Brief Guide to Writing Academic Arguments, A, 1st edition

A Brief Guide to Writing Academic Arguments prepares students to read and write the types of argument-related source-based writing they are most likely to encounter in college.

A Brief Guide offers an introduction to argumentation, critical reading, and argument-related source-based writing.  The instruction is firmly based in both writing process and rhetorical theory, offering step-by-step advice on producing effective, persuasive, conventionally sound arguments for academic audiences and purposes. 

A Brief Guide offers a complete argument course with an introductory chapter on Classical Argument, a highly-praised simplified approach to Toulmin, and four chapters on claim types rounded out with chapters on rhetorical analysis and visual argument.  Professional and student essays drawn from disciplines across the curriculum help students understand the nature of academic arguments; how to analyze and evaluate arguments; how academic writers form, support, and explain claims; and how they use source material as evidence. 

• A Brief Guide combines the best of several composition theories–expressive, cognitive, social, and rhetorical.  Expressivist pedagogies help students explore the generative nature of writing and the importance of establishing and maintaining their voices in academic writing.  Cognitive pedagogies teach writing as a problem-solving and problem-posing activity that can be analyzed and understood.  Social pedagogies encourage students to see how writers always write in a social context, and rhetorical pedagogies help students read and write persuasive texts that meet the unique demands of different contexts, audiences, and purposes.

• The highly-praised modified approach to Toulmin discusses the need for writers to explain how grounds support a claim instead of presenting warrants strictly as underlying assumptions that link grounds to a claim.

• Twenty professional and student essays and one sample annotated bibliography draw from disciplines across the curriculum help students understand the nature of academic arguments, how to analyze and evaluate arguments, how academic writers form, support, and explain claims, and how they use source material as evidence. 

• Extensive sets of questions accompany the readings: Before You Read questions ask students to reflect on the readings’ topic and form predictions; As You Read questions guide students through the texts; and After You Finish Reading questions encourage students to analyze and critique and establishing for themselves each reading’s value strength.

• Something to Write About questions offer brief writing-to-learn exercises at strategic points throughout each chapter in order to help students understand, critique, or apply the concept covered being offered at that point in the text. 

• Something to Think About and Something to Talk About questions present a wide variety of critical thinking and reflection exercises throughout each chapter in order to help students evaluate their own reading, writing, and thinking processes; to help them better understand the conventions of academic argumentation; and to help them apply the material covered in the text to their own lives, interests, and education. 

• Topic Heuristics present students with sample questions that show them how they might start with a broad topic and narrow it into a manageable line of inquiry for a paper (Chs 13-16). 

• Invention Grids present students with sample graphics they might use to ask questions about their topic, purpose, and audience in order to brainstorm ideas and ways of using evidence to organize their papers (Chs 13-16).

• Box Outlines demonstrate in a visual way how writers might sequence their arguments from the introduction through the conclusion, creating coherence and persuasiveness through organization and carefully sequenced evidence (Chs 13-16).