Writer's Toolbox For Building Arguments Introduction

The questions and checklists provided here are intended to help you as you are reading arguments in preparation for writing your own and as you are writing and revising your arguments. Many of these sets of questions also appear within the Chapter links. We have included these lists and questions separately here to highlight their importance and to make them readily available to you. You may want to use these reading, thinking, and writing strategies throughout the course with each of your argument essays.

You may download the Writer's Toolbox as an Acrobat pdf file, or you may view it online by clicking on the different links below.

To view the file as a PDF for easy printing, download this file: toolbox.pdf. If you do not have Acrobat, you may download it for free from the Adobe website by clicking on the logo below.

To use the Writer's Toolbox online, choose a section below.

• Reading Strategy: Analyzing Sources of Disagreement
  
  
• Reading Strategy: Determining the Core of an Argument
  
  
• Reading Strategy: Determining Claim Types
  
  
• Writing Strategy: Exploring Ideas and Mapping Out an Argument
  
  
• Writing Strategy: Analyzing Your Audience
  
  
• Writing Strategy: Choosing and Refining Your Strategies to Accommodate Your Audience
  
  
• Writing Strategy: Using Evidence Effectively in Arguments
  
  
• Writing Strategy: Strengthening Your Appeals to Ethos and Pathos
  
  
• Writing Strategy: Using Claim-Type Strategy to Develop a Proposal Argument
  
  
• Writing Strategy: Using the "Stock Issues" Strategy to Develop a Proposal Argument