English Composition
105 flashcards by MentisLibrary
The college writing course in card form: thesis and argument, paragraph construction, evidence and citation in MLA and APA, revision, academic register, and the structural faults that sink a draft.
- What is a thesis statement?
- The one sentence that states the arguable claim the whole essay defends, usually naming the grounds for it.
- What makes a claim arguable?
- An informed reader could reasonably disagree with it, and evidence could change their mind.
- Topic and thesis: what is the difference?
- A topic names the subject. A thesis asserts something about the subject that has to be defended.
- Where does the thesis usually sit in a short academic essay?
- At the end of the introduction, after enough context that the claim is intelligible.
- What is the so-what test?
- Ask why a reader should care about the claim. If the only answer is that it is true, the claim is probably too obvious to be worth an essay.
- What is a working thesis?
- A provisional claim written early to steer drafting, expected to change once the evidence is in.
- What is a warrant, in Toulmin's terms?
- The unstated assumption that licenses moving from the evidence to the claim.
- Name the parts of the Toulmin model.
- Claim, grounds, warrant, backing, qualifier, and rebuttal.
- What does a qualifier do to a claim?
- It limits the scope, so the claim survives the exceptions a reader will think of.
- Why state a counterargument in your own essay?
- Because answering the strongest objection is what shows the claim has been tested rather than merely asserted.
- What is a concession?
- Granting that part of an objection is correct, then showing why the claim still holds.
- What is a straw man?
- Answering a distorted, weaker version of an opponent's position instead of the position they actually hold.
- Deductive and inductive arrangement: what is the difference?
- Deductive arrangement states the claim first and then supports it. Inductive builds through evidence and arrives at the claim.
- What is Rogerian argument?
- An approach that opens by stating the other position in terms its holders would accept, then builds toward shared ground before advancing your own view.
- What is the job of an introduction?
- Establish the context, narrow to the question at issue, and land the thesis.
- What is the CARS model of an introduction?
- Create a research space: establish the territory, establish a niche by showing a gap, then occupy the niche with your own contribution.
- What should a conclusion do beyond restating the thesis?
- Say what follows from the argument: what changes, what is now open, or what the reader should do with it.
- Why is In conclusion a weak opening for a final paragraph?
- It labels the paragraph instead of doing anything, and the reader can already see it is the last paragraph.
- What is a roadmap sentence?
- A sentence in the introduction that names the essay's parts in the order they will come.
- What is a reverse outline?
- An outline written from a finished draft, one line per paragraph stating what that paragraph actually does.
- What is the difference between coherence and cohesion?
- Cohesion is local: sentences connect to their neighbours. Coherence is global: the whole piece follows one line of thought.
- What is the known-new contract?
- Begin a sentence with information the reader already has and end it with what is new, so each sentence hands off to the next.
- When does a transition belong at the start of a paragraph?
- When the new paragraph needs to be linked to the one before it, which is most of the time in an argument.
- Block and point-by-point: the two shapes of a comparison essay.
- Block treats all of subject A, then all of subject B. Point-by-point moves criterion by criterion, treating both subjects under each.
- What is the five-paragraph essay good for, and what does it prevent?
- It teaches that a claim needs support and that paragraphs have jobs. It prevents any argument whose evidence does not fall into three equal parts.
- When should an academic essay use headings?
- When the piece is long enough or sectioned enough that a reader will need to navigate it, and when the discipline uses them.
- What does a topic sentence do?
- States the point the paragraph will make, in terms that connect it to the thesis.
- What is paragraph unity?
- Every sentence in the paragraph serves the point named in the topic sentence.
- What is the MEAL plan for a paragraph?
- Main idea, Evidence, Analysis, Link: state the point, give support, explain what the support shows, and connect back to the argument.
- How long should an academic paragraph be?
- Long enough to state a point, support it, and explain the support: usually four to eight sentences in college prose.