The Elements of Argument: A Text and Reader

ELEMENTS OF ARGUMENT was selected as a textbook for a second-semester English composition course that I instructed for our local state university in the waning days of 2006. More or less the first half of the 866-page book is an instructional textbook and the second half is a collection of essays from a wide variety of authors from classical to contemporary.

Generally speaking, I found the textbook portion to be clearly and logically written, presenting in ten chapters most of the considerations involved in writing persuasive essays. These chapters include annotated essays that illustrate the processes of presenting a claim, supporting it, and being aware of the assumptions--the warrants--that affect both writer and reader. Additional short essays at the conclusion of each chapter are accompanied with generally good writing prompts for practice in writing short papers in response to the readings. Following these chapters are sections dealing with the writing of research papers and with citation formatting in both MLA and APA styles.

The numerous essays that are anthologized in the second half of the book vary greatly in length, topic and style. Throughout the entire book, contemporary essays tend to address topics of importance and interest to today's audience: racial categorizations, cloning, church-state separation, terrorism, rising college costs, torture, divorce, and so forth. The editors do not shy away from contentious subjects, and for that they deserve applause.

Let us look at the value of the book from two perspectives, first as it may be used in a controlled classroom environment and then as it may benefit an independent, nontraditional learner who is engaged in self-improvement.

As a textbook for a course in general composition, the book's focus on argumentation, or persuasive, writing obviously limits the focus of the course itself. Perhaps what is needed is a whole series of composition courses, each focusing on a different aspect of writing, of which persuasion is one valid type. In such an environment, ELEMENTS OF ARGUMENT would be, I feel, a fine textbook for the persuasive writing course. Alas, today we are lucky to get university students through no more than two semesters of composition, and much of that time must be spent in remedial grammar study. In this situation, I think our students would be better served by textbooks that combine composition instruction with a variety of literature types so that students can practice emulating more than just persuasive writing. Furthermore, it has been my experience that many schools change textbooks between the first semester's instruction and the second, even though most of the textbooks are entirely adequate in their scope and length to be used for both semesters. This means that fully half of each textbook goes unread, a terrible waste considering the cost of these texts. Under these practices, cutting the book in half so that students purchase only the instructional part, i.e., the 465 pages of the first ten chapters, would be a vast improvement and a benefit to students faced with increasingly insurmountable textbook and tuition costs.

Now, addressing the independent, self-motivated learner, I suggest that if one wishes to improve one's skill in persuasive writing, this is not a bad book with which to do it, although a skill such as writing effectively requires practice in doing, not simply reading about how to do it. The book is not designed as a self-help text, but reading the first ten chapters closely would certainly do no harm. As for the additional essays in the second 400+ pages, if one enjoys reading essay-style writing, this collection is sufficiently varied so that one can surely find quite a few essays to one's liking. Personally, I find that essay-reading becomes tedious after a while, and I long for at least a good short story if not a book-length work, fiction or otherwise-and I do believe that continual reading of a variety of literary styles does indeed help one improve one's writing, merely by exposure to interesting, well-constructed sentences. I doubt that I would find the motivation to read ELEMENTS OF ARGUMENT from cover to cover just for pleasure.

On an ending note, I found the associated CD, "I-Claim: Visualizing Argument," as well as the instructor's notes in the back of the textbook to be of very limited usefulness. I cannot truthfully say that inclusion of the CD enhances the value of the book to any appreciable extent. In short, if one is particularly interested in studying persuasive-style writing, at least half of the book may be of value; otherwise, I would invest my reading dollars elsewhere.

I have never read something that is so boring. It is somewhat hard to understand also. The writer uses many difficult words in the text. I still can't believe how boring this book is.

Excellent book that provides an excellent guide on how to present, state and support ones argument. Highly recommended.

I found this book to be very help full for not only it's content but it's language and focus. Even though it could but you to sleep. I learned a lot about how to analize arguments not only oraly but on paper over all it's a great book and I would recommed it for any learning envirnmont.

This book introduces the important elements of writing and/or reading an arguement. However, I found while reading it I was in danger of falling asleep only to be awakened by its occasional sample arguement and sample advertisements that are intresting. I am unsure if this is just a difficult subject to write about, or what.