DAWN KNIGHT: Hi.
I'm Dawn Knight, an English teacher in Indiana.
Today I'm here to talk to you about the argument essay
specifically the focus today will
be on organization and line of reasoning,
selecting evidence, and depth of commentary.
So we're going to work with the 2021 prompt today.
And I want to point out before we get started,
if you see that part that I just highlighted,
the argument prompt often comes with a little bit of background
information.
That is not the prompt itself, and I
don't want you to get confused there because sometimes people
start writing an essay about what's
in that little part, that's just to give some context.
So let's read that part together.
Many people spend long hours trying to achieve perfection
in their professional lives.
Similarly, people often demand perfection
from others creating experiences that may
be challenging to live up to.
In contrast, some people think perfection is not
attainable or desirable.
So that's not the prompt.
Now, let's look at the prompt.
Write an essay that argues your position on the value
of striving for perfection.
Notice a couple of things here.
One, it says the value of, and the other
is striving for perfection.
So this is different from attaining perfection.
So it's not asking you, do you think it's attainable,
do you think it's desirable.
It's saying is it valuable to strive for perfection?
So we always want to make sure we very carefully read
the prompt and that we're answering the question
that it's asking us to do.
In your response, you should do the following.
Respond to the prompt with a thesis that
presents a defensible position.
Provide evidence to support your line of reasoning.
Explain how evidence supports your line of reasoning,
and use appropriate grammar and punctuation
in communicating your argument.
So when we talk about line of reasoning,
what we're really looking at is what you see on the screen
here.
If you join me for any other rhetorical analysis
videos, our last couple of sessions,
this will look a little familiar,
but it's different with the argument essay
because there's no evidence in a passage for you.
So you'll start with an introduction, a little bit
of background, and a thesis statement that
answers the prompt directly, whether you
think it's valuable to strive for perfection.
The body paragraphs will be organized around supporting
that thesis statement.
So notice body paragraph one, the claim is one reason,
the thesis is valid, and the other claim
is another reason the thesis is valid.
We include specific evidence to support the claims,
and we include commentary that explains.
And we'll get into a little more information about that.
So everything is focused on the thesis.
You'll notice there are two body paragraphs here.
That's because it's a timed essay.
You can write more than two if you want.
That's completely fine.
You just want to make sure that you don't take on
too much since it is a timed essay and two
very well written body paragraphs
is going to be better than three just OK with.
Again, that might sound familiar.
And then the conclusion, this is where you get
into maybe a little summary.
And if you have more time, you can
get into implications or the so what.
And we'll talk about that a little bit more later.
So the introduction we talked about,
a little bit of background information, maybe something
that you know about striving for perfection maybe as a student.
What that might look like or you might think of Olympians.
I know when I think of striving for perfection
I think of Olympians sometimes.
And so what are-- what's some context you
can give your reader to help them think
about striving for perfection?
And then your thesis statement?
Your answer to the prompt?
This time in order to answer the prompt,
we have to think about what we know
unlike the rhetorical analysis where there's a passage,
unlike the synthesis essay where there are several sources.
This doesn't come with any.
So we're looking in our brain.
And in my brain here's what I think when I think
of striving for perfection.
I'm thinking about like I said, Olympic athletes and I'm
dating myself here by thinking about Mary Lou Retton
and you probably have no idea who she is, that's OK.
I'm thinking about Major League Baseball pitchers trying
to pitch the perfect game, or my Indiana Hoosiers who
had a perfect season in 1976.
And thinking about the piece I read on Benjamin Franklin
that I teach my students in English class.
I think about AP students trying to get a 5 on their AP tests.
High-achieving students and stress
also comes to mind when I think about trying
to achieve perfection.
I think about people who I really
want to achieve perfection like pilots and doctors.
And I think about some of those other negative ways
that striving for perfection can sometimes
be detrimental like body image issues or body dysmorphia,
or just a friend who is trying to get an a-plus in their econ
class.
And you'll notice my citations here
there's a big difference in sophistication in some
of these pieces of evidence.
Some of them are just anecdotes, and may not
be really convincing to others.
Some of them are just more general knowledge information.
But some are pretty specific from my English class
or from an AP Psych class, from NPR.
And so I want to think about where do I
have good specific sophisticated evidence
and help try to design my thesis statement around that.
So based on my brainstorm, I came up with the thesis.
Although striving for perfection can lead to personal growth,
it can also have negative health implications
so it's valuable if done cautiously.
So I already have some element of sophistication in my thesis
statement because I'm not looking just
specifically at the positive.
I'm also looking at the negative.
And we're going to talk about that a little more
in the next video.
But now that I have a thesis statement,
I can think about how I want to organize my body paragraphs.
So my first claim might be striving
for perfection can lead to personal growth,
and my second body paragraph might be striving
for perfection can have negative health implications if not
done cautiously.
So notice both of those claims are focused directly
on my thesis statement, and then I'll
have a solid line of reasoning.
Evidence selection.
Again, I want to focus on evidence
that it supports my claim is as sophisticated as possible.
One of the things that you want to try to avoid
is using fiction because fiction is just that fiction,
it's not real.
Now, it's possible to use pieces of fiction if you can explain.
So if I'm talking about the 1920s
and I'm talking about the greed and shallowness of that time
period, I might use the Great Gatsby as an example,
even though it's fiction as long as I explain
how it's widely regarded as a classic
because it captures the essence of the 1920s.
And so then I can justify the use of that fiction.
But in general, we want to avoid fiction.
And we want to site with as much detail as we know.
We don't have the sources in front of us.
So I might just cite it as English class or College Board
as you see on the screen here.
So the best evidence I found for my first paragraph
that striving for perfection can lead to personal growth
was my evidence about Benjamin Franklin
and his list of virtues, and we'll talk about what that was,
and how College Board says even if you don't
get a perfect score on your AP exam, having taken the class
is going to give you a much better preparation for college
and career and life beyond.
So both of those show personal growth
even just by trying to achieve perfection.
So again, we see here body paragraph two,
striving for perfection can have negative health implications.
We can talk about the stress of high achieving students.
We can talk about body dysmorphia
from the psychology class.
And so we have a good solid line of reasoning here.
Now, let's talk about commentary.
A couple of reminders when we are
explaining our evidence in our commentary, this is our voice.
This isn't just a summary of the evidence.
So we want to show how the evidence supports the claim,
maybe using 2 to 3 sentences.
We might want to think what the evidence shows--
it shows that-- is a good way to start or think in your head,
this shows that in order to start that commentary.
So avoid just restating or paraphrasing the evidence
again.
So let's look at an example.
I wrote the first part of body paragraph one, actually did I?
Yes, I did.
Striving for perfection is valuable and that it
can lead to personal growth.
When Benjamin Franklin decided to pursue perfection,
he created a chart of important values
like honesty and loyalty, there were several.
His list included numerous characteristics.
He decided he would work on perfecting one virtue a week
until he had achieved perfection in every virtue,
keeping track of his progress on a chart.
Although his experiment failed, Franklin
did not regret the time he spent trying to achieve perfection.
In the end, he said it had made him a better
person for having tried.
Franklin's experiment is an example
of how striving for perfection even
though it is impossible to achieve can be valuable.
Even though Franklin was not perfectly honest
when his experiment was over, he was
more aware of times when he could choose to be,
and he chose to be more often than he had before he
strove for perfection.
The same was true for the other virtues as well.
At the end then, Franklin was a better person
than before he began because he had improved in every virtue
and was more aware of his behavior.
So you'll notice here we have the claim, striving
for perfection is valuable and that it
can lead to personal growth, we have the specific example
of Benjamin Franklin and our citation as much information
as we know.
And then we have the commentary.
And notice this commentary explains
how that piece of evidence supports
the claim that striving for perfection
can lead to personal growth.
It wasn't just a summary of what he did.
So it's your turn.
You are going to pause here and add a second piece of evidence
to this body paragraph.
You can use the one that I have in the outline for us
about taking an AP class, or you can
decide to use one of your own to support
the claim that striving for perfection
can lead to personal growth.
And whenever you're ready, just hit Play
and you can continue on.
OK.
And you can do the same if you want
to write an entire body paragraph,
you could write body paragraph too.
Here we're looking at that second claim,
striving for perfection can have negative health implications
if not done cautiously.
Again, you can use the specific evidence
that I have in our outline here or you can do your own.
Remember not to just summarize in that commentary
that you're showing not just telling.
Pause here whenever you're ready.
You can hit Play and continue on with me.
In the conclusion-- so in the conclusion,
you can do a brief summary.
Like I said, if you have time to go beyond that,
you can think about the so what the implications.
So in this case, I might think about
what does perfection mean.
Is there a cautionary tale in there?
Do we want to remind people when it comes to social media,
for example, that we might need to be careful.
Or that it's great to strive for perfection as a student
but we want to make sure that we aren't endangering ourselves,
anything like that.
So going beyond and thinking about the implications
or the lessons maybe for society of that prompt.
Thank you.
A couple of reminders, remember to organize around the thesis
for a solid line of reasoning.
Remember to select evidence that is relevant,
can fit convincing, and sophisticated, that's directly
related to that claim and that we want to go beyond summary
and explain how the evidence supports
the claim in our commentary.
Thank you so much for joining me.
I hope you'll come back for the next video.
We're going to talk about the argument essay again
but we're really going to get into sophistication.
I hope you have an amazing time and come back.
Remember to be kind to yourself and to others.
Thank you so much.