Connar Kelley

Dr. Leslie Cook

ENG 3580 Teaching Composition
19 October 2015
Annotated Bibliography 2Argument
De La Paz, Susan, et al. "Adolescents Disciplinary Use Of Evidence, Argumentative
Strategies, And Organizational Structure In Writing About Historical
Controversies." Written Communication 29.4 (2012): 412. Publisher Provided
Full Text Searching File. Web. 15 Oct. 2015.
The authors of this article open with a claim stating that written argumentation is
not as well generated than spoken argumentation by adolescent students. They suggest
that the elements associated with spoken argumentation include the ability to discuss,
argue, debate, and form disagreements on particular topics. However, they suggest that
written argumentation requires a well-developed structure and substantial support of
evidence. The authors attribute to this lack of written argumentation skills to the claims
that are being argued in order to meet standards. The majority of these claims stem from
everyday controversial issues. To supplement for this limitation, the authors of this article
argue that students should write disciplinary arguments that require them to do research
and then argue a claim within the discipline. This, they suggests, allows students to
interpret knowledge yet still have organizational decisions that support their own
interpretations. In this article particularly, they provided evidence on how a historical
controversies paper promoted a well generated written argumentation for 8th graders.
Teachers should use this article for a rationale as to why they incorporate argument-based
claims in interpreting literature or history. It also allows reason for teachers to be careful
when evaluating students interpretations.
Petit, Angela, and Edna Soto. "Already Experts: Showing Students How Much They
Know About Writing And Reading Arguments." Journal Of Adolescent & Adult
Literacy 45.8 (2002): 674. Academic Search Complete. Web. 15 Oct. 2015.
From the beginning of this article, Petit and Soto make a stance that
argumentation can be overwhelming for students in terms of the vocabulary and theories
that are associated with it. They continue to claim that students often do not feel that
argument is a part of their everyday life. They pose that this is detrimental because when
students to not feel a tied to their work, they are removed and therefore less wiling to use
their argumentative skills. Moving forward in the article, the authors generate a plan to
promote students views on arguments in the classroom. They suggest a workshop of
three different levels. First, students construct oral arguments. It is presented in this
article by playing a causal game between students. Next, the authors suggest having
students discover their shared knowledge by analyzing their arguments. To do this, they
had each team from the game share their arguments. Later, students are to move from
the oral arguments to the written arguments by writing a persuasive paper about their
team having the best arguments. Although this promotes students confidence on the

matter of argumentation, I think this activity would only apply to lower grades. High
school students should be using more concrete evidence to generate claims and
arguments.
Verlaan, Wolfram1u, Evan, Ortlieb, and Sue Oakes. "Developing Argument Writing
Through Evidence-Based Responses To Student-Generated Questions." Voices
From The Middle 21.3 (2014): 34-40. Education Source. Web. 15 Oct. 2015.
The authors admit that teaching argument writing is no easy task. However, they
also note that argument writing is not only required but also essential for postsecondary
courses. They discuss Common Cores place of importance on college and career
readiness that coincides with argument style writing. The authors note one main issue that
arises from teachers who are trying to teach argument writing: the wide variety of
preparedness for argument writing. To manage this issue, the authors suggest an
assignment with student-generated questions for topics of argumentation. Although they
agree that a teacher led think and search question can help students perform a close
reading and write an effective response, they take it to another extent and suggest that
students can reach optimal engagement with argument writing if they generate their own
questions. This activity could and should be used by all grade levels. If one thinks about
how much effort and analysis goes in to witting test questions or formulating a prompt,
often the teacher is doing more analysis than the student. By having students form their
own ideas, it could eliminate much of the bullshit writing that is seen in many
assignments. This assignment would be one to keep in mind for all teachers.