The Humble Argument

Roy K. Humble

Description

The Humble Argument is so much more than a writing textbook. It gives you tools, tips, and tricks that actually explain what a writer does. It doesn’t sugarcoat the process or dumb down the very real challenges that entering a college writing space requires. This book is more like a friend. It’s the kind of friend that will coach you through a tough time and encourage you, and it will make you laugh while you go through it. It’s the kind of friend who holds your hair back when you’re sick of writing and gives you the courage to try again.

Roy K. Humble is the kind of writing teacher who understands the struggle of learning how to write arguments like a college student and doesn’t just tell you what you want to hear. His lessons here are profound, but in the sense that they are delivered by someone who wants you to feel included in the conversation about what good college writing should be. He writes to students in language they can understand without becoming English majors and with just enough humor to keep them reading. He writes for faculty, moving step by step through the unadorned guiding principles of effective formal writing so that faculty have a great framework on which to build their classes. Perhaps most importantly, Humble understands that the price of a book matters to students, so his books are affordable. From every perspective, Humble gets it.

The Humble Argument has students covered on these important topics:

• Understanding argument as an idea
• Grasping the stages of the writing process
• Organizing an argument around rhetorical principles
• Thinking for yourself as a college student
• Crafting a careful and clear thesis
• Gathering and synthesizing evidence to support a thesis
• Guiding readers through a thoughtful, persuasive essay

Sujets

• guide
• Writting
• Disciplines
• Language Arts
• Sciences de l'éducation
• General officer
• Writing
• Rhetoric
• General
• Composition

Informations

• Publié par: Chemeketa Press
• Date de parution: 01 avril 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 3
• EAN13: 9781955499170
• Langue: English

Extrait

The Humble Argument
A Readable Introduction to Argument and the College Essay
Roy K. Humble
The Humble Argument
2022 by Chemeketa Press
ISBN-13: 978-1-955499-16-3
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Chemeketa Press
Chemeketa Community College
4000 Lancaster Dr NE
Salem, Oregon 97305
[e-mail]
chemeketapress.org
Printed in the United States of America.
LAND ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Chemeketa Press is located on the land of the Kalapuya, who today are represented by the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde and the Confederated Tribes of the Siletz Indians, whose relationship with this land continues to this day. We offer gratitude for the land itself, for those who have stewarded it for generations, and for the opportunity to study, learn, work, and be in community on this land. We acknowledge that our College s history, like many others, is fundamentally tied to the first colonial developments in the Willamette Valley in Oregon. Finally, we respectfully acknowledge and honor past, present, and future Indigenous students of Chemeketa Community College.
Table of Contents Copyright Table of Contents About This Book Part One: Introducing the College Essay Chapter 1: The College Essay Is an Argument A Brief Introduction to Argument What the College Essay Is Not The College Essay Is Hard Work Chapter 2: The College Essay Is a Process Start Thinking for Yourself Don t Be a Knucklehead How to Write the College Essay The Writing Process for You Part Two: Developing Your Argument Chapter 3: Ask a Good Question Find a Question that Matters Make Sure Your Question Is a Question The Key to Success: Ask a Smaller Question Chapter 4: Consider the Evidence Consider Credibility and Objectivity Start with General Sources Use Serious Popular Sources to Explore Rely on Scholarly and Primary Sources Avoid Lousy Evidence Take Notes, Too Chapter 5: Decide on the Best Answer Let Your Evidence Guide This Decision Formulate and Refine Your Answer Find Insightful Answers Part Three: Presenting Your Argument Chapter 6: Plan the Body of Your Essay A Brief Theory of Paragraphs Use a Topic Sentence Outline Organize Your Paragraphs Chapter 7: Offer Good Evidence Explain Your Answer Offer Summaries to Present Your Evidence Offer Detailed Evidence to Defend Your Answer Give Credit to Your Sources Chapter 8: Guide Your Readers Use Topic Sentences and Transitions Give Your Readers an Effective Opening Give Your Readers an Effective Closing Don t Distract Your Readers Part Four: Improving Your Argument Chapter 9: Offer Good Reasons When You Don t Need Reasons How Reasons Work Test Your Reasons Avoid Bad Reasons Chapter 10: Earn Your Credibility The Key to a Successful Relationship Is You Doing All the Work Do Credible Work Choose Your Words Carefully Respect the Views of Others Understand Your Readers Chapter 11: Make Better Arguments The Classical Argument The Toulmin Argument The Rogerian Argument Chapter 12: The Humble Essay The Humble Essay as a Process The Humble Essay as a Product The Actual Meaning of Essay
Introduction
About This Book
To Student Writers
Student writers, this book was written because - like it or not - you need to learn how to write college essays. The less you have to decode a bunch of English-teacher jibber jabber, the sooner you ll get that figured out, too. It isn t much of a book, but that s okay. You don t need much of a book to learn how to write an effective college essay.
You will need some sensible guidelines, however, so you ll find those here. It s also a good idea to find someone who s better at writing than you are, someone who can help you apply these sensible guidelines and check your progress. A writing professor comes to mind.
The most important requirement, however, is simply that you write, and write a lot, so that you can see for yourself what it means to put these guidelines into practice. Learning to write the college essay is a lot like learning to French kiss. Reading about it will only take you so far. To learn how to actually do it, you have to actually do it, again and again. That s the main thing.
If you re reading this book because it s part of a class you re taking, I ask you to pause now and give thanks for your writing assignments. I am entirely serious. They, more than anything, will help you to put these guidelines into practice. Embrace your assignments with the blind faith that they will do you some good. Ignore any anxiety you might feel. Repress unpleasant memories. If you re going to learn anything of lasting value in a writing class, your writing assignments will teach it to you.
Don t be afraid of struggling, either. You re learning new skills here, after all, and new skills do not come easily. Making mistakes will be an unavoidable and important part of the learning process. They are in fact evidence that you re getting somewhere. So just make your mistakes, correct them, and then move on to make more sophisticated errors. It s not that big of a deal.
When I was in second grade, I came running into the house one afternoon yelling for my mother and blubbering because I d gotten a frowny face on a math test. We d moved into long division without any warning, and I d missed six out of ten problems. Mom was at an Amway meeting, as I recall, but my older sister Nadine was in the living room practicing for her interpretive dance recital. I told her about the frowny face.
It s just math, she said, waving her arms to simulate the branches of a tree enlivened by a summer breeze. Anyone can learn math.
It s the same story with argument and the college essay. It might feel overwhelming at first, particularly if these are new ideas for you, but it s just argument. It s just the college essay. You don t need any long words or pretty diagrams or interactive websites. Just do the work that s in front of you. You ll get where you need to go.
Anyone can learn writing, and that includes you.
To My Colleagues
This book exists because I lack the vigor to continue translating the language of rhetoric studies into the language of my students. The ideas in this book are the basic ideas of argument, together with conventional advice for putting together a thoughtful college essay. My innovation is merely to strip from these ideas the terminology by which writing professors identify themselves as writing professors.
Colleagues, the placid countenance of the non-major must not be mistaken for comprehension. These students have merely learned that it s best to remain quiet as we wax on about commas and syllogisms and Beowulf . By using ordinary language, this book helps those uninitiated students to grasp the ideas of argument on their own. It helps them to put those ideas to good use, too, without having to raise their trembling hands and ask us to explain, for the thousandth time, what exactly we mean by enthymeme.
The first part introduces the argumentative essay and sound argumentative practices by comparison to inadequate versions of the same. The second part focuses on the process of building an inductive argument, moving from question to evidence to conclusion to presentation. The third part presents guidelines for constructing a solid but not particularly fancy college essay.
In the final part of the book, I attempt to strengthen this working understanding of argument and the college essay by stepping gently in the direction of traditional terminology and rhetorical approaches. These chapters augment the inductive process from earlier chapters with deductive reasoning and more direct consideration of audience, but they are only an introduction so that others more ambitious than I might continue in that direction.
Traditional rhetoric has for several dozen centuries required no help from the likes of me. Exordium is exordium is exordium - whatever else I might call it - and I do not suggest otherwise. This translation of mine is merely the consequence of my own failure to draw students into that finer vocabulary. If you have succeeded where I have failed, I salute you. However, if you too have struggled to make traditional rhetoric useful to your students, then perhaps this book will serve as a useful addition to your classroom, a bridge over which your students might travel more easily.
Part One Introducing the College Essay
You might think you know all about the college essay because you ve written things in the past and your teachers called those things essays. This section will show you why you might need to think again.
The college essay is an argument. It s not a report, nor a story, nor a reflection paper. It s also not the five-paragraph trainer-essay, which might be difficult news to bear. The college essay also requires a new kind of process that spends more time thinking about what to write than actually writing.
The two chapters in this section tell you, in so many words, to set aside any comfortable but inadequate ideas from the past and learn what it actually means to write a college essay of your own.
Chapter 1 The College Essay Is an Argument
You know the word argument because you ve argued. When you were young, for example, your mother told you to clean your room. You argued that it was just going to get messy again so there was no point in cleaning it and she should leave you alone for once in her life. When it comes to the college essay, many student writers continue to believe that a good argument is a loud argument. They write boldly. They make fun of their opponents. They ignore evidence that undercuts their positions.
Foolish student writers! That s not the kind of argument you make with a college essay. The college essay kind of argument must be thoughtful and honest and systematic. You start by aski