Toulmin Replies

Please also respond to your classmates’ initial posts (students who have discussed different essays) and bring together pieces of the discussion and take those ideas further.

 

These responses should be at least 150 words.

In your response to your classmates, find a student who wrote about a different essay from the “Issues Facing the International Community” list, and comment on your classmate’s discussion of his/her chosen essay. Do you agree with his or her analysis of this essay? Why? The why is key – please post a rich response to your classmate. You may also respond to your classmate’s discussion of the Toulmin argumentation model.

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Hello Class,

For this week’s forum I chose to write about Stephen Szabo’s essay Welcome to the Post-Western World. I decided to go with this essay because I find the idea of international relationships and their effect on the global influence of different competing powers to be a very interesting topic.

The claim for this article is when the author says, “Today we increasingly witness the downsides of globalization” (Szabo 9). Szabo cites the intermingling of global economies and the United States’ “overreach in its role as a global rule maker and enforcer” (10), has served to weaken the United States influence. He backs his claim with examples of wars in the Middle East that have exhausted a lot of resources for western powers and other international commitments that have served to weaken the U.S. economy and distract from emerging competitors in global influence such as China.  

Overall the article was a very interesting read. Not only did the author provide solid support to back his claim, in retrospect he was able to accurately predict the outcome of a lot of global events that had not transpired yet at the time of writing. For example. India’s growing economy and its emerging influence in the pacific and how the United States could maintain its global influence through strategic partnerships even if it fails to keep pace with China’s economy.  

            I did not see any examples of concessions or rebuttals so I’m not sure that this essay fits the Toulmin format and even though it is published in a university journal I don’t see any specific indication that that journal was peer-reviewed.  

            As far as my previous and future use of the Toulmin method is concerned, I’m sure that I have unknowingly used some of the principles before in my work but never formally. In the future I will probably utilize it as a method of making sure I am aware of the point of view of my entire audience, but again likely in a less formal manner.

            Looking back at my critical evaluation essay, I was pleasantly surprised by the feedback I received. It served as a confidence boost I’m hoping with curb my anxiety about the next one. I do have some attention to detail issues that I would like to improve upon for this next essay such as grammar and punctuation but I was able to get some tips and feedback from all of you that I think will help a lot.

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This week’s forum was an easy choice for me to decide what international issue I wanted to write about. I chose “The Next Safety Net: Social Policy for a Digital Age” because I could tell by the title that this would be something I would be very interested in learning. This article is about how the digital age is slowly taking over the industrial age and how it affects all aspects of our work life. The days of going to your white-collar job and working in a cubical are slowly dwindling. The future is working from home. This article also highlights that many of these new jobs never make the fortunes they seek, and these newfound companies live short lives. Additionally, their employees’ benefits are pretty pitiful compared to the industrial age we are used to. This article suggests a few alternative ways to provide benefits to the digital age employees in the form of government funds and government compensation. 

The article I chose is not peer-reviewed. I know this because I searched for it in the APUS library, and the article was not marker peer-reviewed underneath the title, nor was there a button on the left side of the menu to choose peer-reviewed. I do believe this article is in Toulmin format, and my proof is as followed:

Claim: Colin and Palier wrote, “As advanced economies become more automated and digitized, almost all workers will be affected, but some more than others” (Colin,Palier 1).

Support: Colin and Palier stated, “Twentieth-century social insurance systems were set up to address the risks met by people who worked in mass industrialized economies—ones in which there were generally plenty of jobs available for all kinds of workers” (Colin, Palier 1).

Qualifier: Colin and Palier wrote, “The basic assumption behind them was that almost all adults would be steadily employed, earning wages and paying taxes, and the government would step in to help take care of the unemployable—the young, the old, the sick and disabled, and so forth” (Colin, Palier 1).

Warrant: Colin and Palier wrote, “So why the need for a new social policy” (Colin, Palier 1)?

Backer: Colin and Palier wrote, “Why not just rely on entrepreneurial activity to redeploy the work force based on the new activities” (Colin, Palier 1)?

Rebuttal: Colin and Palier stated, “Partly because various legal and regulatory barriers stand in the way of this brave new world, barriers erected precisely to avoid a situation in which all of life becomes subject to market operations—but also because there are plentiful dangers lurking, as well as opportunities (Colin, Palier 1).

Conclusion: Colin and Palier stated, “Unless social policy evolves, therefore, automation and digitization will aggravate inequality and leave many workers worse off than before” (Colin, Palier 1).

To me, the Toulmin model is tough to write but very effective at getting the reader to understand the writing from different views. With a lot more practice, I can see myself using this model in future papers because I believe it will help the reader grasp the picture I am trying to paint with more ease.

After reviewing my first essay in this class and annotating Professor Becker’s corrections, I will need to read over my essay multiple times to help mitigate grammar errors; I feel I will try to do a better job of this in my up and coming Toulmin essay. 

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Part 1

For this week I decided to talk about The Great Climate Experiment by Ken Caldeira. This is not a peer-reviewed essay as I have verified it through the APUS Library. I chose this topic because not only does climate change affect my life but all of ours and our future generations. We as Americans have been depending on outdated energy sources and we are experiencing the repercussions of it. Caldeira’s claim was in the first sentence, “In reality, carbon dioxide dumped into the atmosphere today will affect Earth hundreds of thousands of years hence” (Caldeira, 2012).

Calderia supports his claim by stating “As predicted, there has been more warming over land than over the oceans, more at the poles than near the equator, more in winter than in summer and more at night than in the day. Extreme downpours have become more common. In the Arctic, ice and snow cover less area, and methane-rich permafrost soils are beginning to melt. Weather is getting weirder, with storms fueled by the additional heat” (Caldeira, 2012). Calderia gives great examples explaining why his support is credible. I believe Calderia is using the Toulmin method in his article which helps me break it down into simplicity.

Part 2

I have never used the Toulmin model before I started this class. Creating an argument is hard when it’s hasty and without support. I was always trying to prove the other person wrong and make myself right when I should have been convincing the audience around me. I am able to sound more intelligent than someone just spitting random facts and taking the argument personal.

From my Toulmin essay feedback I must use in text citations better. I have the idea down, just need to do better with the punctuation.

 
 

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Hello Everyone,
This week I read Veil of Ignorance by Leila Ahmed, she talks about the wearing of the headscarf and the meaning behind how it shows Women’s power/rights instead of oppressing women and their rights in her community and to the world. I chose this article because I am curious what her take on the wearing of the headscarf meant and I wanted to learn about the headscarf itself. I have heard about them but did not completely understand what they are and what they represented. This is not an article that affects me directly but I feel it does go in line with a lot of what we are looking at across the world, in the United States included about Women wanting to be heard and be equals to men. 
I have searched to see if it is peer reviewed and I cannot see where it is but Leila Ahmed does have articles that are peer reviewed in the Trefry Library, the article is Women and the Advent of Islam.
Leila shows in her article that they wear the headscarves to show that it is a badge of individuality and justice.  She talks about how she and friend where out in Cambridge, MA and saw a group of women wearing the headscarves. At first she thought they were giving into pressure to give up their rights but after talking to some of the women she discovered they were wearing because they were free to do it is there religious right to wear it, they hoped others would see that they are being unfairly stereotyped because they were their veil and few other reasons (Ahmed). I feel like she does use the Toulmin method in her article as I said above, she talked with other women and they explained their reasons.
I have not used the Toulmin method prior to this assignment, I am not sure if I will use this method with any of my future writing. I am workings towards a degree in Exercise Science so a lot of my assignments have been designing workouts and power points on different roles such as a trainer or physical therapist. 
I did not get any feedback from the first essay that I did for this class. 
Mandy