Goals for Students

· Think carefully about how an author makes an argument and supports it

· Consider different techniques for making and supporting claims that can be used in a research paper

· Learn how to critique published arguments based on their claims and use of support

· Consider rhetorical fallacies

Corresponding Course Objectives:

· Summarize, paraphrase and quote from a complete text

· Recognize the distinctions between opinions, facts and inferences

· Analyze and evaluate written communication in terms of situations, audience, purpose, genre and point of view

· Demonstrate mastery of academic conventions regarding essay structure, appropriate tone, formal citation and sentence clarity

Prompt:

Read Aldo Leopold’s “Land Ethic” and evaluate it based on what the argument is and the author’s position and support for the argument.

Your goal with this paper is to carefully examine the relationship between the author’s claims and the use of evidence. Look to see if there are any fallacies; consider whether the support matches up with the claims; uncover unstated assumptions the author relies on. You can ultimately decide that the author’s argument is sound, but you must test it several different ways before coming to that conclusion.