For those who read the comic XKCD, they have a series of comics pertaining to things that are "My Hobby." Here's one of my personal favorites, which really makes me feel self-reflexive about what we rhetoric people do in class all day:
In any case, I am going to use this post to share a bit of My Hobby: Going Meta.
To this end, I present to you a debate about a debate as a way to teach students skills in argumentation.
Meta-Debate
Step One: Split the class in half. As a homework assignment, have students go back to the presidential election and review one of two debates. Have 50% of students go back and rewatch the debate between Joe Biden and Paul Ryan. Have the other 50% of students go back and rewatch the third presidential debate.
Step Two (10 minutes of Preliminary Setup): When students get to class, split each side into two groups. So, now we have four groups: two that watched Biden/Ryan, and two that watched Obama/Romney. Then, announce the debate topic:
Group I: Argues that Joe Biden won the vice-presidential debate.
Group II: Argues that Paul Ryan won the vice-presidential debate.
Group III: Argues that Barack Obama won the third vice-presidential debate.
Group IV: Argues that Mitt Romney won the third vice-presidential debate.
Give them the basic structure the debate will follow, so they know what to prepare:
- An opening argument that lasts three minutes
- Some cross-examination questions to put the other side on the spot
Set the parameters:To win the debate, students absolutely must use the concepts of credibility, logic, and emotional appeal discussed in the chapter. Whichever side provides the best/most supported evidence that their candidate succeeded the most at all three of these will win the argument.
Provide resources: Have students bring laptops to class so they can review the videos during this prep time, and/or print out some copies of the debate transcript that groups can examine as they prepare their arguments.
Have groups decide who will do what: Each group will have an opening arguer, a rebutter, a cross-examiner, and a closing arguer.
Step Three (30 Minutes of Prep Time): Students will now have 30 minutes, with their groups, to prepare their team's argument. As they work, provide each group a handout of the following considerations they have to make. Also direct students to pages 388-406 (which they should hopefully have read before class).
How does your candidate exhibit credibility?
- Where does experience support their argument? What authority do they communicate to speak on their topic? How do they play up their charisma and character to enhance their likability?
How does your candidate use logic?
-What is the structure of their arguments? How do they wield propositions of fact, value, and policy--which do they rely on most? How do they use inductive arguments, generalization conclusions, hypothesis conclusions, deductive arguments, categorical syllogisms, and disjunctive arguments?
How does your candidate exhibit emotional appeals?
- Where do their appeals fall on Maslow's hierarchy of needs? What psychological states/dispositions do they appeal to (anger, joy, etc.)? What pathetic appeals do they rely on to make their arguments?
How does the opposing candidate fail at all of the above?
- What negative character traits do they demonstrate? Where do their claims to experience and authority fall short? Is their charisma appropriate to the occasion?
- Where does their logic fall short? Where do they rely on logical fallacies? What argumentative strategies simply do not work or make sense? Where is their evidence faulty--and does it matter (does your candidate call them on it)?
- Does the opponent make any unethical moves in their emotional appeals? Do the emotional appeals sound authentic and genuine? Do they overrely on one psychological disposition? Do they neglect Maslow's hierarchy in how they construct their arguments?
Regularly remind students how much time they have left to prepare their arguments.
Step Four: Debate! (30 minutes) Now, students will each present their arguments. Set an expectation ahead of time: at the end of their time limit, they must stop. They cannot cut one another off; they cannot interrupt; they cannot, in other words, act like the presidential candidates they're arguing about. (They need to be much more mature than them!)
Both debates will last twelve minutes.
Before the debate starts, I'd walk students through the basic goal of each section:
Constructive: To present your main arguments and points
Rebuttal: To address/refute the major points advanced by the opponent
Cross-Examination: To ask questions designed to make the opponent reveal/concede information
Conclusion: To prove that your team won the argument, partially relying on information from cross-ex
The structure will look like this (I'd put this on the PowerPoint so students can follow where they are at all times):
Obama/Biden Constructive (3 minutes)
Romney/Ryan Constructive (3 minutes)
(1 minute prep break to discuss rebuttals with group)
(1 minute prep break to discuss closing arguments with group)
Obama/Biden Closing Argument (3 minutes)
Romney/Ryan Closing Argument (3 minutes)
Step Five: Debrief! (Remaining Class Time): Now, students reflect on the outcome of the debate.
Which teams won or lost the two meta-debates?
What about the use of persuasion did we learn from the two (vice-)presidential debates we viewed outside of class?
What is the state of argumentation in our society, given all of the flaws and problems we found with the two (vice-)presidential debates?
And finally, what does all of this teach you about the burden you have to meet in your own persuasive arguments? How will your classmates, armed with these concepts, be actively scrutinizing or challenging your positions?
And one more thing. An element of the final exam in my class will involve students analyzing and dissecting persuasive arguments. So, I'll give them the heads up that the skills practiced here will play a part in that final exam, so they remain cognizant of the importance of this section of the textbook.
There you go. Two blog posts in one day. Have an excellent weekend!
Today's post will address two major issues: encouraging students to select topics that work well, and teaching them to analyze audiences (as well as ethically consider how audience analysis works). Both of these issues were discussed in a lot more detail at the workshop on Friday, which was very productive! Thank you to everyone who attended.
Topic Selection:
The Persuasive Number Line: Imagine a number line that looks kind of like this:
Now, say a student has a position way over on the "conservative" side of an issue. Rather than writing to try to bring the hardcore liberal all the way over to the conservative side, they should instead try to develop ways to move that person part of the way toward the more moderate position. This number line is also helpful for conceptualizing the "persuadability" of the topic. If every single person falls in the moderate "middle" on the topic, chances are there's not going to be a lot of persuading going on if they choose that topic. The way to teach this is pretty simple: Have students pitch their potential topics, then get a read on where their classmates fall through a simple vote regarding where they fall along the line.
Encourage arguments about policy, not fact or value. Students often gravitate toward questions of fact: These are your conspiracy theories: "Oliver Stone killed Kennedy so he could make a movie about conspiracy theories surrounding the assassination!" or "The moon landing was faked!" style-arguments. These arguments obviously require students to locate unbelievable or weak evidence in sources like silly conspiracy theory documentaries. They also are simply impossible to persuade people about, because people are either inclined to believe in unsupported sensationalist nonsense or they aren't. So, I just generally put a ban on this type of topic (except in exceedingly rare circumstances, e.g. a student wants to challenge a prevailing stereotype about a type of person or a major).
Students also often gravitate toward questions of value: Difficult arguments grounded in fundamental beliefs that people hold regarding religion, politics, and so on. When people want to argue about abortion or other moralistic topics, this is often where they're coming from. Again, point to the number line to help students recognize how incredibly hard it is to actually persuade people about these topics.
Instead, concentrate on issues of policy. Policy arguments may be rooted somewhat in questions of fact or value. But they differ in an important way: They require that students provide a plan or solution to the problem. So, rather than getting up and giving us all a fire-and-brimstone apocalyptic story about how bad something is, students must instead develop a policy or proposal that would help to solve the problem. An important part of this is enabling the audience to actually go out and promote something. An example of this is a speech I watched a student give about the College Bowl system for football last year. Rather than just attack the BCS system, he developed an elaborate and feasible counter-proposal that would resolve some of the problems in the BCS and could easily be implemented within a year.
The benefit of the policy speech is that it encourages students to develop a unique or innovative approach. It forces them to think about the feasibility of solving the problem, which--by necessity--causes them to gravitate away from gigantic problems that cannot be solved. It gets them thinking about their agency in society--how would we actually go about making this change into a reality?-- and it leads them to more conciliatory messages that invite others to their side, rather than just repeating talking points and value statements.
The "Be Original" Rule: The ever awesome Jade Olson recommended giving students a strict rule: If you talk about a cliche topic that's been done before (Animal cruelty! Abortion! Climate change! Gun control!), you need to discuss it with a new spin, argument, or approach that I (the teacher) have never heard before. That forces students to figure out a way of talking about the issue that doesn't rely on the exact same talking points that they've likely used before. As a tool to help students decide a "new" way of arguing the issue, she recommended sending them to iDebate and looking up the topic in their "Debatabase" to identify the common arguments on either side of the issue. They then must develop a new approach to arguing the topic that does not rely on any of these more common points.
The Ethics of Audience Analysis:
First of all, I like to kick off the audience analysis unit with this PBS Frontline video about Republican pollster Frank Luntz (a man who emanates pure evil):
Lead a discussion about the ethics of what Luntz is up to. Start with the question posed in the documentary: is he telling people what they want to hear, or is he manipulating or disguising messages as something the audience wants to hear?
Ask students about some of the incredibly cynical things Luntz says directly into the camera. "Life is 80 percent emotion and only 20 percent intellect. I care much more about how you feel than how you think." There's something deeply bothersome about this assumption--especially when we recognize that Luntz has made a ton of money, has influenced our laws and policies, has shaped what we purchase and what we think, and has elected people to some of the highest offices in the country.
Consider, then, the ethics of the audience analysis process we're about to enact here as a class. Should students feel uneasy about tailoring their message to their audience? How much audience adaptation is too much?
The moral: We learn these things not just to do them better, but also to be conscientious about them. There's something unethical here, something problematic about what he's doing. And while we're practicing it in our speeches, we are doing so not just to be better at it ourselves (to "get ahead" and convince others with our arguments), but also to generate in students an admonitory appreciation and guardedness against the powerful language manipulations inflicted on them every single day.
Teaching Audience Analysis:
Survey: One approach, again shared by Jade at yesterday's event, involved creating a survey of basic demographic and psychographic (Berko, et. al., p. 300) information about the class. One way to do this would simply be to create a SurveyMonkey survey and share it with students on ELMS to create before class. It can address information about age, gender, religion, ethnic background, educational background, occupation, racial background, attitudes, political affiliation, etc. The results of the survey (which is anonymous) can be printed out and shared with students as they are constructing their speeches, and then students can all draw from the information as they are preparing their arguments.
Focus Group: Another approach that can either complement or replace the one above involves having students generate focus group questions during class time. Questions can address:
How receptive classmates might be to a certain argument. "When you hear me argue that ____, what do you think?"
Classmates' prior misconceptions or positions on an issue: "What do you already know about ____?"
Classmates' reasons for opposing or supporting a topic: "What about ____ is most/least compelling to you?"
Whether classmates would accept a certain piece of evidence: "If I told you that ___, would you be more or less inclined to believe that ____?"
Then, break students into groups of 5-6. (My classroom, with 23 students, would split into four groups in four corners of the room). Students will turn their desks to face each other--as much as is possible, anyway. And they will then circulate, asking each other questions and jotting down notes about what their classmates think.
As part of their speech, you can then require students to include data from the survey and focus group into their persuasive speech. They can address misconceptions they heard from their classmates, the prevailing opinion they have to persuade against, why a piece of evidence should be respected or treated as more valid than classmates argued, and so on. This can be part of their leadership/credibility grade.
How does this happen? I spent two years living in New Orleans, and teaching ten miles up the road from where this happened during Hurricane Katrina:
And yet somehow, I encountered my first hurricane in Maryland.
Anyway: with the hurricane passed, and the persuasive unit on the near horizon, I am returning with a vengeance to the blogosphere/tumblverse to provide some lesson ideas and approaches for the persuasive unit. What follows is the first of four lessons conceptualized as water heavily beat against the glass and the temperature abruptly shifted us from Fall to Winter. Behold, Hurricane Persuasive Unit!
Note: For this unit, I am going to be posting entirely ideas and suggestions that do not come from the Instructor's Manual so that you all have maximum variety of options to choose from!
Day 1: Introducing the Persuasive Unit
I begin by ruminating on hurricanes because that is what the persuasive unit is all about to me. I lived and worked in a place where students' lives and parents' livelihoods were wiped away by a tremendous storm, flooded by government malfeasance and apathy, and tarred by an oil spill that crippled the local seafood industry. Time and again, these students, with jobs that would at first glance seem as far away from civic engagement as you could get (manning a shrimp boat; operating an oil rig), were thrown into an interaction with the political. They needed the potential to advocate for themselves, to research and read the messages thrown at them by the media and politicians, to stick up for their chosen lines of work, band together, and fight. This is true for everyone: we live in a society, and critical thought and persuasive skill are not optional. The need for these skills will find us, no matter what we do.
The goals of instilling critical thinking skills and speaking ability in students are not mutually exclusive. They play into each other and rely on one another. As students develop the critical consciousness to knock down arguments that are fallacious and badly reasoned, they become more cognizant of how to better prepare their own arguments to avoid these problems.
The first day is about orienting students to this idea, and beginning to develop their awareness of each. The next two days will develop each respective skill in immense detail. But for now, we just need an introduction to the major concepts and ideas. A brief outline looks like this:
Introduction: Persuade for a Dollar
Reading "A Campaign Speech"
Viewing a Real-World Speech
Viewing a Sample Speech
Introducing Persuasive Speech Expectations
1) Persuade for a Dollar
Materials required: A Dollar
I originally got this idea from my peer at Northern Illinois University, Marj Askins. She got it from her high school teacher. Who knows where he got it from. This is one of those activities that's so passed around in speech teacher lore that who knows where it came from. But it's fun and a good way to kick off persuasion.
I begin by stressing that this dollar is no longer my dollar. It now belongs to the class. And as the classroom is a democracy, the decision about how to use the dollar is now up to the class. First, I will ask students to jot down a brief argument for why they should receive the dollar. They will then come to the front of the room and persuade their classmates why they are the most worthy, or how they would use the dollar the best. Afterward, the class votes on who did the best job of persuading them about the dollar.
This is easy, it is fun, and it leads to a great discussion afterward of ethos, pathos, logos. Students will rely heavily on appeals to credibility, pathos, and to a lesser extent, logic to make these arguments. The discussion is best facilitated based on the votes: Why did ___ receive so many votes? Why did ____ receive no votes? Why was ___ more persuasive to you than ___? If you were one of the two people to vote for ___, why did you vote for him and not the guy who won? Etc.
2) Reading "A Campaign Speech"
On the heels of an election, it is always important to have students read a campaign speech. I will begin by passing out copies of the speech below. I will project the questions bulleted beneath the speech on the PowerPoint and have students discuss. Then, we'll turn to a full class conversation.
When I speak to you today and thus to millions of other Americans, I have more right to do this than anyone else. I have grown out of you yourselves. Once I myself stood among you, I was among you in the war for four and one-half years and now I speak to you whom I feel myself to be bound still today, and for whom in the final analysis I carry on the struggle. As far as I was concerned the struggle was not necessary. Nor would I wage it for a class or any certain stratum of society. I lead the struggle for the masses of millions of our honest, industriously working, and creative people.
In my youth I was a worker like you, and then I worked my way up by industry, by study, and I can say, by starving. In my innermost being, I have always remained what I was before. When, after the war, I entered political life, I did so with the conviction that our people was poorly advised by its political leadership, that a horrible future awaited the American people as a result of this bad leadership. I acted then with the most sincere self-justification because I did not belong to those who were in any way responsible for the war. I was just as little responsible for the war as anyone among you, for at that time I was, just like you, an unknown person, whom fate passed over in the order of the day.
I began with six or seven men. Today, it is the greatest American movement. This is not so by chance and not because the way was made easy for me, but because the ideas upon which I built are right. It was only for this reason that they could be carried through. For you can imagine, my friends, that when a man in my station in life begins a movement, success does not just fly to him. That is self-understood. One needs great tenacity and tremendous will to begin such an enterprise at all. If I had this faith, I had it only because I knew the people and because I had no doubts as to the quality of the American people. I took courage because I knew the American worker and the American farmer.
In America, I guarantee that this community will not work out to the advantage of any element of the American people. You can look upon me as the man who belongs to no class, who belongs to no group, who is above all such considerations. I have nothing but my connections with the American people. To me everyone is entirely equal. What interest do the intellectuals have for me, the middle class, or the working class? I am interested only in the American people. I belong exclusively to the American people and I struggle for the American people.
With their surrounding peers, students will discuss the following questions from the PowerPoint:
Who is the speaker’s audience? (Or audiences?) Who might be listening to the speech?
What is the speaker’s purpose? (Or purposes?) What is the speech trying to accomplish?
What is the speaker’s strategy? (Or strategies?) HOW is he trying to persuade his audience?
Is the speech effective? Is this convincing? Would you vote for this person? Is he doing anything unethical?
As students evaluate the speech, they will probably come across another question lurking in the background: Who delivered this speech? Have the class speculate. Point out the war record, the humble origins. Have them consider which presidential candidate in the U.S. may have best fit this. Then, reveal to them your secret lie: This is a speech by Adolf Hitler, with "Germany" and "German" changed to say "America" and "American." (A particularly clever student may hit on this before you say anything about it.)
The implications of this are huge! Have students reflect on what it means that a speech by the worst fascist in history could have plausibly sounded like it came from one of our own politicians. The important point is this:
3) Viewing a Speech
It is important to ground students in the social importance of what they're doing. Particularly: the importance of finding a passion and designing arguments that deeply matter to them. To do this, I am selecting this TED Talk which is a strong example of personal advocacy:
What J.D. Schramm does here reveals many valuable aspects of effective persuasive speaking. A few points that, in the ensuing discussion, I would want to hit:
He delivers a narrative. He tells a story, revealing his own part in that story as a surprise. This plays off of all of the traditionally strong elements of a narrative compositionally, and is something we should urge our students to try in their own speeches.
He cares about this, personally. While students may not all have this deep and powerful of a connection to what they're talking about, we can urge them to pick topics that reflect their genuine passions. Is it something they can rant about, or rage about? Then they should talk about it.
Finally, the thing I like best about this video is that it emphasizes the power of talk to bring about a change on a topic. We shy away from talk on controversial or depressing subjects like this; but it is in the interaction surrounding the subject that we can bring healing, social reform, and ultimately, change.
The purpose of the video is to get students' imagination going about what, in their own lives and experiences, deeply matters to them to convince us about. We then transition to a more formally organized speech that better matches the structure that they will use here.
4) Introducing a Sample Speech: Video
Before viewing the speech, tell students to get out a pen and paper and outline it. Not only is this good practice for a "debate" students will have with one another in a few days; it also sets them up to start recognizing the structural elements they will be expected to have in their own speeches.
(I believe this speech comes from a DVD accompanying The Art of Public Speakingat the University of Wisconsin-Madison, but there is no credit listed on the video here on YouTube.) A few points that should be made as regards the video:
Students will likely say her video is a bit robotic. That's true, you should counter, she could be more conversational and relaxed. But what's more important is that she is controlled and clear in her message. She has a clear idea of what she's going to say/do moving forward in the speech.
There is some discussion to be had here about intensity and enthusiasm. She can't be enthusiastic about teenage driving deaths, but she can be intense about it.
She is attentive to her audience. Speaking to a room of college freshmen who recently earned the right to drive, she asks them to listen to her with an open mind, anticipating their skepticism of her point.
Her evidence is not stitched together like a bunch of paper dolls; it is seamlessly integrated into her speech and attributed properly, summarized and reframed in her own words.
5) Persuasive Speech Expectations
This then segues into the expectations for the persuasive speech itself.
I will set this up by:
Eliciting student thoughts on what they needed to improve on in the wake of the informative speech.
Asking how the speeches we just viewed differed from some of the topics/structural patterns seen in the informative examples and students' own informative speeches.
Having students explain the components of the outline and justify why she might have organized it that way.
As always, I will not run this entire conversation as a full-class discussion right off the bat. Students will talk through these three points with one another in a turn-and-talk, then we'll come back full group. This way, I can more confidently cold call on people--"What did your group discuss?" rather than listening for crickets for several minutes.
The next area I will hit is topic selection, which is important for me to give some explicit guidance about. I will stress four major points:
Persuasive. The topic must be something that not everyone else in the room is inclined to agree about. That is, it needs to be something you have to actually persuade people about. Convincing a classroom of college students to lower the drinking age to 18 is probably not going to work.
Realistic. At the same time, it needs to be realistic. You're not going to get a pro-life person to turn pro-choice in ten minutes. I will use a "persuasive number line" to illustrate what I am talking about here. Imagine that 0 is a middle-of-the-road position on the topic; a -10 is completely opposed to your opinion; and a 10 is completely in your favor. Can you convince a -10 to move all the way to a 10? Probably not. But you can perhaps get them to shift their view toward a more moderate position, or get them to accept a certain policy as reasonable. Or, you can move a moderate person toward your more extreme position.
Personal. The topic must be something they have a personal connection or or interest in.
Policy-based. We will consider the distinction between propositions of fact, value, and policy (page 396). It is crucial that students recognize the major differences between each, and have a clear sense of what they're trying to accomplish with their persuasion. I will stress that this speech is not so much about questions of fact ("9/11 was an inside job") or questions of value ("You should support gay marriage!"). Rather, it should be about questions of policy: Convincing people to support a certain plan, proposal, or law; getting them to accept or reject something on campus. Questions of fact and value obviously play into one's opinion on a policy. But the policy argument tends to lead to a richer and more complex speech that is easier to persuade others to buy into. It avoids the absolutes (the -10s and 10s on the number line).
I will conclude by hitting a few things that are due:
The due date for topic selection (next class period)
A paragraph of important considerations about their topic, including key places where people might have differences in opinion, the types of proof/evidence that might be needed to persuade others, and their personal connection and passion for the topic.
The place to look in the book for an example outline (410-411)
The importance of reading Chapter 15 by next class if they have not yet done so.
