Reading & Writing Argument

Michael W. Smith, Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, James E. Frederickson: Oh, Yeah?! Putting Argument to Work Both in School and Out

Reading & Writing Argument

           “From the clothes you wear to the foods you choose to eat to the groups you decide to join—all of these everyday activities make nuanced, sometime implicit arguments about who you are and what you value. Thus an argument can be any text— whether written, spoken or visual—that expresses a point of view” (2). Just as argument is considered the center of political discourse, I believe that we are in the position to make argument the center (or near center) of everything that we teach. I can admit that I was dumbfounded when I learned the true definition of argument—like many, I can say that I was under the impression that an argument is a point that you make when you’re in disagreement with someone else. The reading from this book took argument and defined it as the process we use to make a decision about practically anything.

            What I found to be the most interesting about what Smith, Wilhelm, and Fredricksen had to say was their stance on the Common Core. Though I am still iffy on my thoughts of CCSS, these authors make note that what we understand about the Common Core and argument basically breaks down to understanding form and structure. Should we be focusing on the structure of argument? It is my opinion that when we begin to teach structure of any form of writing, we begin to treat that writing as an isolated form just like we do any other type of writing—instead of making them interconnected with each other and showing that like other types of writing, there is indeed a model and a process to follow, teachers aren’t doing this. Chapter 2 has an in-depth conversation highlighting the immediate problem that we are facing in our schools—the growing gap between student abilities in both oral and written argument. “NAEP doesn’t disaggregate scores based on genre, but it’s worth noting that 40 percent of the writing prompts called for persuasive writing, so it seems safe to say that NAEP establishes that most adolescents are not proficient at argumentation” (11). Can we really argue with this generalization though? We deduce the abilities of our students when we do not challenge them to think critically about the decisions and arguments that they make. This chapter outlines for us the Toulmin Model, a model that should be used when teaching students how to effectively learn about arguments and then how to make and defend them. And we want to stress that it’s crucial to keep in mind that using Toulmin’s model is a means to the end of helping students become more proficient composers and consumers of arguments. That is, while we introduced the terms and used them, we never tested students on them. What mattered to us was that students understood how to employ them rather than how to define them” (51). What is important and stood out about this that they used this model as a strategy—and not as an assessment piece. All too often we as teachers choose that when we teach a new strategy, there needs to be a formal assessment that goes along with it—not necessarily. What I thought about as I was reading this was a number of strategies that we already use in the classroom—Socratic Seminars, Book Clubs even—both of these strategies are built around having our students think about their thinking and the choices they make. Furthermore, I couldn’t make the connection until now, but when we are working in Socratic Seminars, one of the central challenges we faced in class a few weeks ago was connecting our arguments to why and how we got there—all steps that are discussed within the Toulmin Model.

           I can easily see myself using Socratic’s as my own means to teaching argument in my classroom. Slowly we would think about what questions or thoughts we wanted to explore—using the model, students would then take an individualized approach to understand how you use claims or qualifiers, back them with evidence and support that warrants their claim, and eventually think ahead and form rebuttals to students who can effectively disagree with them. Though this is just one example of how I would use argument in my classroom, Smith, Wilhelm, and Fredricksen provide a range of other ways that we can incorporate argument in our classroom in chapters 4-7. I enjoyed the examples of incorporating student’s writing into this unit as well—when students have a mentor text that is accessible for them to work with, I believe with the right scaffolding, they would be able to make stronger arguments in their own writing and have the direct evidence to support it. Using journal articles as well as controversial topics is an excellent way to do this. The activity I enjoyed the most was the one we did in Vic’s class where we needed to explain how the husband died from falling from the stairs. I believe using this as in introduction not only engages students, but gives you an understanding of how students are making arguments and claims as well as showing if they can demonstrate how to back it up. I would personally bring in several commercials that demonstrate a stance—such as what “real” beauty looks like. I know the students would refute a claim stating that someone who is blonde, blue eyed, and a size 0 is the ideal definition of beauty, so using something like commercials and advertisements are essential to getting those differing opinions from students which would force them to think about why they feel a certain way. I agree with Smith, Wilhelm, and Fredricksen when they state that for us to be able to capture the essence of writing arguments, we need to first address the absence of authentic argument in our classrooms! If we do so, we can then move toward creating units that focus on central and essential questions and move through the process for creating arguments around them. “It is our obligation to prepare our students for the future. But we are convinced that we can only do so if we can engage them in the present. In the case of teaching students to read and write arguments, that should be easy. But we’re afraid it’s not” (38).
            
            In short, I can admit that before reading this book, I was like many others—someone who felt that my stance on arguments simple went along with how well I could persuade someone that I was right. I now know that it goes much deeper than this and if I want my students to be able to write and speak effectively using arguments, I need to view this as a tiered model. I can also admit that like many other teachers, I would have made the mistake of teaching argument with persuasion. To help eliminate this—I was looking online at some ways to help my students differentiate between the two—now three (Argument, Persuasion, and Propaganda). For my “Do”, I am attaching the url link to a  fantastic handout that I would include as a reference sheet for my students to look at when I am beginning my unit on arguments.


http://www.readwritethink.org/files/resources/lesson_images/lesson829/Argument-Propaganda.pdf