Argumentative skills are necessary skills you will use extensively in college and beyond.  Now that we’ve completed both an argumentative paper and a formal persuasive research paper in this course, you will exercise your argumentative skills in a less formal manner.

Part I:  Choose the ONE person who you feel most strongly about saving and create a paragraph in which you provide logical reasoning to support your argument. Include warrants for your reasoning.  Warrants are general rules or principles you believe to be true; you will use these to ‘back up’ your reasoning as to who is the one to be saved.  

Part II, tomorrow’s assignment, cannot be completed until you post this paragraph for Part I.

Have fun with this but stay logical and clear with your reasoning.

In the middle of the night, a large passenger liner hits a gigantic iceberg.  The ship, now with a large hole in it, begins sinking.  It is only a matter of time before the ship is completely submerged.

People start panicking and jumping into lifeboats.  You find yourself swimming in the frigid water up to a lifeboat with fifteen other people; however, this boat can only support nine people.  If seven of the sixteen are not eliminated, then the lifeboat will sink, and everyone aboard will die.  No other lifeboats are around.  How would you decide to proceed?  As you think about the boat’s ability only to support nine people, pinpoint which ONE is MOST IMPORTANT to save above and beyond the rest.  Here are the people currently on the lifeboat:

1. A doctor. A general practitioner, he is addicted to drugs and very nervous. Age 60.

2. An African American Minister. Protestant. Age 27.

3. A prostitute, with no parents. She is an excellent nurse who has already saved a drowning child. Age 37.

4. A male criminal who has been charged with murder. He is the man most capable of navigating the boat. Age 37.

5. A man mentally disturbed, who carries important government secrets in his head, age 41.

6. A successful orthopedic salesman and member of the local Rotary Club. Age 51.

7. A young boy, paralyzed since birth. He cannot use his ands,or do anything for himself, so he must be fed by others. Age 23.

8. A married couple. He is a construction worker, who drinks a lot. Age 27. She is a housewife with two children at home. Age 23.

9. An HIV-positive restaurant owner. he is a national gay rights activist. Age 40.

10. A teacher considered one of the best in New York. Age 32.

11. A Muslim Imam. Member of the National Council of Muslim-American elations. Age 45.

12. A retired man, formally a professor of literature. He has a great sense of humor, showed courage in the Korean and Vietnam Wars, and was in a concentration camp for three years, age 82.

13. A married couple deeply in love, but yet no children. She is studying to be a pharmacist. Age 24. He is unemployed, but volunteers for the homeless. Age 23.

***Adopted from NCTE 2013 presentation, “Transformation Thinking:  Rethinking ‘Authentic’ Learning Through Teaching a Socially Constructed, Self-Reflective Understanding of Argument” by Chris Moore (Olentangy Liberty High School) and Andrea Vescelius (Olentangy Orange High School)