Week 24: Week 24 — Argumentation with Expository Models
Week of Mon, Mar 1 · week closes Sun, Mar 7
This week's items
Exact due times are in Canvas. Late work accepted at 10% per day; assessed work not accepted late. Vocabulary quizzes are unannounced and cannot be made up.
Know these cold
- Expository and argumentative writing are not entirely separate modes. Exposition that selects, arranges, and frames information is already making rhetorical choices — the appearance of neutrality does not make an exposition neutral.
- Blended structure: many effective arguments open with a genuinely explanatory section (what is the case) and follow with an argumentative section (what it means and what should follow). The expository foundation lends the argument credibility.
- The hinge sentence marks the transition from exposition to argument — from describing conditions to drawing conclusions. Locating this hinge in a text reveals the writer's argumentative strategy and the moment the writer commits to a position.
- Tendentious writing is biased toward a particular conclusion in ways that may distort the selection or presentation of evidence. An explanatory passage that selects only favorable evidence while appearing neutral is tendentious, not objective.
- A dialectic is a structured engagement with opposing ideas — genuine consideration of what the opposing position offers, not a straw man — through which a clearer or more refined understanding emerges. Arguments that engage a real dialectic are more persuasive than those that ignore the opposing view.
- Extended definition as argument: by defining a key term precisely and defending that definition, a writer stakes out the conceptual ground on which the entire argument stands. Definitional framing is argumentative even when it looks purely explanatory.
- Comparison-contrast exposition becomes argumentative when the comparison establishes that one option is preferable. The structure carries the verdict without announcing it — the argument is embedded in the structural arrangement.
- The neutrality test for expository foundation: genuine neutral exposition includes evidence that complicates the forthcoming argument, not only evidence that prepares for it. If every explanatory sentence points toward the same conclusion, the exposition is already an argument.
Meerk's quiz — open the Week 24 gate
10 questions, no time limit. 85% on your first attempt in a 24-hour window opens the gate. Retakes inside the window are practice — they help you learn, they don't count. Work alone; the point is to know it, not to have seen it.
Dinner Table Question
Ask at home: When a writer explains a situation, can they really be neutral? What would genuine neutrality require?
En español: Cuando un escritor explica una situación, ¿puede realmente ser neutral? ¿Qué requeriría una neutralidad genuina?