In terms of today’s academic disciplines, when we teach our students to write within a discipline, we are teaching them how to present arguments that fit the conventions of that discipline.
When a student develops an argument for my class, it doesn’t matter so much whether she succeeds in convincing me that she’s right. What matters is that she convince me that her argument is well formulated according to disciplinary conventions. A crucial and often overlooked first step toward helping students write successfully for a discipline is helping them understand that academic writing involves arguing something.
Before students can formulate their own arguments, they need to examine good models of argument, preferably from the discipline in which we ask them to write.
Remember that authoritative books are the ones that most need to be defaced. Textbooks and works by prestigious authors are ideal targets.
For example: What is this author trying to persuade you to do or think? Did she succeed? Why or why not? What was most convincing about the author’s argument? What’s the best counter-argument you can offer?
If it’s worth reading, it’s worth debating in writing.
Personal encounters tend to be more memorable than impersonal ones.Students will perform well on exams if they can remember three things: the names of the authors they’ve read, the authors’ argumentative points, and how to win an argument with each author.
Take a few minutes to scribble an argumentative response to lecture or discussion before rushing home to crawl back in bed.
But nudging students toward a more argumentative relationship with their course material is at least a partial solution to some of the most widespread problems we encounter when trying to teach them to make arguments of their own.
However, it isn’t just students’ attitudes that sometimes need adjustment, but also their critical skills.
One point I always hammer away at in class is “thesis over theme.” I explain that yes, that was the topic or theme. But what was the point? What was the thesis? Most students find it much harder to recognize just what that thesis was, much less state it with any precision. I think it’s important to offer them a solid example of what I’m looking for.
Every field has its own rhetorical rules that govern what makes an argument or hypothesis or interpretation, and the data it purports to explain, sufficiently valuable to be worth the attention of those in the field.
When we teach writing within a discipline, we’re basically trying to get students to internalize these rules, or as many of them as possible.
To sum up, then, teaching students to look for and write argumentatively doesn’t involve only teaching students to write thesis statements. It involves helping them look for and recognize and debate arguments they’re already reading and witnessing daily.
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| Author: | Kevin J. Barrett, Dept. of African Languages & Literature | |
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