Evaluation |
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By the end of this lesson, you should be able to do each of the following without consulting notes or other resources:
Please complete the following assignments before coming to class on Tuesday: Read Chapter 10 of Everything’s an Argument
and excerpts from Captain John Smith’s A Description of New England
(97-100) and Chapter IX of William Bradford’s Of Plymouth Plantation
(126-129). Write a complete rough draft of your evaluation. This draft should include an introduction, a claim, a set of criteria, supporting paragraphs showing how your writing meets or does not meet the criteria, and a satisfying conclusion. Our class activities this week include the following: Think Fast: In what ways are Captain John
Smith and William Bradford making arguments of evaluation in the excerpts you
read from A Description of New England and Of Plymouth Plantation? What are their criteria? Which argument do you find more
compelling and why? Presentation: Evaluation (Professor Canada) Cooperative Learning: Discuss the arguments
with your classmates. Discussion: During this time, we will
discuss the insights and questions that have emerged during our reading,
“Think Fast” exercise, presentations, and cooperative learning. I also will show you how to post your
first essay on the World Wide Web.
Please come to Dial 149 on Thursday. Workshop: Exchange drafts of the evaluation
with a partner. As you read your
partner’s draft, circle the claim, comment on the appropriateness and
thoroughness of the criteria, underline the topic sentences, comment on the
appropriateness and thoroughness of the supporting evidence, and evaluate the
essay’s general clarity and style.
Suggest any changes that you think would improve the essay. Think Again: Using what you have learned or
reviewed in this lesson, revise your evaluation. Make sure that this essay has a claim, evidence, effective
topic sentences, well-organized paragraphs, ample support, and an engaging
style. Conferences: While the rest of you are
working on the “Think Again” exercise, I will meet with two of you in
one-on-one conferences. During
this time, I will review some of your writing, orally quiz you on lesson
objectives, and field your questions. Announcements: We will wrap up this lesson
with announcements regarding upcoming lessons, as well as other relevant
subjects. Names and Terms
Make sure you know the meaning and significance of each of the following names and terms:
Resources
You can find more information about the subject covered in this lesson by consulting the resources listed below: Everything’s
an Argument contains extensive discussion of evaluations. Be
Your Best: Internet contains general information about the structure of
the Internet, along with tips for designing a Web site. The
Easy Way to a Web Site features step-by-step instructions for creating and
posting Web pages. Updated August 29, 2002
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IntroductionHaving discussed the general subject of argument in our last lesson, we turn this week to a specific brand of argument called evaluation. Before coming to class on Tuesday, type a draft of your evaluation in Microsoft Word and save it on diskette. On Thursday, bring this diskette to Dial 149, where we will conduct a draft workshop and post these drafts on the World Wide Web. DiscussionEvaluationYou walk out of a cinema with a friend and say, “That was a great movie!” Someone asks you what you think of your new car, and you say, “It’s the perfect car for me.” Your roommate asks you about the course you took with Dr. Canada, and you say—well, I’ll leave that up to you. In each of these instances, you are making arguments of evaluation. Specifically, you are presenting your ideas about whether something was good or bad. On a broader level, an evaluation is a kind of argument in which the writer or speaker measures a specific thing—a movie, a car, a college course, or just about anything else—against a set of criteria in order to determine its value. The criteria are the standards of measurement, the factors that give something value. In many cases, evaluations may argue simply that something is “good”; in others, however, the value may be something more specific. For example, a military analyst may evaluate the strength of a nation’s navy, or magazine’s reporters may evaluate the academic atmosphere of a university. In each case, the evaluator is using a set of criteria, but these criteria refer to specific kinds of value: strength or academic atmosphere. Like all kinds of arguments, evaluations can themselves be evaluated. That is, readers or listeners can decide whether the evaluation is compelling. In other words, do they believe the evaluator’s assessment? Two factors determine the effectiveness of an evaluation. First, the criteria should consist of standards that the audience accepts. If, for example, you argue that the movie you saw was good because it had great special effects and your audience cares nothing for special effects, then you have not gained much ground with that audience. For this reason, you generally will want to use widely accepted criteria in your evaluation or, if you choose unusual criteria, show why your criteria are appropriate. Second, your evaluation should clearly show that the movie, car, course, or other item you are evaluating meets the criteria you have set. Plan to use numerous examples to illustrate your points. For instance, if you are arguing that your car is perfect for you because it is very safe, point out several specific safety features, such as air bags and anti-lock brakes. You already have encountered and created hundreds or thousands of evaluations, and you will engage in many more over the course of your life. Knowing how to assess their strengths and weaknesses and how to create compelling evaluations of your own can help make you a successful consumer, voter, and more. ConclusionIn this lesson, we focused our exploration of argument on a particular brand called evaluation. In our next lesson, we will look at a different kind of argument, one called definition. |