Likewise, as writers move from common ground to problem statement, they must implicitly or explicitly acknowledge and respond to the ideas of others. In other words, writers must imagine what their readers already know in order to engage them by challenging, complicating, or disrupting this knowledge with a problem statement or question. By articulating a question or problem, a writer gives readers reason to care about the claim that the writer puts forth in response.Įmphasizing the importance of common ground and problem statement over claim supports students’ understanding of academic argument as conversation. (This latter term may be more intuitive for WR 120 students, who are not yet generating arguments from their own research). As Chapter 7 of Turabian states, “The centerpiece of your introduction is your disruptive research question ,” also known as a problem statement. Most students are familiar with the idea of claims (thesis statements), but they are less familiar with questions or problems–and this lesson seeks to foreground their importance. (While Kate Turabian identifies a fourth move, “ significance ,” we see significance as tightly linked to the question or problem and talk about it with students accordingly.) They respond to this question or problem with a claim, an answer, or the promise of an answer.They disrupt that stable context with a question or a problem, highlighting something debatable or not yet known that this reader cares or should care about.They say something about the current situation, creating common ground with the imagined reader and offering some background.Introductions to academic arguments typically include three main rhetorical moves: We can introduce this notion through how we teach introductions, the moment in an essay where the writer must enlist readers to engage. But the ability to imagine and write for a reader who could genuinely learn from the student’s argument is, in fact, critical to a rhetorically effective essay. It is hard for many student writers to imagine a reader other than their instructor, who by definition knows a lot more than they do about the matter at hand.
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