Toulmin, Classical argument & Planning

Don't let yourself get discouraged by the Toulmin Model or the Classical Argument - they can often seem uncompromising in their rigidity. They seem to ask you to write one way and one way only, artificially cramming ideas into a pre-made container into which those ideas may or mat not readily fit.

This does not have to be true and usually isn't.

At the very least what these models of argument do is give you the vocabulary you need to analyze and speak about and conceptualize the written argument - in essence you are getting part of the language of persuasion (or "Rhetoric" as Aristotle coined it). This is an important step - conceptualization, that is - in the process of taking information and processing it into applicable knowledge. By applicable we of course mean that you are converting something from a text into a form that you can use in your own writings. These Models also allow you the vocabulary to break down arguments into their component parts - this means that you are able in your own work to consider how your audience will react to certain informative/persuasive choices you make in your papers. And that is a major key to successful persuasive writing: being able to predict how your audience will react, not only to a topic (like Global Climate change for instance) but also to the way you present that topic. This is related to the concept of "audience-based reasons" from your text.

These models also give you valuable planning tools, something that, judging from your posts to the discussion board about your processes for planning essay in the past, many of you will benefit from greatly. So, use these models to help you gather and sculpt your thoughts into something more cohesive than you can get out of simply freewriting/brainstorming. You will find your writing taking on shapes that you never noticed before, and shape means that you will have given thought not only to the ideas you develop in service of your argument, but also how those developed ideas are being organized into something persuasive. And this, ultimately, is approaching then Aristotle's definition of "rhetoric": the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion.