ARGUMENT ESSAY/QUESTION TYPES

These should not be ignored:

y  You are not being asked to agree or disagree with any of the statements in the

argument 

y  You should analyze the argument¶s line of reasoning 

y  You should consider questionable assumptions underlying the argument 

y  You should consider the extent to which the evidence presented supports the

argument¶s conclusion

y  You may discuss what additional evidence would help strengthen or refute the

argument 

y  You may discuss what additional information, if any, would help you to evaluate the

argument¶s conclusion.

The above suggestions are extremely valuable to help guide your thinking. According to theguidelines, we should examine ³assumptions´ and the effectiveness or suitability of ³evidence;´

further, we should hypothesize what additional evidence could be used to strengthen or refute theargument. These three suggestions comprise a pretty reliable outline of the essay.

Another important suggestion in the guidelines is that the Argument Task isnot like the Issue

Task for one key reason: you willnot  be asked to contribute your own opinion. If you encounter an argument advocating the consumption of soy to prevent depression, do not begin your essay

 by agreeing or disagreeing and providing evidence for your stance. Almost all the material for your writing is contained within the given argument.

The Flaws

Because nearly all of your writing material comes from the given argument, you can imaginethese arguments are not impenetrably persuasive. All arguments will contain multiple flaws and

logical fallacies; some of those fallacies will come straight from that Intro to Logic class youmight have taken in college (e.g. post hoc, fallacy of accident, etc). Lucky for us, we won¶t have

to recall the fancy names of these fallacies±just being able to recognize them is good enough.Here¶s a quick overview of some of these flaws in plain English:

y   Assuming that characteristics of a group apply to each member of that group

y   Assuming that a certain condition is necessary for a certain outcome

y   Drawing a weak analogy between two things

y  C onfusing a cause-effect relationship with a correlation (famously known as post hoc

ergo propter hoc, i.e. correlation does not imply causation)

y   Relying on inappropriate or potentially unrepresentative statistics

y   Relying on biased or tainted data (methods for collecting data must be unbiased and 

the poll responses must be credible)

 

 

CAUSAL ANALOGY

STATISTICAL SAMPLE/SURVEY

FLAWS

CAUSAL

X LED TO Y

NO 3RD

VARIABLE

INVOLVED

NO REVERSE

CAUSE

 

 

ANALOGYTHE TWO THINGS ARE

RELEVANTLY

SIMILAR/COMPARABLE

THE SAMPLE

REPRESENTS

GENERAL

POPULATION

SAMPLE/SURVEY

 

 

STATISTICAL

FLAW

% = NOSMISINTERPRETED

DATA

LANGUAGE

SHIFT

HAVE

DIFFERENT

INFORMATION

CONCLUSION

AND PREMISE