Welcome back to AP Daily.
We are going to look today at the Skillforce C again.
This is the one where we're going to qualify claims using modifiers,
counter arguments or other perspectives.
We're working on your writing and we're going to look today at
how we can focus on our writing to avoid absolute claims,
to make our writing stronger,
sort of admitting maybe our opinion is not the only one out there.
And I'm Stephanie Hyatt.
I'm with you from Huntsville, Alabama at Lee High School and glad to be back.
So what are we going to learn?
Today, our standard is and we looked at this one under 3C when we were analyzing
some professional writing, but we're going to look at this idea that because
arguments are usually part of ongoing discourse,
effective arguments often avoid expressing claims, reasoning and
evidence in absolute terms.
And we looked at this before I think we were kind of examining it when we were doing
some rhetorical analysis.
We're going to look at it today in our own writing,
within the synthesis and argument essays.
In fact, we're going to kind of build on what we've been doing with those same,
the same two essays.
So avoiding absolute claims, you'll remember we talked about this before,
what some of those absolute terms look like always,
every absolutely completely without question none, never all.
These are the words that when you say them,
you give yourself absolutely no wiggle room, right?
You are saying that something is always the case,
it is never the case.
You don't really have any room to back out of that and say, well,
you know, except for these instances.
So we want to be careful about that because there really isn't an argument
that is that one cited, right?
There's always two ways to look at these things.
So let's look at an example of this from a student to see how a student has done
this well.
And this is looking back at that wind farm's essays.
The same one we've been looking at.
This is a different paragraph where I think they're on the second body
paragraph now, even though evidence points to wind power as a positive choice,
such a drastic change arouses opposition.
Source C states that multiple studies have demonstrated
that sleep interference gets worse, the nearer residents are to turbines.
The noise produced by wind turbines are proven to be much more annoying than vehicles
and much louder, especially at night.
The disturbance caused by wind power highlights a serious argument against wind power,
but it is not a deal-breaking detail.
When cars were first introduced and large cities were first formed,
there were those who demanded a return to quieter and more peaceful times.
However, as these people saw the benefit to such innovations firsthand,
there was no longer such a negative stigma about them.
Instead, they're even romanticized in some instances,
such as people referring to a city that never sleeps.
When big corporations decide to make the change to wind power,
there will be resistance, criticism, and a call for returning back to fossil fuels.
However, the people will get accustomed to the sounds and appearance of turbines,
except them, and eventually embrace them when they witness how it will benefit the planet.
Okay, just like the last body paragraph we saw from this student in this essay,
this is a very sort of pattern-driven approach where there's a topic sentence,
some evidence, commentary, more evidence, more commentary, sort of this back and forth
between the source and the argument from the student.
I hope you're noticing in this, in this synthesis,
that what the student is doing is they are keeping their argument completely central.
They are quoting the sources, they are paraphrasing the sources,
they're making it very clear when we get little pieces of the sources,
but they are really arguing from their own perspective.
So let's look at how this person avoids absolute claims,
because we don't see anything in here that says,
when farms are the best, you've got to do wind farms,
always come up with wind farms, or we should never have wind farms because of this noise.
The student is avoiding those types of all or nothing arguments.
Instead, we see something like, even though evidence points to it,
like, you know that the evidence says this is there, right?
And then you see words like such a drastic change, right?
These are words that kind of soften the argument a little bit.
Another one here, as those people saw the benefit, right?
Not a generalization that everyone saw, but just that as those people saw.
So in this particular paragraph from this particular student writer,
what you see is that there is a strong argument here,
but they're using some softening language.
They're avoiding those absolutes to make it clear that while they are putting for a particular
argument, they also recognize that there are other ways to view
this particular topic.
Now let's look at an example that maybe isn't quite as effective in doing that.
So this particular example is from one of those essays about that journey into the unknown.
And we haven't looked at this one before, and I don't want us to necessarily pick on this one
at all, but I want us to look at how this one differs from the previous one.
This one did not get as high a score.
But look at this paragraph with me.
When you think of the unknown, many will think deep space or deep in the ocean,
but the unknown can be something as simple as a new food.
The unknown simply put can be anything you don't know.
Using the example of food, we are quick to get something we always get,
but very hesitant to try something new.
One explanation is that it is our survival instinct.
We only trust that the food we know will taste good and we have no trust for the new food
only skepticism.
Okay, this particular paragraph is less successful.
Couple of reasons one is it does really throw out a whole bunch of different possibilities
before it kind of focuses on a single idea about the unknown.
It's focusing on the idea of trying new foods, and that's fine.
That's a fine example, but if that's going to be the example, there's really no reason
to throw out their deep space or deep ocean to begin with, it just sort of muddies the water.
That said, that's not where we get into the trouble with the absolute claims.
There's a couple of places.
First of all, and I know your English teachers have been telling you this since like probably
fourth grade, but when you use the word you and your writing and I'm your reader,
you're pointing at me.
It's about me.
When I think of the unknown, many will think deep space or deep in the ocean.
I didn't think of that, but the unknown, the unknown simply put can be anything you don't know.
So you're pointing to me repeatedly here, and I want you to think about that as its own sort
of limiting claim, its own sort of absolute, because now you're talking about it being my perspective,
and you don't honestly know my perspective.
You don't know my life.
You don't know what I'm thinking about.
You want to get that you out of your writing.
Don't throw it in there.
It's very, very infrequently correct, right?
It's normally wrong.
Remember, here I am not using absolutes because there are times when you would want to use it,
but this is not one of those cases, and usually most often in your argument essays,
you don't want the word you.
It's not about the reader.
So now look at a couple of other things that are going on here.
Anything you don't know, the unknown simply put can be anything you don't know.
Remember, whenever we say never or anything, everything, there's always an exception, right?
There's always an exception to always.
And right now we're throwing an absolute in there that anything.
We've got a generalization here.
We are quick to get something we always get.
Now, is that true?
For everyone, it's not true for me.
If I go to a new restaurant, or if I even go to an old restaurant,
I usually do try something new off the menu because I've had the other things.
So I think you want to be careful here when you are basically
using your own experience, which is probably what's going on here,
and suggesting everyone has that same experience, that's not necessarily true.
If this person has said, using the example of food,
I am quick to get something I always get at a restaurant,
but very hesitant to try something new, that would actually be okay.
That would be much better than including me and all of you into the argument.
There's one more in here.
There's one more absolute.
And it says, we have no trust for the new food only skepticism by saying,
we have no trust.
Again, that's an absolute.
So when you look at this paragraph, you knew with me that this paragraph had some weaknesses,
that figuring out what those weaknesses are, really all boiled down to,
there's way too many absolutes in here.
There's that you, I'm going to point at you and you're part of the absolute.
There's this generalization, there's uses of the words, no, and anything.
You want to try to get that out of your writing to make your writing stronger,
like the other paragraph we looked at.
So what do we need to take away this time and avoiding absolute claims?
You want to use qualifying language in your argument, like our first writer did,
where you've got those softening words that make it so much more applicable to
more situations, right?
You want to place yourself in the continuum and what I mean by that is,
you want to recognize that you're not the first person to talk about this subject.
You're not the first person to contemplate the unknown or wind farms,
and you want to establish yourself sort of in the middle of that conversation.
You probably don't have the defining answer on this side, and you don't have the defining answer
on this side.
You're going to be somewhere here in the middle, and you want to remember that your position
in here is not to basically offer the end-all, be all argument on this,
it's to offer a perspective.
And then finally, you want to avoid making these accidental tertiary claims.
And that's what I mean by that is when you start pointing at the use and the weeds,
and you're making these sort of accidental generalizations that involve your reader
and involve everyone who could be anyone in the audience.
Be careful of those things.
When you do that, it weakens your argument, it doesn't strengthen it.
So some ideas, today's lesson was a lot of don'ts, some things to not do,
but these are some things where if you can work these out of your writing,
you will absolutely strengthen your writing, and that's what we're here to do.
So thank you for joining me today, and let's keep writing strong.
