence in a logical fashion. In particular, take care not to organize your evidence by source; that is, avoid writing a paragraph for each source. Rather, look for patterns among your pieces of evidence and place similar points together. ConclusionIn this lesson, we have discussed evidence and looked at various kinds, including some that you can generate. In our next lesson, we will visit the library, where you will learn how to find various kinds of existing primary and secondary sources. |