Justificatory

Reasoning: Two Reasons Exercise & Outline

If you have not read the following readings posted to the Assignments folder on Blackboard, then you should do so before proceeding: Reasoning Justificatory Reasoning Reasons versus Evidence Introductions Propositions Premises Guide to Rhetorical Analysis Write a three-paragraph, 500-word draft consisting of an introductory paragraph ending in a justificatory proposition, followed by two supporting paragraphs. Refer to your skeletal outline from Exercise 1, revising it as necessary (including if you wish a new proposition or reasons) so that you have a good blueprint for this first chunk of reasoning. Be sure that your proposition is based on the assigned readings for your seminar. Paragraph 1: Introduction. The last sentence of this paragraph must be your justificatory proposition. The proposition should be a single sentence. Paragraph 2: Open with your first reason and devote the remainder of the paragraph to developing that reason with evidence, explanation, or other devices aimed at helping your reader to grasp and accept your reason. The paragraph should be devoted to developing this one reason. Paragraph 3: Open with your second reason and, as with paragraph 2, devote the remainder to developing this particular reason with evidence, explanation, or other rhetorical devices. Recognize that you are writing a rough draft. This exercise is your second draft, if you count the pre- writing that enables you to formulate a proposition, reasons, and evidence. The best approach is to consider this your first prose draft and work from the skeletal outline. The habit of sitting down at the computer and free-writing a response to the assignment will not work for critical writing, other than as a pre-writing activity. This second draft demands that you have your ideas organized, premeditated, structured. Like a math problem, the validity of critical writing depends on demonstrated logical coherence. This is done by showing that reasons and evidence support the proposition. The writing process of letting ideas flow may be useful to you for generating ideas, but you will need to relinquish it when you turn to this second draft, where you must commence the work of demonstrating the logical validity of your proposition. At this stage, dont focus on the cosmetics, on the beauty or polish of the piece. Instead focus on mastering the featured strategies of reasoning and on developing a writing process that is, in this second stage, architectural and logical, rather than associative, free form, and poetic. There are a few reasons for this: first, this is an exercise, a drill, equivalent to playing scales in piano or hitting 50 consecutive serves in tennis. The objective is to learn control and awareness of your reasoning and your writing process. Second, ideas and reasoning are the heart of critical writing. Too much revision for the sake of creating a beautiful-sounding draft at this early stage of thinking and research might prompt you to purge your best ideas, the gems in the rough. Third, we want you to become accustomed to sharing raggedy writing. Writers able to share their writing at an early stage are typically the most prolific and successful. Some students spend hours on this draft, and that is a waste of time at this stage of writing.
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 When you review your draft, concentrate on the clarity, strength, and logic of your reasoning: is your proposition justificatory? Do your reasons relate to and directly support your proposition? Are you providing reasons, or merely examples? Does your evidence clarify and strengthen your reasons? Note that your reasons and evidence should be chosen with your audienceother class membersin mind. What reasons and evidence would they likely find persuasive? Do not write a conclusion. You are not writing an essay. You are writing a chunk, or building block, that you may end up using in your final justificatory paper for the first half of the semester. Mainly, however, you are learning how to develop reasons and evidence that support a solid proposition, and how to introduce these. As we will discuss later in the semester, a well-developed work of critical reasoning can do without a conclusion since, in fact, the proposition is the conclusion. Do not feel that you must exhaust the topic in 500 words. Imagine this as a short piece in a longer work. You will find yourself coming up with and developing more reasons as these exercises unfold, just as you will as a future professional, researching and writing longer papers, reports, proposals, articles, case histories, and other forms of critical writing. Choose your two strongest justificatory reasons, and hold onto the others for possible use in your final essay. If you feel compelled to write a concluding paragraph or develop the other reasons, do soand then cut and paste the excess material into a document and save it in a folder for future reference. Do not include any extraneous material in your assignment submission. Follow the blueprint and honor the word limit.

Writing the Draft

Set your timer and your goal for how much time you will spend on this draftsay, 45 minutes. Write your proposition. Write paragraph 2 and then paragraph 3. Be sure to open each paragraph with one reason that is directly linked to your proposition. Restrict each paragraph to evidence and discussion of that paragraphs reason. Remember that you are writing a rough draft. Instead of worrying about the cosmetics (flow, beauty, polish), focus on mastering the featured strategies of reasoning and on an approach to writing that is architectural and logical, rather than associative, free form, and poetic. Write the introduction Give it a quick review to identify any glaring issues of clarity, spelling, and grammar, and to insure that you have followed directions. Do not, however, waste time polishing this draft. It is meant to be a thought piece that you can integrate and refine at a later time. Upon completion of the first draft, write a rhetorical outline. The rhetorical outline serves as your second draft. Do not polish the first draft, though do correct typos, misspellings, and points where the syntax, punctuation, or word choice make the draft difficult to understand.

Creating the Rhetorical Outline: Detailed

The rhetorical outline gives you practice in rhetorical readingreading like a writer. While the outlines are decidedly laborious, they will prove beneficial, although typically students dont appreciate them
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until the semester unfolds. Think of your rhetorical outline as the next draft of your exercise. Do not just describe what you have said and done, but also evaluate it: P2S1 is not a reason, or, This reason does not directly support the proposition. Crafting a careful outline will illuminate the moves you would need to make if you were to revise the current version of your work. Your outline teaches you to think like a writer, to become aware of your craft: of why you are doing what you are doing, and of how and why you might, in the next draft, say or do it differently so that you reach your reader with the intended message. The outline gives you practice as well as demonstrates your understanding of rhetoric; it illuminates revision and acts as a blueprint for your next draft. On a more humbling level, it also tells you when a sentence or paragraph is doing little or nothing. As you grow more sophisticated, you will move beyond catching out nonproductive sentences and focus more on what other things that a productive sentence might be doing. One of the four criteria of assessment for the final portfolio is demonstration of your knowledge of writing. The outline is the major tool for demonstrating this knowledge. Like any artist, your understanding of the craftand your aimis always going to outstrip what you are actually able to execute in the art itself and the outline is an opportunity to showcase a level of sophistication about writing that you are unable, as yet, to achieve in your own writing. This, by the way, is a condition of all the arts: the mind can conceive of things that cant be achieved in practice. Along with being a valuable tool for metacognitive development and revision, the rhetorical outline is also a checklist for logical coherence as well as an excellent way to practice your skills of paraphrase and expand your repertoire of rhetorical strategies. As you analyze your and others writing, you will acquire innumerable ways of, for example, supporting a reason or bridging two paragraphs. Artists learn from other artists, but only if they can identify and implement what the artist is doing rather than be arrested at the level of analyzing what the artists work means. As you peer review others work and see how they have outlined your work, note their strategies, as well as how they identify and evaluate yours. You will pick up new moves as well as new (and often better) ways of expressing your ideas. Heres how to set up your rhetorical outline: Proposition: (paraphrase your own proposition) Audience: identify your audience for this exercise. What do they know and feel about this proposition? What is their attitude toward your proposition and toward you? Be as specific as possiblenot just students in this class but the mindset, knowledge, and values of your colleagues as they relate to this proposition and to you as its writer. Do you think most will agree or disagree with your proposition? Why or why not? If you imagine that everyone in the class will agree with your proposition before you even explain why they should, then you have not written a justificatory proposition, or at least not one for your audience. There might be readers elsewhere who would disagree with you, but for this exercise you are not writing to them. You are writing to your colleagues and, to formulate a strong rhetorical approach, you need to ask yourself what they need to know and feel to be persuaded. Are they strongly opposed, mildly opposed, uncertain? Do they have a battery of counterarguments at the ready, or might this be their first encounter with what you are proposing? The degree of adherence to a different proposition, as well as the knowledge girding it, greatly matter when one constructs a justificatory piece.
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How are you to describe the beliefs and knowledge of people you are only now becoming acquainted with? That is one of the writers great challenges and demands a combination of studying and using their imaginations to conceive of a readership and a set of strategies sufficient to capture and change their minds. Note that on occasion, writersparticularly bloggers--will publish justificatory pieces intended for readers who already agree with them: singing to the choir. The aim of such justification is to reinforce the solidarity and passion of the group by providing them with something new, such as fresh premises, reasons or evidence to fortify their position. Goal: Once you have identified your proposition and your readers, you must now consider precisely what you hope to accomplish with this text. How do you want your reader to think, feel, or act after reading your work? Imagine your actual classmates and the effect you will have on them if you are rhetorically successful. Plan: Considering your proposition, readers, and goal, what will be the architecture of your piece? In these early exercises, we provide you with the blueprint of the foundation: a justificatory text with an introductory paragraph that sets up the proposition, and then two paragraphs each devoted to developing a reason. Fill in this broader plan with some details: what kind of reasons and evidence will you use? Quantitative or qualitative, abstract or concrete? How will you set up your introduction? What is your plan for capturing and changing your readers state of mind? For example, if you were writing the text on abolishing the death penalty (the example provided at the end of the Skeletal Outline Instructions) your plan might look like this: Plan: Introductory paragraph that acknowledges opposition's strongest beliefs as a way of introducing the justificatory proposition, followed by two developed reasons, one quantitative based on loci (money); one qualitative based on interpretation of another loci (US Constitution) Follow this overview with a sentence-by-sentence paraphrase and analysis of your text, formatted as shown below. Since this is your second draft, be sure to note any sentences that you would revise in a future draft and briefly indicate why or how. Use the says paraphrase portion of the outline to be more precise and concise whenever possible. At the end of the outline, note errors in grammar, spelling, word choice, or other matters of style. You will make use of these in a future assignment, the Custom Proofreading Sheet. P1S1 says: (paraphrase) P1S2 does: (describe the action/strategy/purpose of this sentence: is it providing a reason? Offering an example? Defining a term? Introducing an anecdote?) If you find that a sentence is not doing much of anything, say so: This sentence is redundant. Or, This sentence is a tangent.) Continue this procedure for every sentence in your exercise. If two or three sentences are saying and doing the same thing (a meaning cluster) feel free to group them. For example: Example of a cluster says/does:
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P2S4-6 says: scholars imagine a rational audience. P2S4-6 does: Sentence 4 provides the reason, Sentence 5 provides a quotation by an authority who restates this reason, and Sentence 6 provides an example that supports the reason Grammar, Typos, Misspellings, Style notes: P1S4: The proponents, who argue that the life of a criminal is not worth saving, overlooks the main point. Subject-verb disagreement. P2S1: He writes, An eye for an eye, (punctuation should go inside quotation marks) Directions for Submitting Your Exercise & Outline: Submit a single-spaced copy of your essay and outline to the Blackboard link marked Assignments. Bring two copies of your first draft and your outline to class (or bring one copy and your laptop). Please use the following heading on your exercise: Your Name Justificatory Reasoning: Two Reasons Exercise & Outline Date Submitted

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