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Parallelism Worksheet 24A
"More Parallelism Practice"
Parallelism/Modifiers Continued: Part 10 unit 6 Worksheet
Complete thesis challenge
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Parallelism Continued
Prepwork for Thesis Challenge
Thesis Challenge Document
Your secret to a strong position essay: a strong Thesis Statement
Handbook Chapter 3
Remember, a strong claim is direct, concise, clear, and provocative (though not intentionally outlandish or extreme).
You should stake a clear and specific position—the thesis is no place to be vague and indecisive!
An effective thesis strives to generate discussion about a certain aspect of your topic.
In other words, your claim should be contestable, open to reasoned argument and debate. Ideally, your thesis should focus on one main idea. If you have lots of good ideas on the subject but are writing a short paper, choose what you think is the strongest or most important argument and make it your thesis.
Evaluating your claim
As you draft your working claim, evaluate its efficacy. A strong claim (thesis) will be:
Contestable: Intentionally writing a claim that someone can disagree with may seem counterintuitive, but consider that if no one could possibly disagree with what you’re arguing, there’s little point in writing about it. Being able to acknowledge and refute counterarguments will strengthen your claim, not weaken it.
Reasonable:
While you want your claim to be contestable, you also want it to be reasonable. A claim can be radical, in the context of current dialogue on your topic, and still be reasonable if you have sufficient evidence to support it. Readers will recognize the difference between thoughtful, critical interpretations of evidence and contortions that twist evidence around to support an unreasonable claim.
Specific:
Broad claims are more difficult to support effectively than focused claims. Specific claims also tend to provide readers with more useful information than broad claims.
Significant:
Consider the context of the course for which you are writing your paper. Is your claim adding anything meaningful to the current dialogue surrounding your topic? Note that as you become more familiar with the concerns of a given topic or discipline, you will be able to contribute more significantly to the discussion.
Interpretive:
Does your claim offer an interpretation of evidence or does it simply describe a situation?
- A good thesis outlines the rest of the essay
- I'm a big fan of what I call the roadmap method of thesis statements. A good thesis not only states your position, but calls attention to the structure, or at least the big, structural ideas, you're going to use to support your thesis. These ideas should come, if not in the thesis statement (and let's face it, with compound and complex sentences at your disposal, there is little reason why they should not) then as physically near to it as you can make it. These ideas should also be in the order in which you plan to present them in the essay. Always check your thesis statement after completing an essay to make sure that your paragraph order matches your roadmap. Sometimes things change while your writing. Make sure your opening reflects those changes.
Carefully worded
Because it communicates your paper's main idea, your thesis statement should be clearly and accurately worded. It should be direct and straightforward. Avoid using vague, wordy phrases. Also, avoid using phrases like "I believe," "It seems," "personally."
THESIS CHALLENGE
Now, you try...
Much like Manjoo's argument about the necessity of Facebook, most Americans would agree that there is no reason why people should resist other dominant forms of technology, especially the smartphone.
Despite the overwhelming popularity of smartphones, there are still Americans (approximately 30% of cell phone users) who own dumb phones (talk and text only).
Nearly half of those dumbphone users have incomes under $49,000 a year, suggesting the choice had to do more with economics than preference.
For some Americans though, the dumbphone may be a matter of preference. These dumbphone owners are holdouts who resist on principle.
Consider the following position that Scott Johnson writes in "Why I Resist," an article published inTechnology World in 2014:
"I have consciously opted out of the connected culture of the smartphone for a variety of reasons. Individuals who have smartphones miss out on a lot of adventure, waste a lot of time, and are plagued with more stress. Dumbphones allow individuals to be more productive and more thoughtful about how they spend their time. They also allow people to be "present"--to be entirely focused on and engaged with the real world instead of the screen."
1. Make sure you understand the claim that is offered in the prompt.
2. Brainstorm:
What do we agree with?
What do we disagree with?
Does Johnson use any logical fallacies here? Does he make assumptions?
What other issues are related to Johnson's claim? How might we bring these into our own position argument thesis?
Other Positions to consider:
"I would not want to live without a Smart Phone. It keeps me connected to the world around me. I have no idea how many times I have looked on Facebook or Twitter and some kind of big important news is being posted by everyone. If I would not have had my phone on me then I would have had no idea but what was going on until I got home. Not only that but being able to jump on the internet at any given time is a true blessing. Just about everyday I am in a discussion with someone and we do not know the answer to something. So we use our smart phones to find out. I know for a fact that I look things up way more often than I used to just because it is so quick and easy now. So for these reasons and many more I love my Smart Phone. :]"
"I have given in to having a smart phone and love having the ability to access the web for directions and information wherever I go for business. My office also has a VoIP phone system so we all communicate seamlessly without being in one location."
"I have many friends who grew really addicted to their "smart" devices. When we'd go out for a drink, the common ritual occurs - check in with FourSquare, then tweet if it's a particularly nice place, check their email, and maybe take a photo and post it on Facebook - and that's even before the drinks arrived. Checking email/tweets/status update routine would then extend during the conversation, in 5-10 minute intervals. Interestingly, I never had a smart phone. For me the ultimate thing to look in any phone has been it's battery life. That easily removed any smart phones from a list of desirable phones as far as I am concerned. Give me a 10+ day battery life and that gets me excited.
Not being "plugged into" the email throughout the day really allows me to enjoy the rest of my day, time that I am supposed not to be working."
"For most of us, our phones have become a part of us. We would no more leave the house without the phone than we would without clothes.
But if you have a gadget you're going to carry around with you everywhere, you really should get the most out of it. If you upgrade from a standard phone to a smartphone, there's a whole world of new things you can do."
THESIS CHALLENGE
Practice:
In "Why I Resist," an article published in Technology World in 2014, Scott Johnson writes,
"I have consciously opted out of the connected culture of the smartphone for a variety of reasons. Individuals who have smartphones miss out on a lot of adventure, waste a lot of time, and are plagued with more stress. Dumbphones allow individuals to be more productive and more thoughtful about how they spend their time. They also allow people to be "present"--to be entirely focused on and engaged with the real world instead of the screen."
With your group, create a well-developed thesis statement that states your position on this issue and responds to Johnson's claims. Use one of the 3 ways to respond. Compose a thesis statement that would serve as a road map for a short (approx. 2 page) position essay.
Make sure your thesis is
- contestable
- specific
- reasonable
- interpretive
- significant
Make sure your thesis is a solid sentence or two
Make sure your thesis adheres to the rules of parallelism
Include the name of all your group members on your thesis.
Templates for Disagreeing
X is mistaken because he overlooks ____________ and ____________ . By doing so, X fails to explore ___________, which is important because of __________.
X's claim that ____________ rests upon the questionable assumption that ______________. Therefore......__________________.
I disagree with X's view that ______________________ because ____________, ____________, and ________________.
By focusing on _____________, X overlooks the deeper problem of ___________ and ________________. Therefore, __________________________.
Templates for Agreeing
X's argument that __________________ is extremely useful because it sheds insight on ______________ and ________________.
I agree with X when she argues ______________ because ______________, ______________, and _________________.
I agree with X's idea that _______________. It is a point that needs emphasizing because of ____________ and __________________.
Templates for Agreeing and Disagreeing Simultaneously
Although I agree with X's point about _____________ because ___________, I cannot accept his overall conclusion that ________________ because __________________.
Although I disagree with X's point about ____________ because ______________, his overall argument is valid because _______________ and ____________________.
X is effective in arguing _____________ in the way that she _______________; however, X fails to examine ____________ and ________________. In doing so, she ___________________.
Although X makes a strong claim in pointing out that _______________, his argument about __________________ is less convincing because of _________________. Furthermore, he fails to explore how _____________________.
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