Literature Teaching Sequence 5: Composition (argument)

Day 1: Students will have read the "Understanding Argument" chapter of Rottenberg's Elements of Argument (pp. 3-23). In addition, they will have read a selection of Newman's Idea of a University arguing the case for active learning, and will have practiced a double-entry journal response with it (one entry: paraphrase/summary; opposite entry: analysis) In class, we will look back at Jefferson's Declaration of Independence (featured in "Understanding Argument") and Rottenberg's analysis of the argument to observe her use of "Claim," "Support," and "Warrant." For the remainder of class we will exchange responses to the excerpt from Newman, testing Rottenberg's preliminary notions of claim, support, and warrant against a different set of materials.

Day 2: Students will have read the "Responding to Argument" chapter (pp 25-40, 43-44). In addition, they will have read, "A Proposal to Abolish Grading" (pp 190-93) and have generated a double-entry response. In class, we will spend the period on a collaborative activity engaging Jacob Neusner's speech, "The Speech the Graduates Didn't Hear," which suggests that university education fails to prepare students for the "real world" (pp 238-39).

Day 3: Chiefly a day of orientation (famniliarization with Windows95, logging on, using the Interchange module) to DIWE. For homework, stduents will have read "Writing an Argumentative Paper" (pp. 309-329), then generated a primary claim and appropriate supporting points for their first paper. They will bring three copies of these claims and support to class, and in the orientation session, they will be asked to use the "Interchange" function on DIWE to "workshop" their paper starters, and to discuss the process of writing the first paper.

Day 4: Students will have read "Claims of Fact" and "Claims of Value" (pp 47-62) and have produced a draft of their paper. A full day of peer review, so that papers may be reworked before submission. The idea of a page acknowledging intellectual debts incurred in wrting a paper will be introduced as well.

Day 5: DIWE - Students will have read "Claims of Policy" (pp. 62-66) in Rottenberg and will bring finished drafts of essays to the labs. DIWE "Respond" function will ask students to identify major claims for the paper, and to do a sample analysis of one of their paragraphs, breaking down claims, support, and warrants. The "Interchange" function will ask them to discuss and compare processual strategies for composition and revision with one another, as well as what they feel are strengths and weaknesses of their papers.

Collaborative Exercise: "The Speech the Graduates Didn't Hear"

Instructions: Choose one member of your group to serve as recorder. The recorder will take notes on your group's responses to the questions below and report them to the rest of the class when we reconvene. Select another group member to read aloud Jacob Neusner's speech on pp. 238-39 of Rottenberg. A third person should read alound the questions below. As a group, discuss the questions and attempt to reach consensus about how to answer them.

1. Who is the audience for this speech? How do we know? Who is the speaker of this speech, and whom does the speaker claim to represent? What is the speaker's attitude toward his audience? Toward those whom he represents?

2. List the speaker's main points.

3. Paraphrase what you think is the speaker's primary claim.

4. List at least five objections that might be raised to the speaker's primary claim.

5. Of these objections, which seems the most important? Generate one statement that might serve to begin a counterargument to the spaker's primary claim.