15.10: Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs)

The chapters of How Arguments Work aim to empower students to integrate and apply chapter concepts in the ways described below.

Chapter 1: Introduction

• Recognize ourselves as participants in a larger academic conversation.
• Explain how learning to write will help us academically, professionally, and personally.
• See reading and writing as tools for careful critical thinking.

Chapter 2: Reading to Figure out the Argument

• Identify the main claims of a text as well as the reasons that support those claims.
• Identify any limits, counterarguments, or rebuttals mentioned in an argument.
• Draw a visual map of the claims, reasons, limits, counterarguments, and rebuttals.

Chapter 3: Writing a Summary of Another Writer's Argument

• Write a thorough summary of an author’s text that includes that text’s main claim, reasons, counterarguments, and limits.
• Choose phrases precisely to show the role of each point summarized within the larger argument.
• Identify key similarities and differences between two arguments.
• Write an essay summarizing and comparing two arguments that highlights what we can learn from their key similarities and differences.

Chapter 4: Assessing the Strength of an Argument

• Check arguments for common problems such as exceptions, faulty evidence, invalid assumptions, and inadequate treatment of counterarguments.
• Identify insights in an argument that can contribute to future discussions on the topic.
• Write a complete assessment of an argument’s strengths and weaknesses with a thesis that points to the most crucial ones.
• Use precise and varied phrases to highlight the argument’s flaws and insights.

Chapter 5: Responding to an Argument with Our Own Ideas

• Distinguish between assessing the strength of an argument and offering an original idea
• Generate relevant and original responses to others’ arguments
• Demonstrate the ability to suggest an exception to an argument
• Demonstrate the ability to extend an argument with an original point
• Demonstrate the ability to suggest an alternative argument.

Chapter 6: The Research Process

• Understand a research paper assignment prompt
• Choose, evaluate, and integrate sources from a wide variety of publications including academic journals
• Narrow a research topic.
• Use correct MLA format for essays and in-text citations.

Chapter 7: Forming a Research-Based Argument

• Determine the purpose of an argument
• Distinguish between definition, evaluation, causal, and proposal arguments
• Explain what common questions will need to be answered for each of the above argument types. 

Chapter 8: How Arguments Appeal to Emotion (Pathos)

• Describe the value of emotional appeals in written academic argument
• Identify the ways in which a given argument appeals to emotion through word choice, tone, or powerful examples
• Assess the likely effectiveness of an emotional appeal for a particular audience
• Distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate emotional appeals
• Use legitimate emotional appeals to support their own written arguments. 

Chapter 9: How Arguments Establish Trust and Connection (Ethos)

• Describe the value of building trust and connection in a written academic argument
• Evaluate the effectiveness and legitimacy of an argument’s appeals to trust and connection
• Use effective, legitimate strategies for building trust and connection in written arguments.

Chapter 10: Writing an Argument Analysis

• Write an analysis of an argument's appeal to emotion
• Write an analysis of an argument's appeal to trust
• Connect an assessment of an argument's logical structure to an assessment of the effectiveness of its rhetorical appeals
• Give constructive feedback on an argument analysis essay
• Describe how the visual features of an image can reinforce the message of a visual argument.

Chapter 11: The Writing Process

• Describe the stages of the writing process
• Identify strategies for annotation, brainstorming, outlining, and drafting
• Choose what to focus on in revision
• Give constructive feedback on a peer's draft
• Evaluate and incorporate peer feedback.

Chapter 12: Essay Organization

• Write a thesis that summarizes the main point of an essay
• Write a topic sentence that summarizes the main point of a paragraph
• Introduce relevant specific evidence to support a topic sentence
• Integrate quotations and paraphrases from other texts as support
• Connect a new idea to a previous point or to the thesis
• Introduce essays in ways that engage the reader in the specific topic
• Conclude essays in ways that sum up as needed and point toward further questions or implications.

Chapter 13: Correcting Grammar and Punctuation

• Understand the value of being able to write Standard English in professional and academic settings.
• Acknowledge the value of other English dialects.
• Describe multiple proofreading techniques.
• Feel empowered to look up, learn about, and fix a variety of common errors.

Chapter 14: Style: Shaping Our Sentences

• Recognize clarity as the first priority in academic writing.
• Edit out repetition and wordiness.
• Revise sentences to feature characters as subjects and actions as main verbs.
• Use parallelism to create balanced sentences.
• Employ varied sentence structures to make prose more engaging.
• Feel empowered to decipher convoluted academic prose.