Past Assignments for Erin Karper's EN 102 classes

1) a page of writing on any topic of your choice.

2) An analysis of the sources of disagreement in the following article, using the guidelines on page 48 of Writing Arguments to discuss what and how the various people in the article are disagreeing with each other.

1) a page of writing describing a time in your life when an argument (defined here in any definition you wish) caused something negative to happen to you.

2) Rammage and Bean explain the concepts of logos, ethos, and pathos in chapter 4 of Writing Arguments. Your assignment is to find an advertisement (on televsion, on the radio, in a magazine, in the newspaper, on a billboard) which illustrates each of those concepts, and:

• describe the advertisement in as much detail as you possibly can.
• describe the argument that it's making
• explain how it exemplifes logos, ethos, or pathos

Here's an example:

Dish network ad on the radio

Description: the announcer reads in a monotone about how you can get a free satellite dish, and claims that the ad doesn't need to be fancy because getting a free product is the only appeal that people need to hear

Argument: people want free stuff, so therefore they will want to take advantage of this offer

This ad exemplifies the use of logos, because the author is claiming that he doesn't need to use emotional appeal but that the logic of being able to get something for nothing will make you want to rush out and subscribe to dish network.

• "Myths of Bingeing"
• "The Student Stoner Dilemma"
• "Barhopping with the Bud Girls"

1) A page of writing about a time in your life where argument had positive consequences.

2) Now is the time to begin exploring possible topics for your research paper or any of the other three papers. For this week, please choose a topic that interests you, make a claim about it, and then use the Toulmin structure to develop your argument. Your writing, which can either be in diagram or list form, should include a claim, a reason (or because clause), grounds, a warrant, backing, the rebuttal, and any qualifiers.

1) Make a list of all of the parts of classical argument (if you need one, it's somewhere between p. 63-66 of Writing Arguments. Don't say I didn't give you a hint.) and then briefly describe how your paper that will be fitting that part next to each part. For example, next to "exordium" you might want to put something like "my paper will open with the image of a small child getting beaten by his parents for no reason."

2) Write about some of the appeals which could be used in your paper? Do you want your paper to simply appeal to logos, or do you want to persuade your audience using appeals to ethos and pathos? Explain and discuss the kinds of argumentative strategies do you plan to use in this paper and why.

Over this week, please work on writing assigment three as well as your research paper.

• The event/trend/happening you will be speculating about in your paper.
• A list of the major causes you think are behind it.
• A toulmin structure (see the book if you need help with this) which explains your argument.