Chapter 12 summary

Calvin Gurtler

4/27/14

English 102

                  In chapter 12 of the Bedford Researcher we discussed important ways  to properly develop your argument. When supporting your argument it is important to first support your thesis statement. The first step you should take when trying to support you thesis statement is to choose a reason. The kinds of reasons you choose will change based on the type of document you intend to write. For example, readers of reflective documents, such as blog posts and academic essays, will expect you to focus on a particular subject. While readers of informative documents, such as reports, essays, and articles, expect you to help them understand something about an issue. You should then select evidence to support your reasons. You can draw evidence from your sources in the form of quotations, paraphrases, summaries, numerical data, and visual images. Again, you should be considering the type of document you intend to write. You also need to decide how you want to appeal to your readers, whether you want to appeal to authority, to emotion, to principles, values, and beliefs, to character, or to logic. The final main step in supporting your argument is to assess its integrity. You check your arguments for fallacies. the four major fallacies that arise in a document are fallacies based on distraction, fallacies based on questionable assumptions, fallacies based on misrepresentation, and fallacies based on careless reasoning.