The Purposeful Argument: A Practical Guide

THE PURPOSEFUL ARGUMENT: A PRACTICAL GUIDE encourages students to recognize where argument fits into their lives and how it can be a practical response to the issues in a variety of communities?School, Workplace, Family, Neighborhood, Social-Cultural, Consumer, and Concerned Citizen. When students are encouraged to honor and respond to issues that matter to them, their investment becomes evident and their writing purposeful. Students learn how argument can become an essential negotiating skill in their lives?both in school and beyond. With a focus on accessibility, THE PURPOSEFUL ARGUMENT relies on clear explanations, explicit examples, and practical step-by-step exercises that guide students through the process of building an argument. An innovative anthology of arguments and readings, arranged by community, covers a wide range of cutting-edge issues that address concerns of many student writers.

Harry Phillips earned a Ph.D. in English from Washington State University (WSU) in 1994 and an M.A. in English with a minor in Education from North Carolina Central University in 1988. From 1994 to 2009, he was Instructor of English at Central Piedmont Community College in Charlotte, North Carolina, where he regularly taught Argument-Based Research and a range of American literature courses. He began teaching argument in 1993 at WSU and recommended that this course be a part of the North Carolina Community College Common Course Library, a recommendation that led to the course being adopted across the N. C. Community College system. He continues to view argument as an essential set of skills both for two- and four-year college students, as well as for everyday people intent on crafting effective argument. Dr. Phillips is curator of native plants at the North Carolina Botanical Garden and the principal author of GROWING AND PROPAGATING WILD FLOWERS (University of North Carolina Press, 1985).

Patricia Kennedy Bostian is the author of over 80 scholarly works for presses such as Greenwood and Facts on File. She is the editor of a peer-reviewed scholarly journal: TEACHING AMERICAN LITERATURE: A JOURNAL OF THEORY AND PRACTICE (http://www.teachingamericanlit.com). She has completed her doctoral coursework in composition/rhetoric at the University of South Carolina and has taught literature, composition, and humanities courses for several two- and four-year institutions, including Central Piedmont Community College, the University of South Carolina, and Johnson C. Smith University, for 20 years.