Readings about Rhetoric & Argumentation

31 “On the Other Hand: The Role of Antithetical Writing in First Year Composition Courses”

Steven Krause

In this essay, Steven Krause invites writers to engage in a somewhat unconventional planning exercise: to explore the antithesis in their writing projects. Krause explains how doing so tests out the strength of an argument and creates an opportunity to generate content for the essay. An antithesis is a counter-perspective, a counter argument. When we draft arguments, we sometimes get so caught up in checking off all of the boxes of what we need—a claim at the end of the intro paragraph, reasons, a counterargument—that we do not pay enough attention to what persuasion actually means, and how persuasion is audience-centered. Read this essay to find strategies for developing counterargument and response.

Read Stephen D. Krause’s “On the Other Hand: The Role of Antithetical Writing in First Year Composition Courses.”.

 

Keywords from this chapter in Writing Spaces

debate, antithesis, thesis, audience

 

Author Bio

Steven D. Krause is Professor of English Language and Literature at Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti, Michigan. Most of his teaching at both the undergraduate and graduate levels explores the connections between writing and technology. Some of his recent scholarship has appeared in the journals College Composition and Communication, Kairos, Computers and Composition, and The Chronicle of Higher Education, as well as in the edited collections Designing Web-Based Applications for 21st Century Writing Classrooms and Writing Spaces (Invasion of the MOOCS).

 

This article was originally published on WritingSpaces.org, an Open Textbook Project. The site features many articles about writing and composition that may be useful to you.

 

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