Hi team,

Those of you who were so painfully torn away from our second full class by the great power outage of 2011 can still have the benefit of training your mind through the following exercise, now adapted into this third response. 

This will be an optional response – but is perhaps desirable for those hoping to have the added preparedness for next week’s work leading up to project 1, or let’s say, for those who enjoy building the foundation of a powerful rhetorical arsenal that will demonstrate they are poised for scholarly, intellectual and personal success in most aspects of life.

The all-stars who attended C1020 at 4:30 have already completed the assignment and posted it there (so they're winning).

Here is the response:

Task: Construct 2 or 3 short paragraphs.  

Goal: Best set of paragraphs (a pair-agraph?) wins an extra credit for a response. 

First Paragraph's Purpose: Use a template from They Say / I Say to introduce both positions as an ongoing debate, and summarize their positions succinctly (there are good ones on p.8-9 and p.21-25, you can use these ‘word for word’ in your response, just put them in italics).  Include a 'choice' quote from each author (cite both in MLA or APA style).

Second Paragraph's Purpose:  Presents your position on the issue.  The position/claim you make can:

• defend one of the above
• attack one of the above
• stake a claim for middle ground
• stake a claim for common ground
• stake a claim for a new position (difficult in this case) 

This is the challenging part.  At this point, any position you pick must remain "in conversation" with the initial positions.  Start by stating your initial position as an enthymeme. See where this leads you.  Part of your position in this paragraph might also be developed through one of the stasis protocols that you can use to develop your position.  

Third Paragraph's Purpose (optional): to point out a fallacy in one author's argument -- and to use it to forward your position in some way. (bonus points for finding a 'spurious enthymeme' instead – these are in a box on Thursday’s page)

Criteria for evaluation/winning:

• Paragraphs are concise with carefully crafted sentences.
• First paragraph offers a sufficiently complex summary of both positions.
• Both positions presented 'generously' or evenly at first.
• Team's position seems to be "part of some larger conversation" and seems to be a convincing/persuasive response to this conversation.
• Team's position is sound and worthy of further discussion, research and exploration.
• Team correctly identifies an fallacy or spurious enthymeme and uses it to forward their position.

Post your your paragraphs below (try posting them right on this page using the edit function -- don't forget your name):