Snow Day Instructions
In a separate document I have given my analysis of the reading (Parenti’s “Military Soothsayers”). This includes the thesis, the main points, the key idea of each paragraph, and the main evidence used to support each main point. Please read it carefully so you can see how an argument is structured—made up of smaller pieces, each supported with evidence, and each contributing to the overall thesis.
Feel free to use the ideas I have presented, but be sure to rewrite them in your own words to show me you understand them. If you simply copy what I have written your paper will receive a lower grade.
Since it now looks very much like school will be cancelled Wednesday, please plan to continue with the homework for tonight, which is to evaluate the evidence. Unlike the analysis, which is a description of what is on the page and therefore should be as objective as possible (most people should be able to agree on the analysis, even if they have completely different opinions), the evaluation involves your opinion as well. Specifically, you must decide whether the evidence provided is sufficient to prove the point, relevant to the point, and representative of whatever the author is using it to illustrate. (For more on what these terms mean, see “Assessing Evidence.”)
For example, are the reports Parenti quotes from representative of military planning? To make this decision, you must consider what you know about the subject. If you do not know about military planning for climate change, what do you know about the military in general? What does common sense tell you? What seems likely, given the way the world works? Using as much or as little knowledge as you have of the subject, make your best, educated guess about whether Parenti’s examples are typical of the sort of report military planners are probably writing.
In the same way you should decide whether he has enough (sufficient) evidence, and whether the evidenceis relevant to the point it is supporting.
Since this involves your opinion, I will not be able to provide specifics the way I have for the analysis. I can ask questions, give examples, and discuss how to do this, but ultimately it comes down to your own ideas. This is the core of the assignment.
Writing the Critique Paper
The homework this week is focused on how you read and think about what you read. Once you’ve made some decisions about the quality of the evidence in the reading, you’ll use that to come up with your thesis. If you think that the evidence is sufficient, relevant, and representative, then you will probably find the article convincing. If, on the other hand, you think it is lacking in one or more of these areas, then you will more likely find it unconvincing. Your thesis should express that evaluation.
The paper should begin by introducing the article (author, title, thesis, where it comes from, maybe a little about why it is important or something else about the context). Assume your reader is not familiar with the article or, if they have read it, their memory needs refreshing. Once you’ve introduced it, summarize it. The best way to do this is by giving the thesis and each of the main points in a single sentence. That way, you know you’ve covered everything in the article, and you haven’t given too much attention to minor details, or too little attention to something major.
After summarizing the article you begin the critique of the evidence. This is where you present your analysis and evaluation. For thispart you’ll work straight from your notes—plan to include the ideas, if not the exact words, that you wrote about in homework #4, 5, and 6, modified as needed based on my comments. You won’t have room to cover all the evidence for all the points, so pick key examples that give a good picture of what the article is like overall.
Don’t use up all your words on this, though. (The complete Critique Paperwill be about 750 – 1,000 words.) You will be adding a third and final section, analyzing and evaluating the reasoning, in a day or two.