A COMPLETE ARGUMENTATION EXERCISE SERIES

exercise 2          exercise 4

exercise 3          exercise 5    

Exercise 1 for Argumentation

Consider the following sentences. Are they appropriate thesis statements for argument? Why or why not?

1. Mercy isn’t something that can be doled out in measured amounts. Either it flows freely, or it doesn’t flow at all. 

2. No person is free so long as any person anywhere is in chains. The enslavement or wrongful imprisonment of anyone diminishes the liberty of everyone. 

3. Third-quarter earnings were up 11% from those of the second quarter. Simultaneously, company contributions to the employee benefit fund fell 11%. 

4. If Jimmy Connors isn’t the greatest U.S. men’s tennis player, then John McEnroe surely must be. The challengers—Chang, Agassi, Courier, etc.—have nothing like the winning record these two have. 

5. No one but an idiot writes except for money. 

6. Sarah has been a lousy student government president. 

7. Whereas 3% of male executives have no children, 61% of women executives have no children.

8. Plagiarism shouldn’t be referred to as "the sincerest form of flattery."

9. I don’t like late-night commercials for 900number talk lines. 

10. Labor Day has lost its original meaning now that labor unions are less popular.

Exercise 2 for Argumentation  
In argumentation, most writers present combinations of appeals to ethics, emotion, and logic, as in each of the following short excerpts. Discuss how well the appeals work. If some appeals seem ineffective, try to come up with better ones:

1. [A lawyer’s summation to a jury] We believe the Court should pardon the defendant because, at age 17, he has his whole life in front of him and, although he has been convicted of DUI ten times this year, he only had four convictions last year. In addition, the mandatory loss of license will mean that he will spend his freshman year at the university without being able to drive. The social contacts he will miss in that year will mean that his future earnings as a lawyer will suffer immeasurably. Does the Court want to doom this man to a life of second-rate law practice and near-poverty?

2. [An academic dean’s argument to an English department head] Statistics at our university, compiled for the last three semesters, show that 70% of all first-year students make B’s or better in Freshman Composition. Based on that statistic, it’s clear that the course is not doing its job. If 70% of the students can make A’s or B’s, one wonders why they are being required to take the class at all. It would make more sense either to make the grading in the class much more rigorous, thus teaching the students more, or to institute a placement test so that a large number of these students (who apparently already are good enough writers) can avoid wasting everybody’s time and money taking a class they don’t need anyway.

3. [A business tycoon’s testimony to a Congressional committee looking into problems with U.S. public education] In the face of its continuing demonstrated ineptitude, the best thing for the U.S. public education system to do is to sell itself to private industry. During the 1980s, nearly half of all college degrees were granted through corporate education programs anyway. IBM, General Motors, and Sony can’t do any worse job educating us than the public education system has; chances are they’ll do better. Parents should be given "tuition vouchers" by the government to spend educating their children at any schools they choose. Thus the best schools will be able to do their jobs better because they will be freed from the bureaucratic mentality that inextricably accompanies government-sponsored programs of any kind in any country. And the worst schools will be faced with diminishing student populations (and resulting diminishing budgets), causing them either to change their tradition-bound and unproductive ways, or to die.

Exercise 3 for Argumentation  (click for back to top)

What kinds of evidence would you use to support each of the following theses?

1. Reintroduction of medium-sized predators—such as red wolves—into our national parks will only serve to improve the wilderness experiences of all those who visit the parks. Any small damage they may cause to livestock on surrounding farms and ranches is more than compensated for by the value they bring to our experience of wilderness.

2. One of the fundamental principles of American democracy is the freedom of the individual from unnecessary government interference. Thus the requirement of filling out lengthy IRS forms each year —specifying everything about ourselves and our families from birth dates to who’s in what grade in school—is basically unconstitutional and should be stopped by the Supreme Court.

3. The Exxon Valdez oil spill that dumped 11 million gallons of crude oil into some of the world’s most pristine waterways proves once and for all that oil companies cannot be trusted to protect the environment as they should. The only way to ensure the safety of all areas where oil is drilled, transported, or refined is to establish a new government watchdog agency and to staff it with committed environmentalists.

4. In the last days that Bush was in office, he initiated military actions in Bosnia, Iraq, and Somalia. He sent troops to these areas not to prove that he was a powerful president or to exercise control one more time but because the situations themselves demanded action.

Exercise 4 for Argumentation (click for back to top)

Decide on specific readers, a thesis, evidence, and a structure that might work well for these topics.

1. Why do so few actresses seem to be movie stars today? 

2. What three changes would most improve your high school? 3. What label will be used in the future to describe the 1990s? Why? 

4. What general education requirements does your university have? What are their goals? Do you think that the courses fulfill those
goals? 

5. What personal values will be most important to you in choosing a career? 

6. Has pro football become too violent? Are rule changes needed? 

7. What is the most effective type of diet? Why? 

8. What superstitions do you believe in, even if you don’t admit these beliefs to others? Why do you think these superstitions affect
you?

Exercise 5 for Argumentation

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To gain practice in identifying problems with logical reasoning, analyze the following essay, which is riddled with them. In the first paragraph, for example, you might begin by noting the false analogy involving numbers and the either/or fallacy (that is,either a situation is one way or the other, not allowing that their might be some combination) :

The Dire Threat of Rock & Roll

by Ima Goody (American Citizen) In my career as a bookkeeper for several small businesses, I often have occasion to deal with numbers. And that makes me think of the numbers of our fine community’s upstanding young people who every day and night pollute their brains with the screeching and unworldly sounds of heavy metal, head bangers, nearly naked and gyrating singers, guitar players, and drummers that pass off today as rock and roll stars. My fellow citizens, we must put an end to this destruction today, for if we don’t, who knows what will happen tomorrow? I am not against all modern music, far from it. I would listen gladly to Mr. Welk’s television show every night, and I remember fondly that nice Elvis person who met such an untimely death due to indigestion. 

How I wish we still lived in such times! If only Castro hadn’t taken over Cuba and the U.S. gone off the gold standard, we would never have had MTV! Consider the number of young people every year who destroy their budding futures in order to buy guitars and start garage bands. What might those people have contributed to our country as patriotic citizens, maybe even Senators and Representatives and, yes, even Supreme Court Justices! Imagine if Jim Morrison had only gone on to law school and become a Supreme Court Justice, if Jimi Hendrix had run for the Senate and become a candidate for president, and if Kurt Cobain had been an astronaut and then a congressman, maybe even Speaker of the House? But no, in each case an innocent soul, like flowers before a lawn mower of rock and roll being ridden by Dick Clark, was yanked out of normal decent life into who knows what. That’s why we must ban MTV and all such forms of mental pollution and begin a return to the music that made this country great—barbershop quartets, Sousa marches, and the fox trot!