Argument ? Not from me.

Argument? Really? No, I haven't had to write an "argumentative" paper in college. Persuasive, yes. I guess you can say that's the same thing. I don't think it is. Not in 1010, 2010, or any of the upper division courses did I have to make an argument for something. It was mostly "interpretation" papers then it was all tech writing stuff. This is where the big difference between English majors comes in. My emphasis is in tech writing, so I never had to take those classes that would make you have to do those kinds of papers. For those of you who don't know what tech writers learn, lets just say it may seem boring to you creative writers. Also, we are not trying to give our opinion; we write what we are told to write. I may seem like we are just slaves, but at least we'll have jobs in the future. There, I said it. Now I'll talk about how I've looked at my student's argumentative papers.

Most of my student's argumentative papers are filled with "I feel." Is this OK? I think it just depends on the paper. I usually tell students to use "I know" when they are trying to make a much more bolder personal statement in their paper, not usually an argumentative paper though. But I tell them to use "I know" wisely. Don't say "I know" if you really don't know all the details of a certain subject. I tell students to use "I know" if it's about a personal experience or if they can truly say they know how the experience that they are reading about feels like. I get a lot of papers that show students trying to make an argument by using their personal experience to try and justify their argument. This is usually a bad move because for the most part, their stories have nothing to do with their argument. Most of my students fail to bring really any kind of evidence in their argument papers. Most just rely on their stories. Maybe they just think that adding a personal touch to an argument will give them more credibility. And who can blame them for thinking like that. Politicians use sad stories of struggling families or how their dad used to be a coal miner, etc. Using a personal story may work in politics or even in the court room (sadly), but it usually fails in an academic essay.

Maybe I should have learned how to write an argumentative paper in high school. I didn't really go to my classes. LOL! I was a bad student. Would I like to learn how write a better argumentative paper now. I guess. I'm just not that enthusiastic about it. I enjoy the writing that I do. People must think I'm not too thrilled to be an English major when they read this, but I honestly don't care what they think. I love professional writing. It's organized and I like that. Not saying that argumentative writing or even creative writing is bad. It's just not my thing. I don't believe I will be writing hardly any argumentative papers in my future.