Research Project Proposal and Draft

My research project is on the viability of the use of logic in composition classrooms. Richard Fulkerson defines logic as “the systematic study of argument with a view eventually to classifying any given argument as satisfactory or unsatisfactory” (“Logic” 199). Through my research I hope to provide evidence that teaching logic to students in 1301 can improve the quality of written arguments and boost critical thinking skills. Those two factors are vital to the production of quality, factually sound work, especially at the university level. Being able to judge the validity of arguments will help students to not only produce better quality work of their own, but also to spot faulty arguments in the work of their peers and even primary and secondary source materials.

The paper will have two parts. The first will be a discussion of the theorists who have studied either just logic or logic as it applies to teaching composition. It will include both their views of what the study of logic should entail, how their conception of logic applies to the composition classroom, and what affects they theorize it will have on a student’s ability to make valid arguments. Since I am still in the process of researching this topic, this draft will consist entirely of the body of this part of the paper.

The second part will be a learning tool for students who want to learn more about logic. This will most likely take the form of a website since websites are both easily accessible and allow for a great deal of interaction between the student and the material. Through a website I can also include multimedia, such as video recordings of commercials and political debates. Since I want for the students to be able to learn how to apply logic to real world situations, it only makes sense to avoid the use of the standard format of logical argument, which usually entails statements such as:

All composition classes are hard.

1301 is a composition class.

Therefore, 1301 must be hard.

While this kind of writing might make students better able to make logical conclusions, it is unlikely that it will help them to write effective argumentative essays. I will include definitions and examples of induction, deduction, logical fallacies, and other key concepts for understanding logic.

In so far as what help I would like to receive from the readers, it would be helpful to know your thoughts on how logic is relevant to teaching composition. Also, I would be interested in knowing what issues that I have written about the in the discussion of secondary sources below seem the most vital to quality writing. Finally, if anyone has any suggestions as to what multimedia might be useful in the first part of the project, that would be very helpful.

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In “A New Logic for Composition,” Jack Pitt explains that the new logic he calls for is distinct from the Aristotelian system of logic as well as formal deductive and inductive logic. This new logic is based on the use of a specific kind of deductive logic in which “a series of sentences one of which (the conclusion) is claimed to follow from the others (the premises)” (Pitt 88). Pitt further explains that students must be taught the difference between validity and truth because an argument can be valid, but untrue or vice versa.

Dennis Packard argues that teaching logic in composition classes will add to the rationality of student writing in “From Logic to Composition and Reading.” He argues that using effective logic in writing:

allows us (1) to isolate premises and conclusions of arguments, (2) to determine logical connections and relationships within such statements, and (3) to evaluate arguments for validity. (366)

While Packard’s article mainly focuses on using outline diagramming to find the arguments in sentences, he also makes some valid points about the importance of logic in general. By breaking down the sentences that make up arguments into outlines, he points out the importance of understanding the implied premises in an argument. While not all writing includes leading words and phrases like “therefore” and “as a result,” that does not mean that those phrases are not meant to be inferred by the reader.

Richard Fulkerson discusses the features of a form of logic that he terms “comp-logic” in the articles “Logic and Teachers of English?” and “Technical Logic, Comp-Logic, and the Teaching of Writing.” In the former, he laments that at the time in which his article was published that logic was not considered as a necessary part of the composition curriculum. Fulkerson alludes to a study done by William McCleary for his doctoral dissertation that suggested that there is no evidence that teaching logic to composition students makes them able to write better argumentative papers. Despite the ineffectiveness of the kind of formal logic that McCleary used in his study, Fulkerson still argues that logic can be used in the composition classroom if it is transformed to meet the needs of writing students. He states that while composition teachers do not necessarily need to teach logic, that they need to understand it in order to help students to understand such issues as “why a written generalization without examples is unconvincing and how to improve it” (“Logic” 200).

In “Technical Logic, Comp-Logic, and the Teaching of Writing,” Fulkerson details the features of comp-logic. He explains that it:

includes three parts: “induction,” by which composition texts mean generalizing from evidence; “deduction,” by which composition texts mean reasoning from general principle to specific case; and an array of material fallacies that students are to avoid. (“Technical Logic” 437)

It is important to note that Fulkerson has taken these traditional logic terms and reworked their definitions to make them viable for use in composition. While he lists deduction as a component of comp-logic, he later explains that for the most part students will be using induction instead of deduction. One of the ultimate goals of comp-logic is to enable students to provide the type and quantity of examples that are likely to satisfy a reader.

Brooke Moore wrote Making Your Case: Critical Thinking and the Argumentative Essay in order to meet the needs of composition teachers who are increasingly being as to teach critical thinking in their courses, and vice versa. She addresses how critical thinking can be applied to writing affective argumentative essays and to identifying poor arguments in sources. In chapter seven of the book she discusses informal fallacies. She identifies argumentum ad hominem, a fallacy in which “we ‘refute’ a person’s ideas by pointing out something about the person,” as the most commonly used fallacy (Moore 157-158). The remainder of the chapter details fallacies such as the appeal to authority, straw man, and scare tactics.

In A Guide to Argumentative Writing, Byron Stay explains that argumentation “implies interpreting the world around us and communicating such interpretations meaningfully” (6). He advocates the Toulmin method of argument, which is made up of data, claims, warrants, and qualifiers. Stay also gives a process for evaluating issues in order to develop arguments for or against them. In particular, he focuses on polemic issues, or issues that “tend to get people strongly one of two sides,” such as capital punishment (Stay 86).

Interestingly, in his book Teaching and Learning Argument, Richard Andrews divides his strategies for teaching argument into different age groups. While presumably the other sources did not address techniques according to which level they are appropriate for because they were mainly focused on teaching logic in the college classroom, it does seem important to recognize the differing capabilities of children and young adults of varying ages to compose arguments. This source also provides an international perspective since both the author and the subjects of his research are British.

Works Cited

Andrews, Richard. Teaching and Learning Argument. New York: Cassell, 1995.

Fulkerson, Richard. “Logic and Teachers of English?” Rhetoric Review 4.2 (1986): 198-209.

Fulkerson, Richard. “Technical Logic, Comp-Logic, and the Teaching of Writing.” College Composition and Communication 39.4 (1988): 436-452.

Moore, Brooke N. Making Your Case: Critical Thinking and the Argumentative Essay. Mountain View: Mayfield Publishing Company, 1995.

Packard, Dennis. “From Logic to Composition and Reading,” College Composition and Communication 27.4 (1976): 366-372.

Pitt, Jack. “A New Logic for Composition.” College Composition and Communication 17.2 (1966): 88-94.

Stay, Byron. A Guide to Argumentative Writing. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 1996.

My Observations

About a week ago I was in the line at the Walmart pharmacy waiting to pick up some Claritin-D. I was standing in one of two lines and the one that I stood in fed into two registers. There was a Hispanic woman with her little girl standing in the line opposite mine. They were watching their cart, which was full of items and parked towards the benches at the back of the makeshift pharmacy space. In front of me was a woman who was talking on the cellphone about how she had been waiting for quite a while and didn't understand why her prescription hadn't been processed yet. There were two women at the registers that I was waiting in line to get to, both of whom were having lengthy transactions performed for them. After I had been waiting in line a couple of minutes, a pushy middle aged woman showed up behind me. She decided that even though the line I was in was feeding into the two registers, that it would be alright if she started her own line going to one of the registers. Ignoring my death glare, she proceeded to wait in her makeshift line until the register she had chosen opened up. Thus, even though I had been waiting longer, she was served first. Already in a bad mood, I was all the more irritated when I finally got up to the register and realized that a blond woman had decided to move the line right up to my heals. Luckily, I was able to buy the Claritin-D quickly and leave.

Interestingly, line etiquette is much different here in Texas than it is Northern Virginia.
In Northern Virginia, people conscientiously leave a foot or two of space between the counter where people are paying and the beginning of the line. This is especially vital in a pharmacy, where people might be buying items that they would rather others didn't see; however, in Texas personal space seems to be less of an issue. This fits in with other behavioral differences between the cultures of these two very different states. It makes sense that in a place where there is a more friendly atmosphere even among strangers that there would be less concern about privacy.

Voice in Academic Writing

My first reaction to the question of whether voice competes with or enhances academic voice is to say that academic voice seems to squelch any real meaning or sincerity in a person's writing. I am currently in a class where we are supposed to use more "elevated" writing, which I have decided means putting the Word thesaurus on overdrive and plugging in terms from psychology and philosophy textbooks like madlibs ("The Reflexive Psychosis of Being in the works of Emily Bronte and Theodor Geisel").

However, I also think that voice can potentially greatly enhance one's academic writing. A good, memorable article is not only informative, but also accessible and highly readable. As a highly intelligent, literate people, I feel that we can only sound our most engaging and articulate when using language that we are comfortable with, and thus have mastery of.

My Ever Evolving Teaching Philosophy

I think that the biggest change to my teaching philosophy is that I don't believe in grading quite as harshly as I used to. While I still think that nothing prompts a student to want to brush up on their writing skills more than a low grade on a paper, in general I do not give low grades like I had thought I would. Instead, I make sure to make copious comments on the papers that I grade. Whether that works or not, I know that I at least read the comments that my professors leave for me and benefit from them, so hopefully the freshmen will too.

After researching information on logic as it relates to composition for my video, I think that I will definitely teach about logic in my classes more so than I had thought I would when the class began. I know that after reading about logical fallacies, I have become better able to explain why the arguments and structure of the freshman comp papers need to be fixed. The question will be how I will effectively incorporate this into the class since studies done on logic in the classroom have for the most part shown that it did not have a real impact on student writing.

My Question

Given what you've read for this week (or even from previous weeks), what puzzles you? What are you wrestling with? What questions do you have that others might be able to answer/help you wrestle with?

Even though we talked about this issue in detail in class, I am still not sure about how to integrate peer writing groups into the classroom successfully. I was never a student who liked peer writing or group work in general. It always seemed like the teacher had just decided that they didn't feel like preparing a lecture or didn't have the time to think one up, so instead they just chose to have us all talk it out amongst ourselves. Also, as an English major to be I already wrote pretty well, so whenever I was put in a situation where other students were supposed to critique my work, I never felt that it was very helpful. Either the other students had very little input on my work or they gave advice that was completely incorrect. For these reasons, it is difficult for me to get excited about putting future freshman through an exercise that I feel is like the proverbial blind leading the blind. Has anyone else thought of innovative and credible ways to incorporate group work?