Week 4: Argument Writing

Major Themes in Writing Arguments

At first I was cautious jumping into the Hillocks readings because I felt that the activities and content in the book did not explicitly focus on the teaching of argument writing. It felt more to me like the book focused on developing sound arguments. Thinking about this a little more, I can realize that this skill (making a sound argument) was not explicitly taught to me, and it has been demanded of me countless times in essay prompts. Hillocks reminds us that students are rarely taught HOW to interpret. The processes of defining, judging, and assigning criteria for a sound argument are a writing skill because they directly affect the content of most writing. The fact that they affect our thought processes, debates, and conversations is just a bonus!

What I love about this process is that it is naturally critical. These thought/argument formations can serve as the frame for all critical thought and that makes it incredibly useful. I found the activities in the chapters relevant to what Hillocks was supporting, but I can’t help but feel like reading through all of them really enlightened my pedagogy too much. The main take-away from the reading for me was the importance of discussion as a precursor to flow (and therefore as a precursor to writing), that this can be obtained by sense of competence and control, clear goals and objectives, appropriately complex, provide clear feedback, good timing, and that judgment is only the beginning of a good argument.

Online Role-playing

I was fascinated by the concept of collaborative arguments. I had no idea how much persuasive essays really mislead students, but after reading about them in all of our readings, I realized that I thought persuasive essays WERE sound arguments when I got into college too. It did take me a while to unlearn this. I think removing competition and potentially personal opinions is much more transformative and useful for our students. I think that the cooperative nature of this activity is a much more realistic and productive way for students to strive for common good, negotiate, and determine what is really important.

I think the online role-play forum is a great way to give agency to students who might not feel like they have much of it. I have always liked the idea of assigning a student a point of view to argue that is differing from their own because it is a great way to look at sound evidence without personal attachment, and therefore a great way to practice considering multiple viewpoints.

Taking all of this a step further; is it more important that our students understand exactly how to make a sound argument or that they understand the social and political implications of the collaborative argument? Does a sound individual argument give a student as much agency or sense of competence and transformation as a collaborative one? It seems in some ways like they have differing outcomes.

Links:

I thought that most of the Hillocks chapters mentioned the importance of definition both in argument and in critical pedagogy. Here is a list of different ways to define a word as well as words that are commonly used in a critical social studies classroom. I think most of these terms transfer into the English classroom as well.

To extend the conversation we had last week in class about different levels of thinking, this resource gives more concrete examples of Bloom’s Taxonomy.

This activity is a philosophical experiment that is a collaborative analysis of “good art.” It reminds me of the readings this week because it attempts to define good art, and uses collaborative judgement to determine some kind of answer.

This is an NCTE resource about using literature to teach inference (I know this seems like reading, but our readings made it relevant!!)