The Structure of Debate

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, 2009.

Student Debates

by: Daniel Krieger, shinyfruit@yahoo.com, Siebold University of Nagasaki (Nagasaki, Japan)

from: The Internet TESL Journal, Vol. XI, No. 2, February 2005
http://iteslj.org/

One: Introduction to Debate

1. Basic Terms

• Debate: a game in which two opposing teams make speeches to support their arguments and disagree with those of the other team.
• Resolution: the opinion about which two teams argue.
• Affirmative team: agrees with the resolution.
• Negative team: disagrees with the resolution.
• Rebuttal: explains why one team disagrees with the other team.
• Judge(s): decide the winner.

2. Opinions and Reasons

• A resolution is an opinion about which there can be valid disagreement. The students either agree or disagree with the resolution regardless of what they personally believe. An opinion can be introduced by an opinion indicator:
• "I think/believe that smoking should be banned in public places..."

• A reason explains why that opinion is held and can be introduced by a reason indicator:
• "...because/since secondhand smoke is harmful for nonsmokers."

3. Strong Reasons Versus Weak Reasons:

• According to LeBeau, Harrington, Lubetsky (2000), a strong reason has the following qualities:
• It logically supports the opinion.
• It is specific and states the idea clearly.
• It is convincing to a majority of people.

• To give examples of strong reasons versus weak reasons, a multiple-choice exercise: 
• Smoking should be banned in public places because: a. it is bad,  b. it gives people bad breath and makes their teeth yellow, or c. secondhand smoke is harmful for nonsmokers.

• Explain why some of the above reasons are strong and others are weak based on the above criteria.

• In pairs, practice generating reasons for opinions. The resolutions/opinions should be generated by you (as the four resolutions listed below) or taken from the following online debate resource, which offers resolutions, reasons and debating tips:
• http://www.paulnoll.com/China/Teach/English-debate.html

Part 1: With Your Partner, Think of at Least One Strong Reason for Each Resolution

1. Women should quit their job after they get married.
REASON:

2. Love is more important than money.
REASON:

3. It is better to be married than single.
REASON:

4. Writing by hand is better than writing by computer.
REASON:

Part 2: Now Compare Your Reasons with Another Pair and Decide Whose Reasons are Stronger and Why

4. Ways to State Reasons: Review of Language

• Comparison: X is _____ er than Y. OR: X is more _____ than Y.

• Cause-and-effect: X causes Y. OR: If you do X, then Y will happen.

5. Generating Resolutions: Generate Your Own Resolutions

• Issues about which people are likely to disagree work best for debate. They can be controversial: The death penalty should be banned; or less divisive: Love is more important than money.

• Brainstorm a list of resolutions. Get your ideas from topics discussed or read about in class, or topics which interest you personally. Hand in your list of resolutions and the teacher will select the most suitable ones. You can  choose from these later.

Two: Supporting Your Opinion

1. Warm-up

Begin with a fun practice activity which generates reasons for opinions. An argumentation exercise called "The Devil's Advocate" (see appendix 1) is useful for this purpose and can be used multiple times simply by changing the resolutions. Another good kind of activity for giving reasons is any prioritization task in which you rank items on a list, giving reasons for their choices.

2. Giving Support for Your Reasons

Support consists of evidence. The four kinds of evidence, adapted from LeBeau, Harrington, Lubetsky (2000), are:

• Example: from your own experience or from what you heard or read.
• Common Sense: things that you believe everybody knows.
• Expert Opinion: the opinions of experts -- this comes from research.
• Statistics and Facts: numbers and data -- these also come from research.

Resolution: Smoking should be banned in all public places.

Example: "For example / for instance / let me give an example"

Whenever I go to a restaurant or bar and there are people smoking near me, I feel that I am breathing their smoke. This makes me a smoker even though I don't want to be.

Common Sense: Everyone knows / if...then / it's common knowledge that Secondhand smoke is very unhealthy for nonsmokers.

Statistics: Secondhand smoke causes about 250,000 respiratory infections in infants and children every year, resulting in about 15,000 hospitalizations each year.

Expert Opinion: According to.../ to quote.../ the book _____ says...

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, "secondhand smoke causes approximately 3,000 lung cancer deaths in nonsmokers each year."

3. Practice

Here, you practice making examples/common sense support. You  can develop these from reasons that you came up with in the prior class (third activity).

Three: Debate Structure

1. Warm-up

Do argumentation exercise (see Class Two warm up).

2. Form Teams

Two or three students form a team.

3. Considering Resolutions

Give each team the resolutions chosen by the teacher from the ones generated by the students. Instruct students to mark the resolutions which interest them.

4. Selecting Resolutions and Sides

Pair up two teams and have them compare their lists and decide on a resolution for their debate. They then pick sides-affirmative or negative.

5. Formal Debate Structure

(See Appendix 2 for an additional format option developed for a less formal, more conversational "impromptu" debate.)

Speech 1: The first affirmative speaker introduces the topic and states the affirmative team's first argument.

Speech 2: The first negative speaker states their first argument.

Speech 3: The second affirmative speaker states their second argument.

Speech 4: The second negative speaker states their second argument.

Give a 5-10 minute break for each team to prepare their rebuttal speech.

Speech 5: The negative team states two rebuttals for the affirmative team's two arguments and summarizes their own two reasons.

Speech 6: The affirmative team states two rebuttals for the negative team's two arguments and summarizes their own two reasons.

6. Brainstorming Arguments

Each argument consists of a stated reason followed by ample support. Debaters brainstorm reasons for their resolution and then select the best two. These will be used for their arguments. Model brainstorming on the board with a simple resolution to demonstrate how the brainstorming process works.

7. Homework

Complete two arguments. Note: it is not acceptable to write the arguments in L1 and then translate into English. Arguments should be written in clear and simple English that can be easily understood by all other students.

Four: Predicting and Refuting the Other Team's Arguments

1. Warm-up

Do argumentation exercise (see class two warm up).

2. Predicting the Other Team's Arguments

Each team brainstorms a list of strong reasons that their opponents could use.

3. Four Step Rebuttal

• STEP 1: "They say ..."
• State the argument that you are about to refute so that the judges can follow easily. Take notes during your opponent's speeches so you will be clear about what they argued.
• "The other team said that smoking is harmful for nonsmokers."

• STEP 2: "But I disagree..." Or "That may be true, but..."
• "That may be true, but I think that if nonsmokers want to avoid cigarette smoke, they can walk away from it."

• STEP 3: "Because ..."
• "Because nonsmokers should look out for their own health."

• STEP 4: "Therefore..."
• "Therefore it is not the responsibility of smokers to protect nonsmokers."

4. Writing Rebuttals

Debaters compose short rebuttals for the opposing team's strongest three arguments that the team predicted during preparation.

5. Giving Feedback

The teacher meets with each group and reviews their arguments and rebuttals, challenging students to question their reasoning.

Five: Judging and Final Practice

1. Warm-up

Do argumentation exercise (see class 2 warm up).

2. Judging

Students are the judges. In the judging form below, students must show evidence that they have listened carefully. The teacher then evaluates the judging forms.

Speech 1: The Affirmative Team's First Argument
Note: the same format is used for speech 1-4

Summarize the REASON here:

Is this reason clear? ____/1　Is this reason strong? 　 ____/1

Summarize the SUPPORT here:

Is the support clear?　 ____/1　 Good examples/common sense: ____/1

Expert opinion/statistics: ____/1

Speech 5:　The Negative Team's Rebuttal
Note: the same format is used for speech 5-6 (four rebuttals)

REBUTTAL for the first argument:　
They disagree because...

Therefore...

Is this rebuttal clear? ____/1　

Did you use a strong "because" and "therefore"? ____/1

3. Judging Practice

For practice in judging, the teacher performs speeches of a mock debate. Students listen, fill in the form, and then compare results.

4. Final Practice

The students practice delivering their argument speeches, and then, doing rebuttals against their own arguments.

Six: The Debate

• During the debate: the students fill in the judging form during the debate and can consult with a partner for help with clarification after each debate.
• Following the debate: the students submit judging forms, and the teacher adds up the scores and announces the winners.
• Also, students hand in their argument and rebuttal speeches for which the teacher provides feedback on strong points and things to work on. For an example of a student's debate speech from my class, see Appendix 3.

Appendix 1: The Devil's Advocate

• You have two minutes to argue one side of each resolution. When you hear "SWITCH," you will have two minutes to argue the opposite side of the resolution.
• Then move on to the next one.

1. All Chinese writing should be in Roman letters.
2. It is better to be single than married.
3. Women should stop working when they get married and have babies.
4. Women should not change their family name when they get married.

Appendix 2: Format for Interactive Debate

Seating Arrangement: students facing each other. Two or three students per team.

1. Affirmative team: Argument 1
2. Negative team's Rebuttal
3. Affirmative team's response to rebuttal and open discussion
4. Negative team: Argument 1
5. Affirmative team's Rebuttal
6. Negative team's Response to rebuttal and open discussion
7. Affirmative team: Argument 2
8. Negative team's Rebuttal
9. Affirmative team's Response to rebuttal and Open Discussion
10. Negative team: Argument 2
11. Affirmative team's Rebuttal
12. Negative team's Response to rebuttal and open discussion
13. Affirmative team's Closing comments
14. Negative team's Closing comments

Appendix 3: A Sample Student's Debate Speech (edited)

• Resolution: Personality is more important than looks. (Affirmative argument)
• Reason: People never lose interest in looking at a person who has a
  good personality and living with them always makes us feel pleasant.
• Support:
• Example
• For example, my friendly neighbor in China has twin brothers. The elder brother married a very beautiful girl. But after the first month, he had a quarrel with her because the beautiful wife spent all of her time dressing herself up without doing any housework. And she always went out on dates with many boyfriends. Finally he divorced his beautiful wife last year. But the younger brother who married an ordinary looking girl with a good personality has a very happy married life now and they have a lovely 3 year old baby now.
• Common sense
• In China it is said, "Don't choose beautiful person to be your wife." Because the beautiful wife spends more time dressing herself up without doing housework or child care than the not beautiful wife. And the beautiful wife always spends a lot of money on clothing and cosmetics.
• Expert opinion & Statistics
• Psychologists at Yale University investigated 3,519 married men's life spans. According to the report, the men who married a beautiful wife had a shorter life than the men who married an not beautiful wife. The degree of beauty was in direct proportion to the husbands' life-spans. In the study, there was a scale of 1-20 points: 20 points is the most beautiful wife and 1 point the least beautiful wife. The result was that men who had a wife who scored 1-12 points lived 12 years longer than men whose wife scored 13-20 points.

References

• Davidson, Bruce (1995) Critical thinking education faces the challenge of Japan. Inquiry: Critical Thinking Across the Disciplines. XIV (3)
• Fukuda, Shinji (2003) Attitudes toward argumentation in college EFL classes in Japan. Proceedings of the First Asia TEFL International Conference. Pusan, Korea. pp. 417-418
• LeBeau, Charles & Harrington, David & Lubetsky, Michael (2000) Discover debate: basic skills for supporting and refuting opinions. Language Solutions
• Nesbett, Richard E. (2003) The geography of thought. The Free Press

Exercise: Analyzing Arguments

Analyzing Arguments

Read the following paragraphs and decide the kind of argument and the type of evidence used: (A) statistics and facts, (B) reliable authority/sources, or (C) illustrative incidents.

Far from mitigating the earlier threats to birds and other forms of life on the earth, man has further endangered their survival. Of earth’s 9,000 species of birds, about 1,000 are already at risk. And while the old perils – habitat destruction, pesticide poisoning, shooting, oil spills, migrant killing TV towers, and others – continue, we are adding new threats. Especially sinister are the gaseous byproducts of advanced technology – carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, CFCs – the products responsible for acid precipitation, ozone depletion and the greenhouse effect, developments whose long-term impact on birds (and other life) we are beginning, nervously to guess at. … - Alan Pistorius, “Species Lost,” Country Journal

1. (A) statistics and facts, (B) reliable authority/sources, or (C) illustrative incidents

One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that “an unjust law is no law at all.” ¬ Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter From Birmingham Jail

2. (A) statistics and facts, (B) reliable authority/sources, or (C) illustrative incidents

Watching TV violence can be seriously dangerous for little kids. One 5-year old boy from Boston recently got up from watching a teen-slasher film and stabbed a 2-year-old girl with a butcher knife. He didn’t mean to kill her (and luckily he did not). He was just imitating the man on the video. - Tipper Gore, “Curbing the Sexploitation Industry,” Raising PG Kids in an X-Rated Society

3. (A) statistics and facts, (B) reliable authority/sources, or (C) illustrative incidents

Everyone should drink at least two liters of water everyday. Our sports coach says that becoming dehydrated, especially during exercise, is very dangerous.

4. (A) statistics and facts, (B) reliable authority/sources, or (C) illustrative incidents

Most of the miseries in this world are caused by war, and when the wars are over, they do not know what they were fighting about. Disputes must be settled by peaceful negotiations between countries and between people. Or, failing that, we need “passive resistance,” the method advocated by Gandhi and also by Martin Luther King, Jr.

5. (A) statistics and facts, (B) reliable authority/sources, or (C) illustrative incidents

China has long prided itself on having come up with many of the world’s most important inventions. Now the country that gave us gunpowder, paper money, and the noodle can claim responsibility for another of human civilization’s highest achievements: we have the Chinese, or at least their distant ancestors, to thank for cocktails. According to a report released last week in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in the U.S., residents of the Neolithic village of Jiahu in Henan province were raising toasts with fruit wines and rice spirits in 7000 B.C. – usurping Iran’s place in the tipple timeline by at least a thousand years. Susan Jakes, “Chen. Jiahu, With Hawthorn Accents,” Time

6. (A) statistics and facts, (B) reliable authority/sources, or (C) illustrative incidents

After nearly two years of stubborn optimism, Japan’s economic recovery seems to be skidding to a halt. Last week’s government figures showed that the country only narrowly avoided a return to recession – defined as two consecutive quarters of decline in gross domestic product – with 0.1% GDP growth in the third quarter following a 0.1% contraction in the second. “We are entering a slow patch, and there is no obvious exit,” says Peter Morgan, chief economist at HSBC Securities in Tokyo.

7. (A) statistics and facts, (B) reliable authority/sources, or (C) illustrative incidents

Do NOT do these things when you are giving your speech

You will NOT do these during an Oral Presentation: Common Mistakes; Suggestions for Improvement:

1. Talking without pausing - Suggestions: 

• Don't talk too quickly.
• Stop and breathe at the end of sentences.
• The best speakers in the world are not the fastest.

2. No intonation - Suggestions:

• Don't talk with a monotone voice. You will not sound interested in the film.
• People usually stop listening when speakers have little intonation.
• Stress important words by speaking louder, higher, lower or slower.  

3.Too much intonation - Suggestions: Too much intonation is not natural. Other students may laugh at you!  Practice stressing important words by presenting to your classmates.

4. Reading notes - Suggestions:

• Talk to people, not note cards, in presentations.
• Students who write too many notes usually look less confident.
• Looking down stops you speaking clearly and confidently.

5. Mispronunciation of character names - Suggestions:

• Learn how to pronounce character names correctly.
• Ask your friends or teachers if you don't know how to say a word.
• Say other words if you still don't know. e.g. the woman, her boyfriend, the hero, the bad guy. 

6. Plagiarism - Suggestions:

• When giving a presentation, DO NOT copy a film review from the Internet. 
• Film reviews often have words that you do not know so you won't sound natural.
• Your teachers are clever. They will know when you copy! 

7. Becoming the character - Suggestions:

• Think about the topic you are given.
• Your talk should be related to the topic.
• Talk about the characters. Don't become Spiderman, a princess or Seabiscuit!

8. Not listening to others - Suggestions:

• An interaction means that you listen to other students.
• You respond to what you say.
• Don't make a speech or ignore what the last speaker said.  

9. Turn-taking; not giving reasons for opinions - Suggestions:

• You don't need to take turns one after the other in interactions.
• Natural discussions are less planned. Speak when you have something to say.
• Give reasons for your opinions.  

10. Nervous start - Suggestions:

• Everyone is nervous before an oral exam.
• Try to use English before your presentation or interaction. Listen to songs and talk to your friends or family.
• If you talk English to your classmates beforehand, you will understand them more during the interaction.

11. Not interrupting - Suggestions:

• Some students could speak all day! You must interrupt them to have a chance to speak.
• Wait until they finish a sentence then speak.
• Be brave! Say, 'Excuse me...' or 'Sorry to interrupt you...' then begin.

12. Not serious enough - Suggestions:

• When nervous, some students giggle and can be silly!
• You can laugh and have fun during an interaction.
• However, teachers do not like silly comments like 'You're stupid!'  

13. Not asking for clarification - Suggestions: Students may say a word wrongly. You should ask, 'What do you mean by... ?'  This shows you are following the discussion and your teacher will respect you.

Argument Examples - Exercises for Understanding and Practice

Cloning Disputed – Argumentative Writing Examples

Essay 1: Pre-reading VOCABULARY

Substitute the words printed in italics in the following sentences. Do not change the basic sense of the sentences.But you don’t have to be a genius to see the true utility of manufacturing headless creatures: for their organs – fully formed, perfectly useful, ripe for plundering.
These human bodies without any semblance of consciousness would not be considered persons …
It won’t be long, however, before these technical barriers are breached.
When prominent scientists are prepared to acquiesce in the deliberate creation of deformed and dying quasi-human life, you know we are facing a bioethical abyss.
There is no grosser corruption of biotechnology than creating a human mutant and disemboweling it at our pleasure for spare parts.
With its own independent consciousness, it is just a facsimile of you.

Of Headless Mice … and Men

Medical practitioner turned journalist, writer Charles Krauthammer served as science advisor to President Jimmy Carter and as speech writer for Vice President Walter Mondale. He served as a writer and editor of The New Republic. His weekly column for the Washington Post and his monthly column for Time magazine earned him prestigious Pulitzer Prize for distinguished commentary in 1985. Cutting Edges is a collection of his work. The following essay first appeared in Time in 1998.

1. Last year Dolly the cloned sheep was received with wonder, titters and some vague apprehension. Last week the announcement by a Chicago physicist that he is assembling a team to produce the first human clone occasioned yet another wave of Brave New World anxiety. But the scariest news of all – and largely overlooked – come from two obscure labs, at the University of Texas and at the University of Bath. During the past four years, one group created headless mice; the other, the headless tadpoles.

2. For sheer Frankenstein wattage, the purposeful creation of these animal monsters has no equal. Take the mice. Researchers found the gene that tells the embryo to produce the head. They deleted it. They did this in a thousand mice embryos, four of which were born. I use the term loosely. Having no way to breathe, the mice died instantly.

3. Why then create them? The Texas researchers want to learn how genes determine embryo development. But you don’t have to be a genius to see the true utility of manufacturing headless creatures: for their organs – fully formed, perfectly useful, ripe for plundering.

4. Why should you be panicked? Because humans are next. “It would almost certainly be possible to produce human bodies without a forebrain,” Princeton biologist Lee Silver told London Sunday Times. “These human bodies without any semblance of consciousness would not be considered persons, and thus it would be perfectly legal to keep them ‘alive’ as a future source of organs.”

5. “Alive.” Never has a pair of quotation marks loomed so ominously. Take the mouse-frog technology, apply it to humans, combine it with cloning, and you are become a god: with a single cell taken from, say, your finger, you produce a headless replica of yourself, a mutant twin, arguably lifeless, that becomes your own personal, precisely tissue-matched organ farm.

6. There are, of course, technical hurdles along the way. Suppressing the equivalent “head” gene in man. Incubating tiny infant organs to grow into larger ones that adults could use. And creating artificial wombs (as per Adlous Huxley), given that it might be difficult to recruit sane women to carry headless fetuses to their birth/death.

7. It won’t be long, however, before these technical barriers are breached. The ethical barriers are already cracking. Lewis Wolpert, professor of biology at University College, London, finds producing headless humans “personally distasteful” but, given the shortage of organs, does not think distaste is sufficient reason not to go ahead with something that would save lives. And Professor Silver not only sees “nothing wrong, philosophically or rationally,” with producing headless humans for organ harvesting, he wants to convince a skeptical public that it is perfectly O.K.

8. When prominent scientists are prepared to acquiesce in – or indeed encourage – the deliberate creation of deformed and dying quasi-human life, you know we are facing a bioethical abyss. Human beings are ends, not means. There is no grosser corruption of biotechnology than creating a human mutant and disemboweling it at our pleasure for spare parts.

9. The prospect of headless human clones should put the whole debate about “normal” cloning in a new light. Normal cloning is less a treatment for infertility than a treatment for vanity. It is a way to produce an exact genetic replica of yourself that will walk the earth years after you’re gone.

10. But there is a problem with a clone. It is not really you. It is but a twin, a perfect John Doe Jr., but still a junior. With its own independent consciousness, it is, alas, just a facsimile of you.

11. The headless clone solves the facsimile problem. It is a gateway to the ultimate vanity: immortality. If you create a real clone, you cannot transfer your consciousness into it to truly live on. But if you create a headless clone of just your body, you have created a ready source of replacement parts to keep you – your consciousness – going indefinitely.

12. This is why one form of cloning will inevitably lead to the other. Cloning is the technology of narcissim, and nothing satisfies narcissism like immortality. Headlessness will be cloning’s crowning achievement.

13. The time to put a stop to this is now. Dolly moved President Clinton to create a commission that recommended a temporary ban on human cloning. But with physicist Richard Seed threatening to clone humans, and with headless animals already here, we are past the time for toothless commissions and meaningless bans.

14. Clinton banned federal funding of human-cloning research, of which there is none anyway. He then proposed a five-year ban on cloning. This is not enough. Congress should ban human cloning now. Totally. And regarding one particular form, it should be draconian: the deliberate creation of headless humans must be made a crime, indeed a capital crime. If we flinch in the face of this high-tech barbarity, we’ll deserve to live in the hell it heralds.

COMPREHENSION

1. What, according to Krauthammer, is “the scariest news of all” (1) in the field of cloning? 
2. What are the technical hurdles in creating headless human clones at present? 
3. What does the author imply when he says that the “ethical barriers” to the creation of headless human clones “are already cracking” (7)? 
4. “the deliberate creation of headless humans must be made a crime, indeed a capital crime.” (14) Why is the writer so opposed to the creation of headless human clones? 
5. What measures are suggested by the author to put a ban on human cloning? Are they workable? 

THESIS & AUDIENCE

1. What is the thesis of the essay? Is it stated explicitly? 
2. Which readership, religious or secular (not subscribing to any formal religion), is likely to be more impressed by the writer’s arguments? Why? 
3. The essay is written in a subjective tone. Cite some instances of subjective tone. 
4. Paragraph 6 uses a number of fragments. Identify these fragments and comment on their effect. 
5. What is the method of development used in paragraphs 9 – 12? How does it serve writer’s purpose?

Essay 2. Pre-reading: VOCABULARY
Find substitute words for those printed in italics in the following sentences.

1. Dolly has provoked widespread ethical foreboding.
2. President Clinton asked a Federal bioethics commission for a speedy review of the implications of mammalian cloning.
3. The Greek mythology character, Daedalus, escaped punishment from the gods for his hubris, Haldane noted, but he suffered “the age-long reprobation of a humanity to whom biological inventions are abhorrent.”
4. If Daedalus did not offend the gods of his day, many people have indicted biotechnologists for affronting God in ours.
5. Yet Haldane, for one, knew that although biological innovations are often initially seen as perversions, over time, they become accepted as “a ritual supported by unquestioned beliefs and prejudices.”
6. In this way, artificial insemination of humans, considered tantamount to adultery before World War II, has become widely accepted.
7. So have reproductive methods like in vitro fertilization and surrogate motherhood.
8. Now impresarios can dream of cloning Kareem Abdul-Jabar and raising their own Dream Team.
9. Anyway, no one knows what genes contribute to the qualities we most admire and value, whether virtuosity of the pen, the pitch, or the piccolo.
10. Dolly heralds wondrous innovations with huge economic implications.

II. Fill in the blanks choosing a suitable word from the list here.

    foreboding     bioethics     hubris     abhorrent     indicted     affront     perversions     insemination         tantamount     in vitro        impresarios       virtuosity       heralds

1. His refusal to answer was ____________ to an admission of guilt. 
2. The uproar led to the establishment of ____________ committees to oversee cloning research. 
3. There’s a sense of ___________ in the capital, as if fighting might at any minute break out. 
4. The president’s speech ____________ a new era in foreign policy. 
5. He was punished for his ____________ . 
6. Famous mainly for his wonderful voice, Cole’s ___________ on the piano was no less. 
7. City’s famous theatrical ____________ play quite a role in molding the social tastes of the society. 
8. Scientists are studying these cells ___________ . 
9. Racism of any kind is ____________ to me. 
10. Five people were ____________ for making and selling counterfeit currency. 
11. He regarded the comments as an ____________ to his dignity 
12. His testimony was clearly a ____________ of the truth. 
13. Artificial ____________ is a common practice to improve animal breeding. 

Study Cloning, Don’t Ban It

Founder and director of the Science, Ethics, and Public Policy Program at the California Institute of Technology, Daniel Kelves is a versatile writer who has published both in the USA and outside. His articles and essays, published both in scholarly and popular publications, primarily deal with the influence of scientific developments on history, society, politics, and morality. Some of his well known books are The Code of Codes: Scientific and Social Issues in the Human Genome Project (1992), In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity (1995), and The Baltimore Case: A Trial of Politics, Science and Character (1998). The following essay was first published in 1997 in The New York Times.

1. In “Songs on Innocence,” William Blake asked, “Little Lamb, who made thee?”[1] The answer for Dolly the sheep is Dr. Ian Wilmut and his colleagues at the Roslin Institute near Edinburgh.[2] Dolly, as the world knows, is a clone, a duplicate of one genetic parent. Her birth marks a milestone in our ability to engineer animals for food and medicine. It also signals that humans can, in principle, be cloned, too. That prospect troubles many people, but they ought not be too concerned about it at the moment.

2. Dolly has provoked widespread ethical foreboding. The Church of Scotland suggested that cloning animals runs contrary to God’s biodiversity. Dr. Wilmut himself said that cloning humans would be “ethically unacceptable.” Carl Feldbaum, president of the Biotechnology Industry Organization, urged that human cloning be prohibited in the United States. (President Clinton asked a Federal bioethics commission for a speedy review of the implications of mammalian cloning.)

3. The outcry over Dolly calls to mind the great biologist J.B.S. Haldane’s [book] “Daedalus,” … published in 1924. Haldane held that Daedalus of Greek mythology was the first biological inventor (the first genetic engineer, we would say) … [who procreated] the Minotaur[3] … . Daedalus escaped punishment from the gods for his hubris, Haldane noted, but he suffered “the age-long reprobation of a humanity to whom biological inventions are abhorrent.”

4. If Daedalus did not offend the gods of his day, many people have indicted biotechnologists for affronting God in ours. Yet Haldane, for one, knew that although biological innovations are often initially seen as perversions, over time, they become accepted as “a ritual supported by unquestioned beliefs and prejudices.” As technologies improve, people recognize them as advantageous. Society, through its legislatures and courts, figures out how to resolve the problems they posed at the outset.

5. In this way, artificial insemination of humans, considered tantamount to adultery before World War II, has become widely accepted. So have reproductive methods like in vitro fertilization and surrogate motherhood. People abort fetuses with genetic disorders, administer growth hormones to smallish children, and use insulin made by bacteria injected with a human gene.

6. Scientists have long speculated about manipulating genes to produce new Einsteins, Heifetzes, and Hemingways. Now impresarios can dream of cloning Kareem Abdul-Jabar and raising their own Dream Team.[4]

7. The fantasies are endless, but they are just fantasies. People are the products not only of their genes but of their environments. Today an Einstein clone might grow up to be Steven Spielberg.[5] Anyway, no one knows what genes contribute to the qualities we most admire and value, whether virtuosity of the pen, the pitch, or the piccolo.

8. Still, Dolly heralds wondrous innovations with huge economic implications (that Dr. Wilmut held back the news of Dolly’s birth until he could register a patent has been reported without comment). Someday an infertile couple might choose to have a child by cloning one or the other partner. A cancer victim might use his DNA to clone spare body parts – liver, pancreas, lungs, kidneys, bone marrow.

9. For now, cloning should rightly be confined to animals. But as the technology evolves to invite human experimentation, it would be better to watch and regulate rather than prohibit. Outlaw the exploration of human cloning and it will surely go offshore, only to turn into bootleg science that will find its way back to our borders simply because people want it.

10. As with so many previous advances in biology, today’s affront to the gods may be tomorrow’s highly regarded – and highly demanded – agent of self-gratification or health.

COMPREHENSION

1. By implication, is Kelves rejecting the age-old belief that life is created only by God when he cites William Blake in conjunction with Wilmut’s creation of Dolly? 
2. Kelves maintains that initially biological inventions are viewed as perversions, but later they are embraced for people recognize them as advantageous. What are the instances cited in support of his argument? 
3. What does Kelves imply when he says, “no one knows what genes contribute to the qualities we most admire and value”? 
4. What will happen, according to Kelves, if human cloning is outlawed? 
5. The writer lays down his thesis quite explicitly. Identify this thesis and paraphrase it in your own words. 

PURPOSE & AUDIENCE
What are the qualities of this essay that make it a popular reading among general readers?

STYLE & STRUCTURE

1. Where does Kelves recognize and refute the opposite view? Do you find his refutation balanced and convincing? 
2. How would you characterize the tone of the essay? Is the language objective or is it subjective and passionate? Give examples to support your opinion. 
3. What is the method of development (mode of discourse) used in paragraphs 1, 3-5, and 8-9? How these methods of development advance his central thesis? 
4. Is Kelves attacking religion and Christianity by citing the myth of Daedalus when he says that Daedalus escaped the wrath gods but he could not escape “the agelong reprobation of a humanity to whom biological inventions are abhorrent”? 

Footnotes:
[1] The famous romantic poet, William Blake (1757-1827), concludes his poem with an answer to this question, “God made thee.” The implication here is that such an answer is no longer valid today in view of cloning research.
[2] Wilmut and his team produced the first viable genetically cloned creature, a sheep, named, Dolly in 1997.
[3] In Greek mythology, Minotaur was a monster having the figure of half human and half bull.
[4] Albert Einstein (1879 –1955) was a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, Jascha Heifetz (1901 – 87) a renowned violinist, Ernest Hemingway (1899 – 1961) a Nobel Prize-winning writer, and Kareem Abdul-Jabar (1947 – ) a famous basketball player.
[5] A noted filmmaker

Argument-Persuasion - Key Points Slideshow

Argument Speech Writing with Examples

Argument Speech Writing with Examples

   More than two thousand years ago, Alexander the Great found what his great teacher, Aristotle, had taught him about the art of persuasion, logos, pathos, and ethos.

   Persuasion is based on three appeals. The first is reason. An appeal to reason is an appeal to your mind. On the other hand, an one can attempt to manipulate your emotions, your heart and not your mind. Finally, one can refer to the character of the person making the appeal; a person of high character or integrity, obviously, is likely to be more successful in his argument than a person of doubtful character. A persuasive essay may use all the three appeals, or just one; however, it is clear that an essay employing all the three appeals is likely to succeed more in persuading the reader than an essay which is based on only one appeal.

How the Three Appeals Are Used

            In order to persuade readers to agree with a particular position on an issue, writers need to think carefully about how they will appeal to their audience and what support they will use. Depending on who their audience is, writers may want to appeal to their reader’s reason, emotions, or sense of the writer’s character. Suppose, if you were to argue in favor of reduction of your high tuition fee in your university, you would make different persuasive appeals to different audiences. Possibly, emotional appeal would serve better with your student community; in that case, you would argue that your tuition fee is unrealistically high, and the university is really very unfair and greedy in making such high financial demands on you. On the other hand, such an emotive argument may not persuade university authorities; you would do better to use your rational skill in order to persuade university authorities to reduce your tuition fee. You may possibly use cool reason and argue that investment on education would be a big savings in the long run; well-educated citizens of a country are the best assets that a nation can have. 

            African American Nobel laureate, Martin Luther King, Jr. was found ‘guilty’ and jailed for “parading without a permit” in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963. From his jail cell he wrote a letter which is an extremely effective argument that uses all three persuasive appeals. His letter, though addressed to eight Birmingham clergymen who deplored the demonstration in their city, is an eloquent appeal to all humanity in the interest of equality, justice and fair play, the mark of cultured society.

Reason

            An appeal to reason is based on fair, logical and representative evidence. King’s appeal in the following paragraph is based on the universal truth that “one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.”

Sample:

    You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court’s decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws. One may well ask: “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that “an unjust law is no law at all.”   

                Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail

Emotion

            Emotional appeal is based on language, examples and descriptions that respond to readers’ personal feelings. When presented fairly and honestly, as it is in the following paragraph by King, an appeal to the readers’ emotions is an effective and justifiable type of persuasion.

Sample:

    We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jet-like speed toward gaining political independence, but we still creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt stinging darts of segregation to say, “Wait.” But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick, and even kill your black brothers and sisters … then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience.

    Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail

           

    King’s appeal in the above paragraph is effective because it is based on actual experiences and human feelings with which his readers can identify. However, writers should not misuse the emotional appeal by unjustly exaggerating or misrepresenting events or emotions.

Character

            The final persuasive appeal is based on the credibility, or believability, of the character of the writer. Your argument obviously will carry more weight if you convince your readers that you are a fair, honest and ethical person. In the following paragraph, King enhances his own credibility by comparing his beliefs to those of other respected individuals.

Sample:

    But though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist, as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction from the label. Was not Jesus as extremist for love: “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you.” Was not Amos an extremist for justice: “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” Was not Paul an extremist for the Christian gospel: “I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.” Was not Martin Luther an extremist: “Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God.” And John Bunyan: “I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make butchery of my conscience.” And Abraham Lincoln: “This nation cannot survive half slave and half free.” And Thomas Jefferson: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. …” So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice? In that dramatic scene on Calvary’s hill three men were crucified. We must never forget that all three were crucified for the same crime – the crime of extremism. Two were extremists for immorality, and thus fell below their environment. The other, Jesus Christ, was an extremist for love, truth, and goodness, and thereby rose above environment. Perhaps the South, the nation, and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.

    Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail

Exercise

            Read the following paragraphs. Identify in each the writer’s position on the topic and the primary appeal used (reason, emotion, or character).

            Please note that it is not necessary that all writers should state their position explicitly; in some writing, the position is only implied.    

Sample:

These days the common assumption, worldwide, is that the future belongs to China, and the rest of us are just going to have to get used to it. A huge nation is rising, economically and in every other way, and the other nations of East Asia will just have to sit back (if not genuflect) as Beijing takes its rightful spot at the table’s head. It is, after all, a done deal.

                Bill Powell, “Leave the Past Behind,” Time

1. What is the writer’s position on the topic?

2. What is the writer’s primary appeal?

Sample:

Gun control is not an easy issue. But, for me, it is a fundamental issue. My family has been touched by violence; too many others have felt the same terrible force. Too many children have been raised without a father or mother. Too many widows have lived out their lives alone. Too many people have died.

E. M. Kennedy, “The Need for Handgun Control.” Los Angeles Times

1. What is the writer’s position on the topic?

2. What is the writer’s primary appeal?

Sample:

    It is clear, I think, that gun legislation simply doesn’t work. There are already some 20,000 state and local gun laws on the books, and they are no more effective than was the prohibition of alcoholic beverages in the 1920s. Our most recent attempt at federal gun legislation was … intended to control the interstate sale and transportation of firearms and the importation of uncertified firearms; it has done nothing to check the availability of weapons. It has been bolstered in every nook and cranny of the nation by local gun-control laws, yet the number of shooting homicides per year has climbed steadily since its enactment, while armed robberies have increased 60 percent.

  Barry Goldwater, “Why Gun-Control Laws Don’t Work,” Reader’s Digest

1. What is the writer’s position on the topic?

2. What is the writer’s primary appeal?

    

Sample:

    The feminist objection to pornography is based on our belief that pornography represents hatred of women, that pornography’s intent is to humiliate, degrade, and dehumanize the female body for the purpose of erotic stimulation and pleasure. We are unalterably opposed to the presentation of the female body being stripped, bound, raped, tortured, mutilated and murdered in the name of commercial entertainment and free speech.

Susan Brownmiller, Let’s Put Pornography Back in the Closet

1. What is the writer’s position on the topic?

2. What is the writer’s primary appeal?

Evaluating Evidence

            A persuasive writer has to present concrete evidence in support of his arguments. Concrete evidence is made up of accurate statistics and facts, reliable authority/sources, and illustrative incidents. 

Statistics and facts:

      Both statistics and facts form effective evidence in persuasive writing because they are based on objective evidence. Statistics are special facts based on numerical evidence.  In the following paragraph, the writer argues that the earth has been made unlivable for many forms of life, and he supports his argument by statistics and facts.

Argument:      Far from mitigating the earlier threats to birds and other forms of life on the earth, man has further endangered their survival.

Sample: Fact & Statistics: Of earth’s 9,000 species of birds, about 1,000 are already at risk. And while the old perils – habitat destruction, pesticide poisoning, shooting, oil spills, migrant killing TV towers, and others – continue, we are adding new threats. Especially sinister are the gaseous byproducts of advanced technology – carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, CFCs – the products responsible for acid precipitation, ozone depletion and the greenhouse effect, developments whose long-term impact on birds (and other life) we are beginning, nervously to guess at. …

                - Alan Pistorius, “Species Lost,” Country Journal         

Reliable authority/sources:

      Citing an authority in the relevant area makes for convincing evidence. If the cited authority is well known, it makes the evidence stronger still.  However, although it need not always be a famous person, it must be an expert in the field. For example, Martin Luther King, Jr.’s citation from St. Augustine is not only from an expert but also from a highly respectable fifth-century scholar and author, so it lends powerful support to his argument.

Argument: One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.

Authority: I would agree with St. Augustine that “an unjust law is no law at all.”

            ­- Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter From Birmingham Jail

Illustrative incidents:

     Relevant illustrative incidents lend powerful support for an argument.

Argument:      Watching TV violence can be seriously dangerous for little kids.

Incident:          One 5-year old boy from Boston recently got up from watching a teen-slasher film and stabbed a 2-year-old girl with a butcher knife. He didn’t mean to kill her (and luckily he did not). He was just imitating the man on the video.

- Tipper Gore, “Curbing the Sexploitation Industry,” Raising PG Kids in an X-Rated Society

EXERCISES

Analyzing arguments

Read the following paragraphs and decide the argument and the type of evidence used therein, statistics and facts, reliable authority/sources, or illustrative incident.

a) Everyone should drink at least two liters of water everyday. Our sports coach says that becoming dehydrated, especially during exercise, is very dangerous.

Argument: _______________________________________________________

Type of evidence: _______________________________________________

b) Most of the miseries in this world are caused by war, and when the wars are over, they do not know what they were fighting about. Disputes must be settled by peaceful negotiations between countries and between people. Or, failing that, we need “passive resistance,” the method advocated by Gandhi and also by Martin Luther King, Jr.

Argument: _______________________________________________________

Type of evidence: ____________________________________________

c)         China has long prided itself on having come up with many of the world’s most important inventions. Now the country that gave us gunpowder, paper money, and the noodle can claim responsibility for another of human civilization’s highest achievements: we have the Chinese, or at least their distant ancestors, to thank for cocktails. According to a report released last week in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in the U.S., residents of the Neolithic village of Jiahu in Henan province were raising toasts with fruit wines and rice spirits in 7000 B.C. – usurping Iran’s place in the tipple timeline by at least a thousand years.

                                                            Susan Jakes, “Chen. Jiahu, With Hawthorn Accents,” Time

Argument: _________________________________________________________

Type of evidence: ___________________________________________________

d)         Khalil Ibrahim was quite desperate and ready to risk his life; he knew there was nothing but starvation in his country, Bangladesh. So, one day he boarded a rickety boat along with his four family members. They, along with thirty other desperate lots, set sail in search of economic freedom and happiness. Their voyage was a nightmare. Before they were arrested on the coast of Tripoli, Libya, they were attacked and deprived of whatever material goods they had by a group of pirates, and during a terrible storm, their supplies were washed overboard. Ten of the passengers died because of lack of food and water, and the rest were completely dazed.

           

Argument: ___________________________________________________________

Type of evidence: ________________________________________________

e)         After nearly two years of stubborn optimism, Japan’s economic recovery seems to be skidding to a halt. Last week’s government figures showed that the country only narrowly avoided a return to recession – defined as two consecutive quarters of decline in gross domestic product – with 0.1% GDP growth in the third quarter following a 0.1% contraction in the second. “We are entering a slow patch, and there is no obvious exit,” says Peter Morgan, chief economist at HSBC Securities in Tokyo.

           

Argument: _________________________________________________________

Type of evidence: ________________________________________________

Avoiding False Arguments

False arguments may seduce your readers’ emotions but will not stand the test of logical analysis; unreliable and ineffective evidence weakens persuasive writing. The four general types of unreliable and illogical support that should be avoided are: oversimplification, irrelevant evidence, unfairly emotional words, and distorted or suppressed evidence.

Oversimplification: This refers to poor reasoning that weakens persuasive argument. The following are some illustrations of oversimplifications resulting from poor reasoning.

Insufficient evidence: A conclusion based on insufficient evidence is a case of oversimplification. For example, suppose you are cheated by a person at a new place and you conclude that all people in that place are cheats. You would most probably be sadly mistaken.  Your evidence would not be sufficient to support that conclusion.

Illogical assumptions: Superstitions are invariably based on illogical assumptions. Some people avoid staying in room No. 13 in hotels thinking that it brings them bad luck; however, the fact remains that there is no logical basis for such thinking.

Misleading comparisons: Some writers make comparisons that are at first view attractive, but are actually misleading. Comparing life to a chess game is attractive, but does not make a logically convincing argument; such comparisons, as they do not stand the test of logical analysis, eventually weaken persuasive writing.

Irrelevant evidence: Any evidence that does not have an immediate bearing on the subject being debated is irrelevant. For example, if you discuss the teaching performance of your professor and cite his huge debts and his divorce as evidence of his being an incompetent teacher, you are reflecting on his private life, which has nothing to do with his being a good or bad teacher.  Therefore, this is irrelevant evidence, and it undermines your case.

Another example of irrelevant evidence is quoting someone simply because he or she is famous; celebrities make false authorities, except in their area of specialization. Celebrity endorsement is often used as a gimmick by many advertisers to convince people that they will be more like their favorite celebrity if only they use the same product as that person. A football player may be an expert on sneakers, but is his endorsement of frozen food worthy of attention?

Overly emotional words: Words used purely for their emotional impact fail to cut any ice. While emotional appeal is quite valid, writers should not substitute emotion for reason. If you are against abortion, you should not call abortionists “baby killers,” no matter how strongly you feel about it. Using name-calling adjectives, such as crazy, silly, or stupid, also serves only to make an argument seem desperate and emotional, not clear and logical.

Distorted or suppressed evidence: Finally, distorted or suppressed evidence does not make for persuasion. Taking a quotation out of its context is distortion of facts and must be avoided. A second kind of distortion is misrepresenting an opposing point of view before refuting it. Lastly, suppression of evidence occurs when the opposing view is completely ignored.

EXERCISE

            All the following statements are examples of weak reasoning. Write in the blank the kind of weak reasoning they illustrate: oversimplification, irrelevant evidence, overly emotional words, or distorted or suppressed evidence.

a) My sister gets As in English but only Cs, and sometimes Ds, in math. It is but apparent that girls are good at languages but terrible with numbers.

………………………………………………………………………………………

b) Never mind the past, I’m promising no new taxes from now on.

………………………………………………………………………………………….

c) The mayor is in favor of raising the education tax again. She really believes in soaking people for everything they’ve got. She is no less than a Hitler.

………………………………………………………………………………………..

d) Would you like to fix up your hair like Supermodel Tanita? Try Glorious Shampoo and marvel at the results. You too will have soft, manageable, shiny hair.
………………………………………………………………………………………..

e) I heard that a terrorist shot a person in broad-day light in down town Paris; it must be a very dangerous place.

………………………………………………………………………………………….

f) He is a self-seeking individual who has sold the city out to special-interest groups and racketeers.

………………………………………………………………………………………….

g) I fail to understand why people are so impressed with Japanese technology; my grinder, made in Japan, broke down after just two days.

………………………………………………………………………………………….

h) Let’s go to the new movie. Everybody says it’s great.

………………………………………………………………………………………......