11. Do you think it advisable to use as much details as possible in Description?
II. Read the following and discuss whether the principles are applicable to argument writing:
As in expository papers, argument papers consist of an introduction, a body, and a conclusion. The introduction gives background and stimulates the reader's interest in the problem or proposal. But in argument, you must also convince your readers that they can trust you and that they can benefit from your proposition, otherwise they are unlikely to be persuaded.
The body of the paper, too, must reflect your commitment to your readers. The ordering of your points, the kind of evidence you present, the appeals you make, all should reflect your concern for the needs of your readers. The organization of your paper should enhance your reasoning processes and your persuasive tactics. Supporting evidence can consist of statistics, authority, analogy, facts, case studies, historical or social background, or explanation of causes. These should be so presented that, along with the language you use and the way you order the material, they help you develop your argument as forcefully as possible.
The conclusion should summarize the argument and restate the proposition. In addition, to be most effective, it should make an appeal to the readers for whatever action may be appropriate. This appeal can be emotional, capitalizing on the sympathy or indignation that you have stirred in readers. Or you may appeal to the decency and fairness of your audience, or point out how your proposition can affect them.
III. Outline the following short argument.
Notes for reference: Your outline should focus on these points: What is the implicit proposition? The main arguments? Is the appeal emotional, logical, or a combination of the two? How is refutation handled? How effective is the conclusion? What kind of proofs does the writer rely on?
Once people are liberated from the confines of automobiles, there will be a greatly increased interest in hiking, exploring, and backcountry packtrips. Fortunately the parks, by the mere elimination of motor traffic, will come to seem far bigger than they are now — there will be more room for more persons, an astonishing expansion of space. This follows from the interesting fact that a motorized vehicle, when not at rest, requires a volume of space far out of proportion to its size. To illustrate: imagine a lake approximately ten miles long and on the average one mile wide. A single motorboat could easily circumnavigate the lake in an hour; ten motorboats would begin to crowd it; twenty or thirty, all in operation, would dominate the lake to the exclusion of any other form of activity; and fifty would create the hazards, confusion, and turmoil that make pleasure impossible. Suppose we banned motorboats and allowed only canoes and rowboats; we would see at once that the lake seemed ten or perhaps a hundred times bigger. The same thing holds true, to an even greater degree, for the automobile. Distance and space are functions of speed and time. Without expending a single dollar from the United States Treasury we could, if we wanted to, multiply the area of our national parks tenfold or a hundredfold — simply by banning the private automobile. The next generation, all 250 million of them, would be grateful to us.
IV. Identify the topic sentence, the incidents, and the conclusion in the following paragraph.
Notes for reference: Narration is frequently used to tell about personal experiences. You have a variety of personal experiences every day, but they will not necessarily make an effective narrative except they can attract the reader's interest. Most often, the writer may have a goal to describe an experience that has some unusual meaning or significance both for the writer and for the reader. In the following sample paragraph, the writer uses narration to give a factual account of an event — the discovery of Wheaties. Notice that the writer has chosen to explain the different incidents in a simple chronological order.
Like gravity and penicillin, Wheaties was discovered by accident. In 1921, a health clinician named Minnenrode, in Minneapolis, was mixing up a batch of bran gruel for his patients when he spilled some on a hot stove. He heard it crackle and sizzle, and had a taste. Delicious, he thought. He took his cooled gruel to the Washburn Crosby Company, which in 1928 would merge with three mills to become General Mills. Favorably impressed, Washburn Crosby gave Minnenrode use of a laboratory. Alas, his flakes crumbled too easily and turned to dust in a box. Exit Minnenrode, enter George Cormack, Washburn Crosby's head miller. Cormack tested 36 varieties of wheat. He cracked them, he steamed them, he mixed them with syrup, he cooked them, he dried them, he rolled them. Finally he found the perfect flakes.
（Steve Walf）
V. Read the following passages and point out rhetorical features you have noticed in item:
1. The chair was the one piece of furniture I wanted to take with me when I closed up my parents' house for the final time. To look at it, sitting in the same kitchen corner where it had been fifty years, you'd wonder how it could be my favorite chair, its seat scratched here and there from the soles of a small boy's shoes. The only thing unusual about it was the intricate design carved into its back. But the carving was what made the chair meaningful to me. ...
2. Erethizon dorsatus, an antisocial character of the northern U. S. and Canadian forest, commonly called a porcupine, looks like an uncombed head, has a grumpy personality, fights with his tail, hides his head when he's in trouble, floats like a cork, attacks backing up, retreats going ahead, and eats toilet seats as if they were Post Toasties. It's a sad commentary on his personality that people are always trying to do him in.
3. On the outskirts of a little town upon a rise of land that swept back from the railway there was a tidy little cottage of white boards, trimmed vividly with green blinds. To one side of the house there was a garden neatly patterned with plots of growing vegetables, and an arbor for the grapes which ripened late in August. Before the house there were three mighty oaks which sheltered it in their clean and massive shade in summer, and to the other side there was a border of gay flowers. The whole place had an air of tidiness, thrift, and modest comfort.
