Description
Purpose
By completing this writing assignment, you will be able to:
Develop an argumentative claim about a research topic
Categorize texts as Background, Exhibit, Argument, and Method sources
Support the argumentative claim using sources rhetorically
Task
For this assignment, you will develop an argumentative claim and argumentative strategy about your research topic using the sources from your annotated bibliography (we only did a sample one of the resources – but this will be based on the sources used for the steroid age arguement) You should categorize all of your annotated bibliography sources into Background, Exhibit, Argument, or Method sources. Your activity should include the following:
Your argumentative claim about the research topic: Now that you have conducted some research on your research question, what is your position on the question? Your claim should be a clear and argumentative, as in, there should be multiple positions that reasonable individuals may believe.
Background sources: What background information will a reasonable person need in order to understand your topic and your claim? What sources will you use as Background information?
Exhibit sources: What examples or evidence will help demonstrate the importance of your research topic? What examples or evidence will help support your claim? What sources will you use as Exhibits?
Argument sources: What is your position on the research topic compared to the sources that you have already read? What sources do you plan to refute, refine, extend, or affirm as Argument sources?
Method sources: What are the key terms or concepts on your research topic? Are there any sources that you will use as a Method source?
Source reflection: Do you have a mix of sources in all categories of the BEAM framework? Are there categories that have more sources than others? What kinds of sources do you think you need to find next to help strengthen your argumentative claim?
Unformatted Attachment Preview
You’re watching the video, Integrating Other Views Into Your Writing. In this video, you’ll learn how to identify other views on your position and how to include these views in your writing in a way that supports your position and increases your credibility. One way to strengthen your position in an argument is to include other views or perspectives. Your instructor may refer to these other views as counterarguments, naysayers, or alternative perspectives or positions.
Including an alternative viewpoint in your writing may seem counter-intuitive. But by acknowledging other views on your position, you will actually appear more credible to your reader. And you will also strengthen your position by engaging with these other viewpoints.
The first step is to identify other viewpoints on your position. On any given position, there will be people who completely agree, people who agree but with a difference, or people who disagree to various degrees. Let’s look at an example of an argument and its alternative viewpoints.
Let’s say that my argument is that all colleges should create food pantries to help reduce college student hunger on campus. There will be people who agree with a difference or disagree with different aspects of my argument. For example, there may be people who agree that college student hunger is a problem but disagree about the solution. These people may suggest a different solution for the underlying problem, like making the cafeteria free for all students on campus, or they may agree that college student hunger is a problem but that the state or federal government should offer solutions, not universities.
There will also be people who disagree to various degrees with my argument. There may be a people who argue that college student hunger is not the most pressing problem on campus, and colleges should devote resources to other issues instead. And at the very end of the spectrum, there may be people who completely disagree with my argument. And instead, they may argue that college student hunger isn’t actually a problem or that college students should be hungry.
You may encounter these extreme disagreements, especially if you’re writing about a polarizing topic. But more often, you will encounter nuanced viewpoints the fall into the middle of the spectrum. Now that you’ve identified different viewpoints on your argument, try to understand this position.
What is this person’s position on the topic and your argument? How does this viewpoint differ from your own position? Why might this person hold this position? What evidence supports this position? You will need to understand the other position so that you can represent the view, and explain it fairly in your own writing.
After you understand the other viewpoints, you will work on integrating this perspective into your own writing. You will need to fairly represent the other perspective as part of your own argument. You may be tempted to write a single sentence about the other viewpoint before immediately refuting it. But imagine that you were reading an article that only briefly mentioned your own position before refuting it. You would probably think that the article was unfair.
So when you write about another viewpoint in your own argument, be sure to represent it fairly. Your reader should understand the alternative viewpoint and why it might be illegitimate perspective. You should also not mock or be immediately dismissive of other perspectives. This may alienate your reader, and it can damage your credibility as a fair and balanced writer who is weighing all the evidence and perspectives before coming to a conclusion.
After you’ve represented the other viewpoints, it is now your chance to respond. You should respond persuasively, because you don’t want your reader to find the other perspective more convincing than your own position. But that doesn’t mean that you should treat the other position unfairly. Don’t just dismiss the other position as, that’s wrong.
Instead, you can acknowledge the validity of their position while still maintaining yours. You may decide to agree with the position, but argue that there are aspects that the alternative position is not considering. If you still find that the other position is more persuasive than your own, you may want to revise your own argument. Ultimately, by engaging respectfully and fully with other perspectives, you will refine your own position and strengthen your argument in a way that your readers will find credible and trustworthy. You’re watching Using Sources in Your Writing: The BEAM Method. In this video, you’ll learn about a method, the BEAM method, which can help you think about how you’re using sources in your writing.
In your previous classes, you may have heard the terms primary source, secondary source, and even tertiary sources. These terms are used to describe the originality of the material and the proximity of the source to the origin of information. The terms primary, secondary, and tertiary describe what the source is. But these terms don’t help you understand how to use the source.
A different way to think about sources and evidence is to think about how you will use sources in your research based writing to achieve your rhetorical purpose communicated through a specific genre for an intended audience.
Professor Joseph Bizup offers a different framework to think about how we can use sources in our writing– BEAM. BEAM stands for background, exhibit, argument, and method. These are four major ways that writers use sources in their texts.
Background is when a writer uses a source to provide general information about a topic. A writer may provide background information or facts about a topic to establish the context for the writer’s text.
Exhibit is when a writer uses a source as evidence, or as an example to analyze.
Argument is when a writer uses a source to engage in an ongoing conversation. A writer may refute, refine, extend, or affirm these conversations.
Method is when a writer uses a source’s way of analyzing an issue to apply to their own text. For example, a writer may adopt a term or a concept from another source that the writer then applies to their own project.
Writers will use sources in different ways depending on their rhetorical purpose, audience, and genre. For example, an author writing an encyclopedia entry may use sources primarily as background with no argument or method because their purpose is to inform an audience who is unaware of the topic. Someone writing an opinion piece in the New York Times may use more sources as argument because their purpose is to persuade a reader. An academic research article typically includes background, exhibit, argument, and method sources in different sections because the purpose is to contribute to ongoing conversations and offer new information or insights.
The BEAM framework is useful to you as a reader to better comprehend research based text. And as a writer, as you construct your own research based texts. As a reader, you can read academic texts using BEAM to better understand the writer’s use of sources and to identify how academic writers use sources throughout their texts. Even if you aren’t familiar with the topic that an author is writing about, you can still identify how the author is using sources to help you understand and evaluate the text.
One strategy is to read through the text and classify each source mentioned as background, exhibit, argument, or method. If a source only appears as an in-text citation or footnote, you may assume that the writer is using this source to provide background information. If you see a block quote, or another source that the author analyzes, the writer may be using that source as an exhibit. If the author refutes, refines, extends, or affirms a source as part of their project, the writer may be using that source as an argument. If a writer mentions a specific theory, concept, framework, or key term from a source that they apply to their own project, the writer may be using that source as a method source.
Now that you’ve identified how a writer is using sources, you can start to think about why the writer is using sources in those ways. What is the writer’s purpose in the text? And how does the writer use sources to achieve this purpose? What are the genre conventions for source usage? And does the writer meet these conventions? For example, you should note how the writer balances sources. Are all of the sources being used as background?
Analyzing how other writers use sources in different genres can help you apply their source usage strategies to your own writing.
As a writer, you can apply the BEAM framework to think about your own sources, and how you will use these sources in your own writing. When you are finding sources for your project, try to gather a range of sources that you can use as background, exhibit, argument, and method. Thinking about how you will use sources from the beginning of your research process, can help you ensure that you have enough materials to work with throughout your project, although you may still have to find more sources later on.
Later in the process, as you are working on your own research based writing, you can evaluate your own source usage. Do you have a mix of background, exhibit, argument, and method sources? How might a reader respond to your use of sources? Do you need more of a certain type of source in order to achieve your rhetorical purpose for writing? Are you using sources in ways that meet the genre conventions and your readers expectations?
Evaluating your own source usage can help you meet your rhetorical purpose and strengthen your own researched based writing.
BEAM is a rhetorical way of thinking about sources As a writer of research based text, your job is to ask yourself, how am I using this source as part of my larger project in order to achieve my rhetorical purpose? Using BEAM to think about how and why you are using sources, can help you become a more effective communicator. How Many Sources Do You
Need?
When you read through the assignment prompt for Writing Project 3, you may have
asked your instructor “How many sources do we need to include?” Your instructor may
have responded with “It depends” or “As many as you need.” This was probably not a
satisfying answer to you because you want to make sure that you are meeting your
professor’s expectations. But think about making an argument beyond your English 102
classroom. If you needed to convince your boss to approve a plan or a voter to select a
particular candidate or a family member to give you a loan, how many sources would
you need to support your argument and convince your audience? The answer: It
depends. It depends on your audience member, it depends on your claim, and it
depends on the sources.
The same response of “It depends” is true for academic writing. If you look at examples
of academic writing, you will notice that some articles will include very few sources while
others will have pages of sources listed. Partly this is a disciplinary difference; in the
social sciences, literature reviews that cite many background sources to establish the
topic significance and the writer’s credibility as an expert in the field, whereas in more
experimental science fields there are fewer sources included except for other relevant
studies. Regardless of discipline, each source that is included in an academic article is
there because it serves a specific purpose. This week’s video on “Using Sources in Your
Writing (BEAM)” presents one framework for thinking about what a source does in your
writing. All of your sources should serve a purpose, whether it is to provide background
information, an example for analysis, something to argue, or a method or framework to
use. Thinking about the purpose of each source as part of your larger argument will help
you move beyond simply meeting the required number of sources for an assignment to
constructing more effective arguments that are supported by sources.
So how many sources do you need to include in Writing Project 3? It depends.
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