Evaluation of arguments writing assignment
CRIT1101, Spring 2021. Instructor:
Topic due date:. Just e-mail me which of the three choices below you have selected.
Last date for (optional) rough draft submission I strongly recommend the submission of a rough draft to me via e-mail at any time. However, it is not a requirement.
Due Date for paper: I may be flexible with the above dates but please observe this one as I need time to carefully read and grade these, grade final exams, and complete final grades.
This writing assignment requires viewing either one of three debates and following the specific instructions featured below each description. Again you need to select only one of these three, not all three.
Believe it or not, this can be a fun and rewarding assignment. I even tried to inject some humor in the descriptions of the some of the participants in the debates in part two.
In order to select which of these to write on I would suggest that you first read the description of the topic of each debate and then view the podcast I created on this assignment. It may seem long but much of it consists in preview clips to give you an idea of what each of these debates is like. You need not read all the details I furnish about each one below until you make your selection. I do not recommend watching all three of the debates in their entirety in order to choose one as it will take several hours to watch all three. Pick one and devote most of your time and efforts to doing that one.
Technical details:
These assignments should be submitted as a Microsoft word document in double-spaced 12-point format text to the assignment position box I will create for them. Do not write these in an e-mail style, using contractions, slang, or non-standard English. No college papers should be written in that fashion.
The assignment should be five to seven pages in length in the above format. This is not a research paper but if you choose to use other sources, especially for evaluating factual claims, please do so. I do not care which reference manual you follow for any footnotes or endnotes. My main concern is that you provided enough information in the citation, where an article or link, that I could find it if I want to examine the source. The Chicago style is my personal preference and the APA and MLA style manuals are fine. You can find them online and here is the link for the Chicago version: https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html.
Writing a paper about arguments.
Most of this is in the podcast but I still urge you to read it.
In writing and working on the paper, what should you do?
The first thing you should do after you have selected the debate you want to write on is view the podcast and then again taking careful notes. In doing this and in writing the assignment you should look at the transcript if one is available at the site.
You should do a lot of thinking before you try to write anything. You need to think about the topic or resolution. You need to think about what position seems most plausible to you. You need to think about the weak points, logical fallacies, if any, in the arguments on all sides. So do not expect to sit down the night before the paper is due and throw something off. (I know that it is a time- honored tradition of which I participated in myself.) That just does not leave you enough time for thinking (and changing your mind). The first thing you should do, then, is give yourself time over several days just to think about the arguments and try to figure out what are the best arguments, the best objections, and the best view.
Once you have a reasonably good fix on what you want to say, write a draft of the paper. Do not think of it as the final product. Do not worry about getting it perfect. Worry about getting it down. Then, having written a draft of the whole paper–put it away! Sleep on it. Look at it again in the cold light of morning, or after a day spent thinking about something else. With fresh eyes you will be better able to see what makes sense, and what does not, what is relevant, and what should go, what is convincing, and what needs further development, what is clear, and what is not. You will likely notice typographical errors, missed commas, sentence fragments, and vague or ambiguous sentences that you did not see in your first draft. The Microsoft word spellcheck function is very useful and your final draft should contain no misspelled words.
If your first draft is reasonably good, you will want to use it as a basis, and revise, expand, correct, and cut, as needed. Either way, the way to make it better is to rewrite it. I don’t think I can emphasize this last point enough. There is absolutely nothing you can do to improve the quality of your writing as much as getting into the habit of rewriting your papers. Nothing.
Ideally, even this revised version of
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