(A Flow Chat Demonstrating How People Learn to Cook (just a joke...) )

Outcome 3 reflects the ability to produce complex, analytic, and persuasive arguments and claims. In other words, a successful writing has a claim, which is arguable, worthy of discussion, and reasonable; this claim should also be unfolded into multiple points and analyses that can prove the central claim from a comprehensive perspective.

It is important to have an arguable claim for our writings. An arguable claim means it is a claim that not all of us agree with. An inarguable claim is more like a common sense that can be accepted or comprehended without the necessity to be proved, or has already been proved by many people. An inarguable claim has a low necessity to be discussed, so we should apply arguable claim to our writing instead of inarguable claim. I am good at making this kind of claims. For example, the claim of my major paper 1, those who move from one discourse community to another should learn the new language spoken in the new community without losing their original one, is an example of arguable claim. It is arguable, because there are people stand for its counterclaim – bilinguals might not be able to speak both languages as well as monolinguals do, and it is also true that in contemporary society, there are many people who undergo language replacement instead of language addition. Because of this claim, my paper has a strong necessity – it should convince those who believe its counterclaim.

In addition, our claims should also be worthy of discussion. In other words, the claim should have a high stake. It shouldn’t be something subtle like “we should brush our teeth every day”; instead, it should be something that is important to discuss or has a great impact on something when it is implemented or not implemented. My revision for the second draft of major paper 2 shows a successful procedure of turning a subtle claim into a complex claim that has a high stake and is worthy of discussion. In the first draft of this paper, the claim was: we should care about the moral concerns of laboratory animals. This claim has low stake because care about concerns can’t directly make any significant change on anything; it can neither directly change the moral status of lab animals nor influence people’s progress on the way of performing animal experiments – caring about moral concern, so what? Thus, in the second draft, I change my claim to: “even though the fairness of using laboratory animals in experiments is controversial, we should still allow animal experiments” (2). This claim shows a high stake, because it states the rationality of animal experiments and allows people to do research on animals, which is currently one of the most important ways for people to accumulate scientific knowledge.

Furthermore, just having a good and complex claim is not enough to persuade our readers. In order to make our writings persuasive, we should logically and critically unpack our claims. My organization of major paper 1 successfully demonstrates my ability to make my claim persuasive. As my goal of MP1 is to refute language replacement and encourage language addition, I write MP1 in a typical form of argument essay overall – First, I describe what language replacement is (2; par. 1) and state the benefits of it (2; par. 2 and 5; par. 2); then, I point out what problems it has (4; par. 1 and 4; par. 2) and introduce language addition “All of these conclusions point to a solution between replacing original language and refusing new language – learning the new language and maintaining the original one, i.e., language addition” (6; par. 2) as the solution of its problems. My organization is logical and critical, because it shows that I objectively analyze facts that stand for not only my claim but also my counterclaim without deliberately ignoring sources that are unfavorable for my argumentations, which is persuasive. In order to persuade our readers to believe our claims, we should also explore the breadth and depth of our claims in order to promote our analysis. For example, in major paper 1, I demonstrate the significance of language addition in several dimensions – what agony people have to tolerate if they don’t undergo language addition (Amy Tan’s problem of connecting herself to her origin in 7; par. 2), what benefit people can gain if they do: “Language addition allows people to express their thoughts to both their original discourse community and the new community they move to, understand the cultures in both their original and new community, and think in two linguistic ways” (6; par. 2), why it is important to encourage language addition as individuals, families, and societies, and how they can encourage it (8; par. 1). All these dimensions show a broad and deep excavation for the topic of language addition, which provide my readers with thoughtful analysis that can persuade them.

In the process of unpacking our claims, it is ordinary that we sometimes introduce some points of view that are too opposite. If we are not able to introduce a smooth transition to link two opposite points of view together, these two points will look conflicting, and the reader will get lost in the writing because he/she may think there is more than one central claim in the paper. In my major paper 1, I use a paragraph to transit my argumentations discussing about language replacement to the argumentations for language addition (MP1, 6). In this paragraph, I first summarize all my theses about language replacement: “Language replacement is positive for its help to integrate new relocated people into the majority and negative for its cutting off connection of these relocated people to their origin. Language replacement integrates new relocated people’s way of thinking into the majority and separates their way of thinking from their origin while refusing the new language has the opposite effect.” Then, I introduce language addition: “All of these conclusions point to a solution between replacing original language and refusing new language – […], i.e., language addition.” Finally, I talk about the stake and other details of language addition: “Language addition allows people to express their thoughts to both their original discourse community […] All these advantages come from mastering both their original language and the language spoken in their current discourse community.” This paragraph is a successful “mini” road map for the reader to transit from one thesis to another without being lost.