Response to "Writing an Argument"

Laura Catter
Christy Vance
English 102 -009
10-18-09

There certainly was a lot of information in this reading. I am still digesting it all. Some of it was familiar to me from my Reasoned Discourse and Philosophy classes before -mostly the bit about fallacies. Ballenger makes references to a lot of other essays in the reading that I was hoping would be included. Particularly the one by Ellen Goodman called "Getting real in the Classroom." But, mostly for curiosity; he made a lot of points about it that I would have liked to have seen illustrated.

The section about Toulman was interesting. The distinction between claims and warrants is good to keep in mind. It is something I have encountered in others' writing, and have wondered about my own. However, I don't quite understand what he means by the Toulman “model.” Is he just referring to the process of identifying one's own claims and warrants?

The transition between Toulman and the following page tripped me up completely. It seems like a rather random placement for that bit of information on sources. Although it did mention some interesting places to look for facts (and I have to wonder if one of them might have helped me with my ethnography, investigation will follow), I still can't quite figure out why it's there.

The following section about development was interesting. I have learned about those organizational strategies before but Ballenger, in his way, puts some deeper detail to it. He gives good examples and uses them to help actually illustrate how they could work, rather than make it sound formulaic. From the beginning of this reading (and in all of his writing so far) Ballenger takes these things beyond “recipe for an essay” and tries (succeeding, in my opinion) to explain how it is done while stressing it still as something you do for yourself.

The sections on the fallacies (which are a good refresher), workshopping, and revising are likely ones I'll be highlighting heavily and keeping handy as I work on this project. I have an aversion to the word “revising” from past classes wherein I was instructed that papers were to be turned in in three drafts and that there needed to be marked differences between each draft to prove that “revision”occurred.

By nature, my writing style is very unorganized. I start with piles of freewrites and notes and slowly filter them into something that actually resembles an essay format. I have been guilty of calling it good at that point (particularly on the night of a deadline), but I know that if I just read it through once -well, I won't make it through without redoing something. Usually several times through. I wonder if we'll be taking a look at the “Revision Strategies” he mentions at the very end; or is there a version of those in the book we do have?