It is the end of the world as we know it.

With the semester starting to pick up again after midterms and tensions rise we start our eighth blog looking at the proper way to settle a dispute with out peers.

No, not that way. I am referring to a proper academic argument to support your claims in an educated research environment. There are a few main steps to creating an effective argument (Booth et al, p 103-170):

1. Make a claim - Clearly and concisely convey your stance on a topic to your reader before starting you discussion. You can’t argue with someone if they don’t know what you are talking about.

2. Reasons and Evidence - Provide information from outside sources to your reader. This will help them see and understand your opinion as well as allow them to form their own.

3. Acknowledgements and Responses - Look at your argument from an outsider’s perspective and close or give reason to any gaps you find. Critique your own argument, this should be hard so try to be as cynical and self doubting as possible beacuse that is the mentality of the people you are trying to convince.

4. Warrants - This is the fact check portion where the reasons and evidence you provide are connected to your claim and gives your argument weight. Make sure the information you provide to your reader is relavent to what you are saying otherwise anything you say will be thrown out the window. The better these connections are the better your argument will be.

The information provided above is the keystone to every persuasive argument. In the case of any project or paper, more specifically the final for this class, we must take use these as a method of guidance for developing our own arguments in or final projects. Last week we developed our topic, question, significance, and artifact (TQSA) for our final projects. This week we covered what will allow us to answer the question (Claim) we proposed and define its significance (Reasons and Evidence, Acknowledgements and Respoces,Warrents).

Well that looks to be it for this week and not a moment to soon!

References

Booth, Wayne C, Gregory G. Colomb, and Joseph M. Williams. The Craft of Research. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008. Print.