Graff advocates for students to write argumentative papers as if they are in a conversation. He suggests they use a summary-response pattern. I like the idea of writing an argumentative essay similar to the way we argue in conversation. I believe the point of writing is to communicate, and we have a lot more practice communicating in verbal conversations than on paper. It only seems logical to me to make writing more like conversation in order to more effectively convey an argument in writing.

However, Graff also suggests that students “summarize the objections that [they] anticipate will be made.” This is where my questions begin. Although, a writer might be able to anticipate some counterarguments to his point of view, is it really adding a “naysayer” to your paper if you are both the sayer and the naysayer? It seems like students would have to be careful not to fabricate a counterargument. Or, is that what Graff is advocating? Although it may lead to a better developed argument, it still seems like a superficial type of argument to me. Is this an effective way of making an argument?

Graff also recommends that students not only be very explicit in what they say, but also “tell readers how and how not to read it.” To me this seems like it would also require a lot of assumptions on the writer’s part and an exertion of control that I’m not sure I believe the writer possesses. Can we really control how others read what we write? Graff indicates that the writer must tell the readers how to read the paper in addition to being explicit. How do you control how readers interpret what you write beyond writing as explicitly as possible?

Scholes recommends writing text against text. In the journal articles we skimmed in the last class, I noticed that the articles were not articles about a piece of literature but rather articles on articles that other people had written about literature, or even articles on articles on articles about literature. If an academic writes articles based on assumptions he has made about an article someone else wrote based on the assumptions that an academic made in writing an article and so on, how valid will those arguments be? It seems like the arguments would become further and further removed from the primary text.

I agree that argumentative essays could be more conversational and should address the already established points of view that might challenge the argument, and I believe in the idea of text against text, but I think we need to be careful that we are not diluting arguments and information by making too many assumptions about counterpoints that have never been established and trying to write in anticipation of any possible interpretation that could be made by a reader.