Lesson 4: Analyzing Arguments, Revising Your Thesis, and Integrating Quotations, Summary, and Paraphrase

Lesson 4: Chapters 5 and 6: Analysis and Development of an Argument

How Can You Improve Your Critical Reading?

One. Identify the main idea, claim, or thesis in a piece of writing.

Two. Identify the form and structure. Essays use a variety of expository modes: contrast, comparison, argumentation, description, narrative, cause and effect analysis, extended definition, to name several.

Three. What problem is the writer trying to define?

Four. What bias, if any, does the writer bring to the topic?

Five. Notice the shifts from specificity to generality (induction) or generality to specificity (deduction).

Six. Notice the transitions used to establish a number of reasons (additionally), contrast (however, on the other hand, to the contrary), and comparison (similarly).

Seven. Use annotations, writing key ideas in the margins and underlining key words and phrases. Annotating increases your memory and reading comprehension. Using a pen is better than a highlighter because you can write your own specific response to what you’re reading whereas a highlighter is too fat to make comments. Another advantage of using a pen is that you might come up with ideas for your essay response, even a thesis, and you don’t want to forget that material.

Eight. Look up unfamiliar words to build your vocabulary and increase your understanding of the piece.

Nine. Identify the writer’s style and tone (voice). The voice could be conversational, supercilious (arrogant), morally outraged, friendly, condescending, ironic, etc.

Ten. Notice if the writer is being implicit, using implication or suggestion, rather than being direct and explicit in the expression of the main idea.

Eleven. Ask if the writer considered opposing views fairly before coming to his or her conclusion.

Twelve. What political point of view, if any, informs the piece?

Thirteen. How strong is the evidence in the piece that is used to support the writer’s claim?

Fourteen. What is the intended readership? Educated adults? Experts? Children?

Your first job in analyzing a text, is to determine the author’s thesis or purpose.

Was the purpose to persuade you to think about something differently or take action, analyze causes and effects, take you through the process of changing your car battery (process analysis), expose the corruption of a bureaucracy?

Once you determine the thesis, examine the author’s methods:

Does the writer quote authorities? Are these authorities competent and credible in the field?

Does the writer also address competent authorities that take a different, perhaps contrarian point of view?

Does the writer use credible statistics? Are the statistics current? Have the statistics been interpreted fairly and accurately?

Does the writer build the argument by using solid examples and analogies? Are they compelling? Why? Why not?

Are the writer’s assumptions acceptable?

Does the writer consider all relevant factors? Has she omitted some points that you think should be discussed? For instance, should the author recognize certain opposing positions and perhaps concede something to them?

Does the writer seek to persuade by means of ridicule and mockery? If so, is the ridicule fair and appropriate? Is the ridicule further supported by rational argument?

Is the argument aimed at a particular audience?

What tone, voice or persona is evident in the essay? Does the voice or persona give the essay credibility? Why or why not?

Some voices to consider:

Confident and straightforward

Arrogant and pompous

Mocking and self-aggrandizing

Bullheaded incuriosity for opposing views

So sanctimonious and pious as to be cloying and saccharine

So sanctimonious as to be unctuous

Persnickety

Whimsical, playful, capricious

Deadpan ironical

Gleeful self-righteousness

Curmudgeonly misanthropic

Bitter and pessimistic

Effulgently optimistic

When you evaluate an author’s text (essay or book), your argument about whether or not the author’s thesis was effectively supported or not is your thesis.

"Why Female Athletes Shouldn't Have to Beat Men"

The mixed martial artist Ronda Rousey has defeated 11 opponents, the most recent one in only 14 seconds. Perhaps predictably, this has led to questions about whether she will fight men.

In an interview with Marlow Stern of The Daily Beast, Ms. Rousey answered in the negative: “I don’t think it’s a great idea to have a man hitting a woman on television,” she said. “I’ll never say that I’ll lose, but you could have a girl getting totally beat up on TV by a guy—which is a bad image to put across.” She also alluded to the recent string of domestic-violence arrests among N.F.L. players.

Her reluctance to risk subjecting viewers to such an image is understandable. But even laying aside the issue of domestic violence, it’s worth asking another question: Why do we assume that a successful female athlete should move on to competing with male ones?

Ms. Rousey is undefeated in her weight class. Is her achievement somehow less legitimate because her opponents have been women? Is the only mark of true athleticism the ability to beat a man?

Those who would like to see Ms. Rousey in a mixed-gender bout might argue it would simply be an opportunity for her to fight the best of the best. But the presence of weight classes in mixed martial arts is an acknowledgment that it doesn’t always make sense to compare athletes with different bodies. If Ms. Rousey wouldn’t typically fight someone twice her size, does it make sense for her to fight someone who may have different bone density, different body fat percentage, a different center of gravity? Isn’t she already, by the accepted standards of her sport, the best of the best?

Gender segregation in sports has a complicated history, and it’s possible that more sports will one day be mixed-gender. It’s also possible that sports will one day adopt groupings that have nothing to do with gender — that are based on muscle mass, for instance, or skeletal structure. And if female athletes want to compete against men, they shouldn’t be barred from doing so.

But in the system we have now, expecting a woman to face a male opponent when she’s expressed no interest in doing so implies that excelling at women’s sports is a secondary achievement. It suggests that women’s sports are like the minor leagues — get good enough, and maybe you can play with the men.

And indeed, female athletes are too often treated as secondary. Last year, Lindsey Adler of BuzzFeed estimated that Kobe Bryant made almost three times as much for the 2013-2014 season as all the players in the W.N.B.A. combined. And a recent analysis of seven British newspapers found that just 4 percent of sports articles during a particular week in 2013 focused on women’s sports.

Female athletes deserve better than this — they deserve the same respect their male counterparts get. And that means treating Ronda Rousey as a champion in her own right, not just good for a girl.

Comments

Alexander Hamilton: Is there a sane person in America who believes Ronda Rousey needs to fight any man? Good, that's settled. Now here's the question I'd like to see answered: 2,000 years after the Coliseum was closed for business, why are people still watching one person beat up another? Is this as far as society has come? And what kind of person takes pleasure in intentionally hurting another? The difference between this barbarism and what Michael Vick did is one of degree, not of kind.

RobW: Female athletes are not "treated as secondary." They generally ARE secondary. Anna North complains that Kobe Bryant made three times as much as the rest of the WNBA combined. That is not because sports fans are sexists: it's because Kobe Bryant is approximately three times more interesting to watch that the rest of the WNBA combined. Fans pay to see the best, and there is not a single woman in the WNBA that could even sit the bench on any NBA team.

As an under-six-foot male, I was always a little bitter growing up that I didn't have any realistic chance of success basketball (Spud Webb notwithstanding). There are some under-six-foot leagues, however; is the fact that there is zero coverage of these in the sports pages evidence of rampant heightism? Ms. North believes that female athletes "deserve the same respect their male counterparts get." I assume that she would also believe, then, that under-six-foot players should get the same respect as their taller counterparts. No, of course she wouldn't. That would be silly--as silly as saying vastly inferior female athletes deserved exactly the same respect, box office, and press that the best male athletes get.

Sorry, but until Rousey demonstrates that she can routinely beat men in her weight class, she will remain merely "good for a girl." And, frankly, I don't think the sight of a woman fighter getting bloodily brutalized by a man would be negative--it might make plain to men the potentially devastating power they wield.

Jim Waddell: We need to recognize that men and women are different, in many ways. There are very few sports where the top female athletes could beat the top male athletes.

But there are areas where women excel more than men, beginning with education (and in staying out of jail.) Just because one sex does better than another in any given area is not prima facie evidence of discrimination.

Analyzing the Text

What is the author Anna North's purpose?

She wants to answer this question: "Why do we assume that a successful female athlete should move on to competing with male ones?"

North goes on to ask these two question:

"Is her achievement somehow less legitimate because her opponents have been women? Is the only mark of true athleticism the ability to beat a man?"

In other words, does Rousey have to beat a man in a fight to be legit?

These questions lead us to the author's thesis, which can be formulated this way:

"Rousey and female athletes in general don't have to compete against men to prove their greatness because we already have weight classes that compare to the different bone and muscle density between men and women."

Any weaknesses with the thesis? Yes, it has only one mapping component and it doesn't address the fact that the best fighter in Rousey's weight class can't compete against the best male fighter in the same weight class.

Does the author have a counterargument-rebuttal paragraph?

Do you notice any weaknesses in the author's argument?

How would you formulate a thesis in response to the author's column?

While North makes a good point that Rousey is a great woman fighter, her larger claim that Rousey is a first-rate champion equal to male fighters is muddled by the fact that Rousey's greatness is a combination of her fighting dominance in the female category combined with her celebrity that transcends MMA competition.

Signal Phrases

Here is a helpful link for signal phrase templates.

Integrating Sources and Avoiding Plagiarism

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.