Our Story Begins Essay Options
Option One
We read in Judith Shulvit's Slate book review of Our Story Begins the following:
To read a collection of Wolff's work that spans the years is to realize that he is obsessed with the act of lying. Asked in an interview why so many of his characters lie, Wolff replied, "The world is not enough, maybe? … To lie is to say the thing that is not, so there's obviously an unhappiness with what is, a discontent." A recent outbreak of faked memoirs has set off a storm of outraged pontification about why people pass off false histories as their own, so it's satisfying to read about liars who lie for interesting reasons rather than the usual despicable ones. Wolff is, in fact, a genius at locating the truths revealed by lies—the ancient and holy tongues, you might say, the otherwise inexpressible inner realities that lies give voice to.
In a six page paper, typed and double-spaced, develop a thesis that analyzes the characters' need to lie in Tobias Wolff's collection Our Story Begins. Address at least 4 stories in your essay. Be sure to have a debatable claim that is argumentative, cause and effect, definition, or claim of value.
For your Works Cited, use Wolff's collection, my blog, and a book review.
This appears to be a cause and effect thesis and the level of difficulty is very high.
Option Two
In one of his darker moods, our instructor McMahon, inspired by Wolff's fiction, said this about the human race:
"We are a lost and sorry lot, hopelessly imprisoned by self-deception: false narratives we rely on to define our identities; tantalizing chimeras that assuage the boredom of our banal existence, and willed ignorance that prevents us from seeing the grotesqueries roiling just underneath the facade that we present to the world and to ourselves. As a result, we are crazed and deformed creatures forever lost in a world of solipsism."
In a six-page essay, support, refute, or complicate McMahon's remarks in the context of no fewer than 4 stories from Tobias Wolff's collection Our Story Begins.
For your Works Cited, use Wolff's collection, my blog, and a book review.
This appears to be an argumentative thesis and the level of difficulty is extremely high. In fact, I discourage you from choosing this one unless you "have" to do it.
Option Three
One camp of readers argues that Wolff's fiction is redemptive in that its characters are delivered from their delusions through life-changing epiphanies that propel them back into the world of reality and personal accountability. Another camp of readers say the epiphanies come too little and too late and only serve to speak to the characters' lives, which can be defined by endless cycles of futility and as such Wolff's stories are not redemptive but nihilistic.
What camp are you in? Develop an argumentative thesis that defends your position in a 6-page essay.
For your Works Cited, use Wolff's collection, my blog, and a book review.
This is an argumentative thesis with moderate and appropriate difficulty. When I teach this book again, this may very well be the ONLY option available to the students.
Use the Toulmin Model for Essay Topic 3
Support, refute, or complicate the assertion that Wolff's fiction is redemptive in that its characters are delivered from their delusions through life-changing epiphanies that propel them back into the world of reality and personal accountability (adapted from The Structure of Argument by Annette T. Rottenberg and Donna Haisty Winchell).
Major Components of the Toulmin Model
You need a claim or thesis that answers the question of the assignment:
Is Wolff’s fiction redemptive in that its characters are delivered from their delusions through life-changing epiphanies that propel them back into the world of reality and personal accountability?
There are three types of claims and it is your responsibility to show evidence or data to support your claim.
Claims of fact assert that a condition has existed, exists, or will exist and are based on facts or data that the audience will accept as being objectively verifiable.
Examples
Many of Wolff’s characters are narcissists.
Many of Wolff’s characters fail to connect meaningfully with others.
Many of Wolff’s characters are trapped in symbiotic relationships.
It’s doubtful anyone would argue these points because they are not only self-evident but in many cases flagrant or extreme examples of narcissism, solipsism, and symbiosis.
Claims of value attempt to prove that some things that are more or less desirable than others. They express approval or disapproval of standards of taste and morality.
Examples
Many of Tobias Wolff’s stories depict an America that suffers from moral bankruptcy due to its blind embrace of perpetual adolescence.
Tobias Wolff’s America is one in which a lack of community and personal connection compel us to fabricate a false universe as a form of futile compensation.
The greatest flaw in Wolff’s story collection is a conspicuous absence of redemption, which makes the stories flat, predictable, and nihilistic.
Claims of policy assert that specific policies should be instituted as solutions to problems. The expression should, must, or ought to, usually appears in the statement.
Literary analysis, such as writing about Tobias Wolff’s stories, generally doesn’t entail a claim of policy.
More often a current event or social problem is the source of a claim of policy.
Claims of policy incorporate both claims of fact and claims of value.
Examples
People who weigh over 400 pounds should have to pay for two airline seats.
Universal healthcare must be implemented for social, health, and moral reasons.
Existing laws governing gun ownership should be more stringently enforced.
Americans are not as safe to the Ebola virus as the government is telling us.
Ebola nurses should be subject to forced quarantines.
You need to support your claims.
Support consists of the materials you use to convince your reader that your claim is sound. These materials include evidence or data that consists of facts, statistics, and testimony from experts.
The appeals to needs and values are the ones that you make to address the values and attitudes of your audience to win support for your claim. These appeals are known as emotional or motivational appeals. They are the reasons that move your audience to accept a belief or adopt a course of action.
The Warrant
A warrant is a principle that is taken for granted or assumed to be true. It may be stated or implied.
If you believe the audience shares your assumption, then there may be no need to express it.
Claim: Universal healthcare is the only moral and practical approach to America’s healthcare crisis.
Support: Every year over 25,000 Americans die of treatable diseases while zero people die in other developed countries where even one death would be looked upon as a national scandal.
Warrant: You’re assuming the reader shares your belief that it is immoral to allow people to die of treatable diseases.
Claim: It is immoral to teach college students fiction, like Tobias Wolff’s stories, in which there is no redemption, only a message of hopelessness and despair.
Support: Teachers shape young people’s minds and teaching them only dark stories strips them of their hope and belief for a better future, for society and themselves.
Warrant: The writer is assuming that teaching dark stories is equivalent to depressing young minds and impeding their chances of striving for a better future. Some might call such thinking over-simplistic and blind to the possibility that dark stories can be cautionary tales that actually encourage morality and that morality is an essential ingredient of being personally accountable and hopeful for a better future.
You can see from the above example that we shouldn’t assume everyone agrees with our warrants.
Counterarguments and Rebuttal
In the Toulmin model, after you have provided evidence that supports your claim, you want to show the reader that you have carefully considered your opponents’ views, so you address them in the counterargument section near the end of your essay. Typically, in a six-page essay, you will want to devote one or two of your pages to counterarguments and rebuttal.
Templates for counterarguments and rebuttal:
Some of my opponents will disagree with my claim by arguing that . . .
While my opponents make a compelling case that my claim is . . .
We can be impressed with some of my opponents’ points regarding . . . However,
We would be well served to heed our opponents’ warning that . . . However,
On the topic of ___________, Author X attempts to make the case that__________.
Author X claims _____________. However, it is actually true that _____________.
Author X attempts to make the case that ___________. However, Author X clearly fails when we consider _________________.
In his essay, Author X attempts to make the case that_________________. However,
In her essay, Author X implies _____________. However, careful consideration shows that___________________.
For a debatable claim, a common thesis template contains concession in which your dependent clause addresses your opponents' view.
Debatable Thesis Templates for Option Three
While a strong case can be made that Wolff’s characters are rendered helpless in their delusions, it would be over-simplistic to argue that Wolff’s fiction is nihilistic when we consider _________________, _______________, _______________, and _____________________.
To deny that Wolff’s fiction is nihilistic is to deny the key causes of characters’ collapse and stagnation evidenced by ______________, _________________, ______________, and _________________.
All of us are afflicted with certain cycles of futility, but these cycles do not, as they do not in the case of Wolff’s characters, make a strong case for a nihilistic worldview because __________________, ____________________, ________________, and ______________________.
While there are moments here and there of lucidity, recognition, and even epiphany in Wolff’s characters, their insights prove feeble in the face of their nihilistic prison evidenced by _______________, ____________, _______________, and _____________________.
To argue that Wolff’s characters are trapped in a “nihilistic prison” is a gross over-simplification of Wolff’s masterful fiction evidenced by his stories’ ________________, ___________________, ___________________, and __________________.
To argue that teaching stories without redemption is harmful to students ignores the value of studying the cautionary tale illustrated with power in Tobias Wolff's stories.
Support your claim by addressing the text with varied signal phrases.
Signal Phrase Templates
Mark's need to punish his parents in "Desert Breakdown" speaks to his stunted emotional growth. As we see Mark fantasize about being a famous performer who calls out his parents in the audience and humiliates them:
We can gather that Pete from "The Rich Brother" has come to his senses in the story's final scene:
Miller wants to reconnect with his mother, but by the time he arrives home, it is too late:
We can surmise from this passage that Dr. Booth fails to redeem himself by the end of the story:
The following passage from "Nightingale" compels us to reconsider Dr. Booth's alleged failed attempt at salvaging the relationship with his son:
As noted New York Times literary critic Michiko Kakutani observes:
What makes Wolff's stories such a vital contribution to literature, we read in Kakutani's review, is that . . .
McMahon answers his critics who object to his choosing Wolff for English 1A by conceding . . .
Interviewed by James Campbell in The Guardian, Wolff asserts that his fiction . . .
Brian Gold escorts us down a lugubrious path of adolescent sulking alternated by obnoxious grandiosity, as we read:
In the words of literary critic Michiko Kakutani,
Tobias Wolff's characters are compulsive storytellers and liars," writes Michiko Kakutani, who adds, "they are constantly spinning their own lives into melodramas, inventing or embellishing personas, daydreaming themselves into fantasy worlds, or turning their pasts into confessional anecdotes." Explaining the motives behind their lies, Kakutani observes: "Some embroider the truth to try to make themselves seem more interesting. Some lie out of self-delusion. Some invent phony identities so that they can cheat strangers out of money. Some fantasize as an escape from the banality of their lives." The significance of Wolff's fiction, Kakutani claims, is in how the lying is elevated into metaphor. As she writes, "In Mr. Wolff’s hands their storytelling becomes a metaphor both for people’s need to make narrative order out of the chaos of daily existence and for the fiction-making process he practices himself."
Example of Intro and Thesis
I was six years old and trying to tell myself that everything was okay as I walked with some kids to KR Smith Elementary in San Jose, CA. But the smell of rotten tuna wafting from my Captain Kangaroo lunch box was so strong the three boys accompanying me were asking me what the hell that horrible smell was, so we stopped in a field and to appease their curiosity I opened the lunch box and the tuna sandwich, rotten and slimy, mixed with the mayonnaise, had escaped its plastic baggie to create dark ink streaks and odious chunks along the insides of the tin box. The rancid tuna had coated my apple, my orange, and whatever else Mother had put inside for me that day.
One of the kids asked me if I was going to eat this and I shrugged. I assumed I had no choice. It was my lunch after all. So I closed the lunch box and we continued our way to school and then I put my lunch box alongside everyone else’s in the designated coat closet.
During class, Mrs. Corey sniffed along with the other students and crinkling her forehead complained about a rotten fish smell. Other students were squeezing their noses and making mock gagging noises. It was clear Mrs. Corey could not teach until the matter of the rancid fish smell had been solved. The boys I had walked to school with pointed at my offending lunch box upon which Mrs. Corey walked cautiously toward it, as if approaching a landmine, slowly opened the box and stared at its contents as if witnessing an abomination from the bowels of hell. Then looking at me, she said, “Did your mom pack this?”
I nodded and Mrs. Corey winced in a way that castigated my parents, my extended family, and my ancient ancestors and delivered terrified pity on me.
She then closed the lunch box, gave it to the teacher aid to place outside, and announced to the class that my food was unfit for eating and that she needed volunteers to take one thing out of their lunch and give it to me so that I would have something to eat during lunch time.
During the lunch break, I was too mortified to have an appetite and I remained on my blanket while avoiding the odd stares from my classmates. It was my first lesson on how generosity, no matter how well-intentioned, becomes a burden when tinged with pity because the recipient of the charity feels belittled, humiliated and smaller as a human being than the giver. Charity is too often a bargain in which the recipient loses his dignity and feels humiliated in so many intangible ways that accepting the charity becomes impossible.
Sadly, though, Brian Gold, overcome by humiliation, accepts "charity" in Tobias Wolff's masterful story "The Chain" and in doing so he strikes a Faustian Bargain (deal with the devil) that sends him down a rabbit hole of destructive narcissism and denies him all traces of redemption evidenced by ______________, _____________, ______________, and ____________________.
Key Passages from “The Chain”
Regarding Brian’s biting of the dog to save his daughter, we read, “He’d told the story many times now and always mentioned this. He knew it was trite to marvel at how time could stretch and stall, but he was unable not to. Nor could he stop himself from repeating that it was a ‘miracle’—the radiologist’s word—that Ana hadn’t been crippled or disfigured or even killed . . .”
We continue to read, “He was going through the whole story again with his cousin Tom Rourke. . . His cousin had an exacting, irritable sense of justice, and a ready store of loyal outrage that Gold had drawn on every since they were boys. He had been alone in his anger for a week now and wanted some company. Though his wife claimed to be angry too, she hadn’t seen what he had seen. The dog was an abstraction to her, and she wasn’t one to brood anyway.”
Brian Gold needs this drama because he has nothing else.
What do we learn about Brian, Tom, and Brian’s wife in these passages?
Brian is so needy for significance that he grabs on to his moment of heroism, courage and masculinity and he plays it for all he can. He tells the story over and over.
He wants this to be a life-defining moment, erasing his low self-image as a wimp and a coward. Further, he feels lonely because clearly his wife is not celebrating her husband’s heroism. Brian doesn’t feel connected with his wife on any level. She doesn’t admire him, she doesn’t share his anger against the dog and the dog’s owners, and she certainly doesn’t approve of his revenge plot, which he will keep secret from her.
Clearly, Brian is a lonely man who feels disconnected from his marriage, who lacks a sense of belonging, and self-worth.
Feeling worthless, he wants to find justice in his life and he capitulates to Tom’s Devil Bargain: I’ll kill the dog for you if you do me a favor later.
Tom says, “We’ve got to take care of business, Brian. If we don’t nobody will.” Tom and Brian join in their adolescent, grandiose “heroism.” And this creates a chain of events from which the story’s title is based.
At the story’s end, we read after the killing that Brian Gold is in his video store watching news coverage of the horrible crime when Garvey says, “That man’ll get his . . . He’ll get what’s coming to him. Count on it.”
The story could be interpreted in two ways: Either Brian Gold is a damned man with no redemption or his punishment is the best thing that ever happened. He thinks he’s falling, but he’s really rising. Perhaps he won’t follow his misguided cousin Tom anymore, for example. However, it is difficult to find anything redeemable in Brian. The story appears to be a cautionary tale about the inevitable destruction of revenge, especially when that revenge is fueled by juvenile, grandiose egotism.
Narcissism Fuels Spite in “The Chain”
One. Spite: The impulse for revenge. More specifically, spite is an obsessive appetite for harming and injuring someone as a form of self-gratification and the misguided pursuit of justice. The narcissist often feels victimized by others or he feels envious of other people being more happy than he is. In both cases, he reacts with spite.
Two. Self-Destructive Spite: “Bite your nose to spite your face” captures the Faustian Bargain of revenge in which the avenger suffers self-mutilation as he seeks misguided “justice.”
Three. What are Brian Gold’s psychological weaknesses that fuel his spite?
1. Self-pity causes resentment, which seeks relief through lashing out at one’s perceived enemy. Gold pities his low station in life. He believes a more grandiose existence, one rich in bling and opulence, will make him happy when in fact what he really needs is integrity and dignity.
2. Lacking in self-esteem and self-worth, Brian Gold needs an enemy (a scapegoat) to elevate his self-regard and to appear heroic toward others. Brian Gold is obsessed with boasting of his heroism to others. He fears people perceive him as being weak and passive for being a Jew. He appears to have an inferiority complex.
3. He resents that people, including himself, question his masculinity and he seeks revenge to impress people like Tom Rourke so that they will give him “Man Points.” Tom goads Brian into admitting he liked the taste of blood because, we can infer, real men like blood. No real man sits back and lets a dog attack his daughter. A real man gets revenge. In other words, Brian Gold's motivations are to appease his ego rather than do what is best.
4. He feels alone in his anger, feels that his anger is not understood (certainly Brian Gold’s wife doesn’t understand it) and he seeks those who will help him coddle his anger because in part this newfound anger empowers him. Angry husbands do one thing and one thing only: They cause their wives to go into withdrawal mode. If you're angry when it's appropriate, fine, but when you're always angry, you become boring and annoying. You're no longer a husband; you're a whiner. A woman will either tune you out or leave you.
5. The aggrieved oversimplifies a single event and allows that one event to be a repository for all the anger and frustration in his life so that in seeking to avenge one injustice when in reality he has consolidated all his anger from many areas of his life and focused on one thing. This is the case of Brian Gold.
6. He has an injured ego, which seeks to restore itself by dominating its perceived enemy. Dealing with an injured ego is extremely difficult because these people become inconsolable, perceiving help or good advice as a form of patronization or manipulation. The person with the injured ego is usually paranoid.
7. Brian Gold has a sense of violated honor, which results in the aggrieved lashing out as misguided attempt at restoring his honor. In an attempt to restore his honor, he resorts to the cheap propaganda of the Taliban, calling the disc jockey a “Child of Satan” to justify his vandalism.
8. He possesses self-righteous indignation, which gives the aggrieved an unlimited license to exact justice against his perceived enemy.
9. He is stricken by envy, which causes self-pity and resentment and turns the aggrieved into a “hater” who seeks consolation by degrading and humiliating those he sees enjoy an unfair advantage in life over him. Gold ponders the wealth the owners of the dog enjoy.
10. He has too much alone-time, which allows the aggrieved to dwell and obsess over his perceived grievance, nurturing it and giving it life until it grows beyond his wildest dreams. The craziest people in the world spend too much time alone.
What does the story tell us about the unintended consequences of spite?
1. The aggrieved “bites his nose to spite his face,” meaning that in the process of injuring his enemy he suffers an even greater injury.
2. The aggrieved is so intoxicated by his own self-righteous indignation that he is blind to the self-destruction that results from his spite.
3. The aggrieved often forms alliances with unsavory, even satanic individuals like Tom Rourke, who promise to help carry out his acts of revenge. Once the pact is made with the likes of Rourke, Gold now owes a debt to him and here we arrive at the Faustian Bargain.
4. Once the aggrieved tastes revenge, he develops an addiction to it so that revenge becomes his only form of “pleasure.”
5. Once the aggrieved begins his act of revenge, he sets into motion a chain of events that grow beyond his control resulting in destruction that is disproportionate to the original infraction.
6. Fixation, stagnation; also called arrested development or emotional retardation.
7. Perdition, a form of shame and punishment that lasts a very long, long time.
Key Passages in “The Other Miller”
We read regarding Miller’s rift with his mother, “One thing Miller told them was true: he hasn’t had a letter from his mother in two years. She wrote him a lot when he first joined the army, at least once a week, sometimes twice, but Miller sent all her letters back unopened and after a year of this she finally gave up. . . . Miller is a serious man. Once you’ve crossed him, you’ve lost him.”
Miller suffers from juvenile grandiosity, a similar trait in Brian Gold and Tom Rourke. All three share the “lie” that their self-righteous indignation is based on a justified contempt against their adversaries when in fact their real enemies reside within themselves. Unable to empathize or connect with others, they all live this lie and suffer solipsism. Additionally, any kind of redemption seems nearly impossible.
And what was the mother’s “crime” that caused her son to shun her? We read, “Miller’s mother crossed him by marrying a man she shouldn’t have married.”
Even more disturbing, we read that Miller felt he and his mother were happy alone together: “She couldn’t see what she already had, how good it was with just the two of them.”
So to spite his mother for marrying Phil Dove, Miller, who hates the military, shoots his foot to punish his mother by joining the army and getting sent to Vietnam.
The psychologist Erich Fromm says in order for us to mature, we have to leave our parents, both physically and psychologically. This separation process, according to Fromm, is called individuation. It is the beginning of the process of becoming an independent adult who can love and reason without the need of parental approval.
But there is no evidence of maturity in “The Other Miller.” Even Miller’s motivation to see his mother is not based on humility and the need to reconnect with someone he loves. His motive is juvenile grandiosity. We read he wants to return home to Mother so she can “receive his pardon.”
Miller’s grandiosity is a mask, or lie, to hide the fact that he is an emotionally crippled child.
And what does he return to? A funeral for his mother.
Narcissism in Brian Gold and Miller
Part One. Review the Narcissistic Traits of Brian Gold (from “The Chain” by Tobias Wolff)
- Brian Gold is too focused on himself to the point that his intense self-focus results in isolating himself from others. He feels separate from others, which reinforces his self-focus, a vicious cycle.
- Brian Gold chews on the gristle fat wad of self-pity, an indulgence that massages his narcissistic pleasure centers and elevates his status as an innocent victim, perhaps even a martyr. As a victim, he believes the world “owes him” to make-up for his unjust suffering.
- As a cipher with no depth or core to his personality, he is like a reed in the wind, susceptible to the influences of outside forces and he compulsively conforms to whatever demands he believes will help bolster his image. For example, when Tom calls Brian’s masculinity into question, Brian is so insecure he will resort to a drastic measure to give credibility to his manliness.
- Brian Gold is so narcissistic that he makes everything about himself. He can’t even look in his daughter’s eyes without being reminded of himself as a failure.
- Brian Gold embodies self-pity, which we said in class is having the genius to always find a way to hate your life. There is a disparity between one's life circumstances, which could be very good, and one's bad attitude.
Miller’s Narcissism Is Rooted in the Incorrigible Wish to Remain a Child Dependent on His Mother
- When you’re a child, your mother loves you unconditionally and takes care of all your needs. However, there comes a time when you must grow up and break the tie from your mother. You must venture into a world that doesn’t love you unconditionally, a world that will not meet your needs. This is called adulthood. The narcissist refuses to grow up. He never achieves what Erich Fromm calls "individuation."
- The narcissist, such as Miller, cannot have healthy relationships. He can only have sick symbiotic relationships, a diseased mutual interdependence that results in more and more dependence. The result is that both parties in this symbiotic relationship become emotionally crippled.
- The narcissist is selfish and does not want his “host” or “hostess” to break free from the symbiotic relationship and achieve emotional health. For example, when Miller’s mother wants to start a life with a healthy distance between her and her son and remarry, Miller feels jealous and betrayed. He’d rather be his mother’s “little boy” forever and ever as the symbiotic relationship turns into emotional gangrene and eventually spiritual death.
Write a thesis: claim of definition for narcissism
Wolff's characters are liars because they show classic narcissistic tendencies evidenced by _________________, _________________, __________________, and _________________.
Wolff's characters warn us that the narcissist cannot achieve redemption because _______________, _____________, _________________, and _______________.
While McMahon makes good points about the difficulty of redemption in Wolff's narcissistic characters, he is in error when we consider _____________, ___________, ___________, and ___________________.
Redemption, albeit a flawed and incomplete version, is rendered in Wolff's stories evidenced by __________, ___________, ____________, and _____________.
The kind of flawed and incomplete redemption described above is not even worthy of being called redemption. What we see in Wolff's stories is nothing at all that's redemptive. What we experience in these dark tales is hard-hitting nihilism evidenced by ____________, ____________, ____________, and ___________.
Lesson on Finding and Evaluating Sources for Your Research Paper (adapted from Practical Argument, Second Edition)
When you use sources for a research paper, the sources supplement your ideas; however, it should be clear the sources do not take over the writing of your essay. Your voice, your knowledge, your deep thinking about the issue are all on center stage of your essay.
Some people say a research paper is 80 percent your words and another 20 percent of quotations, paraphrases, and summary from your research sources. That sounds about right.
Your college library has a Website, containing its online catalog, electronic databases, and reference works.
Evaluating Sources for Your Research Paper
You must assess six things to determine if a source is worthy of being used for your research paper.
The author’s objectivity or fairness (author is not biased)
The author’s credibility (peer reviewed, read by experts)
The source’s relevance
The source’s currency (source is up-to-date)
The source’s comprehensiveness (source has sufficient depth)
The author’s authority (author’s credentials and experience render him or her an expert in the field)
Warning Signs of a Poor Online Source
Site has advertising
Some company or other sponsors site
A political organization or special interest group sponsors the site.
The site has many links to other biased sites.
Summarizing Sources
“A summary restates the main idea of a passage in concise terms” (314).
A typical summary is one or two sentences.
A summary does not contain your opinions or analysis.
Paraphrasing Sources
A paraphrase, which is longer than a summary, contains more details and examples. Sometimes you need to be more specific than a summary to make sure your reader understands you.
A paraphrase does not include your opinions or analysis.
Quoting Sources
Quoting sources means you are quoting exactly what you are referring to in the text with no modifications, which might twist the author’s meaning.
You should avoid long quotations as much as possible.
Quote only when necessary. Rely on summary and paraphrase before resorting to direct quotes.
A good time to use a specific quote is when it’s an opposing point that you want to refute.
Using Signal Phrases or Identifying Tag to Introduce Summary, Paraphrase, and Quoted Material
According to Jeff McMahon, the grading rubric in English classes is used in such a way by instructors that soon there will be no such thing as an “easy” or “hard” professor. They’ll all be the same.
Jeff McMahon notes that the grading rubric in English classes is used in such a way by instructors that soon there will be no such thing as an “easy” or “hard” professor. They’ll all be the same.
The grading rubric in English classes is used in such a way by instructors, Jeff McMahon observes, that soon there will be no such thing as an “easy” or “hard” professor.
The grading rubric in English classes is used in such a way by instructors that soon there will be no such thing as an “easy” or “hard” professor, Jeff McMahon points out.
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