In our last lesson, we began defining the features of a high quality argument. This lesson will deepen this learning, enabling you to create a storyboard for your own argument.
Today’s mini-lesson focuses on a process that I call reverse-engineering. Watch how I unmake an argument written by a skilled author in the video above. You’ll find it here. Go ahead and read it, along with me.
Then, use this process to reverse-engineer an argument of your own, in order to create a storyboard that will support your next steps.
—Investigate a variety of different arguments in your own world, until you find one that you’d like to use as a model for your own writing.
—Read it, and ask yourself: What is author doing? Where? How? Document what you notice, as I did in the first photo below.
—Next, unmake the argument. Break it into bits. Cut it apart using scissors, if you’d like. Then, create a storyboard, much like the one you see in the second photo below.
–Finally, define what the author is doing in each bit of the argument, as I have on each index card situated immediately above the bits of the argument in my storyboard in the third photo.
–If you’re up for an added challenge, ask yourself how the author is doing this, too. I added my observations about this to the remaining index cards–which are framed horizontally–around the margins of the storyboard in the third photo. I describe my thinking here, too.
You’ve Finished This Lesson When:
- You’ve reverse-engineered an argument of your own choosing.
- You’ve created a storyboard that will support your next steps.
- You’re able to say you’ve defined the structure of an argument and the elements that support it.