I was somewhat surprised to see that the chapter on classical arguments in the Allyn and Bacon Guide came after the chapter on synthesis. Like Alex, I've seen many students at the writing center struggle with the idea of synthesis. There is a tendency among undergraduates to exclude any information that might complicate their thesis. Often, they would rather change their thesis completely than recognize the existence of antithetical information in their papers. Synthesis is (to my mind, at least) one of the most important skills that an undergraduate can learn, but I have my doubts as to whether English 1000 students that are unsure of their ability to write a thesis to begin with will be willing to acknowledge and then attempt to synthesize opposing viewpoints.
I felt that the classical argument chapter was a better starting place for this discussion. It outlines in fairly direct terms the different elements of argumentation (and what 18-year-old doesn't like to argue?). It seems like a lot of fun to teach students to recognize informal fallacies and anticipate objections to their claims. And once they recognize the objections that can be made to their claims or someone else's, the process of recognizing antitheses and responding appropriately doesn't seem as difficult.
As an English Lit. major, it took me until my last years of my undergraduate career to understand the “moves” that can be made in a paper to synthesize an original argument out of a variety of sources. While in a perfect world my students would leave my classroom fully confident in their ability to synthesize an argument, I think a more realistic goal would be perhaps to introduce the concepts of thesis/antithesis/synthesis, but focus more on mastering the classical argument.
18 year olds like to argue because they're right about everything and one day we will all wrinkle and need them to not pull the plug on our breathing machines. So, moral of the story, agree with them.
ReplyDeleteYou're right; many students we see in the writing lab would rather change their thesis than deal with information that opposes it. I think that part of this is that they are still far from mastering classical argument techniques, which is no small feat in itself, but due to the way their classes are structured they are quickly forced on to attempt more sophisticated forms of argument before they have developed the proper skillset. When I see students come in with very different assignments every week, I can't help but feel that perhaps the students would be better served by working for a longer amount of time on similar sorts of assignments,so they could be more conscious of the skills they are developing. I think that this (becoming conscious of the skills you develop) is one of the most important things a student can learn in a composition class, but I think the sad fact of the matter is that this doesn't happen because it takes a lot of them a lot of effort just to come to terms with the new nature of each assignment.
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