Activity 6: Reasonable Position

Study the statements in the box and determine the author’s position and reasons on the issue.
Then, in your classroom, answer the questions that follow.

What is the author’s opinion?

- The author’s opinion is to have bike lanes on all alleys and streets that are prone
to accidents.

B. cities should create bike lanes on all major streets to encourage safety.

Reasons

- Bicycle accidents often result in serious injuries or worse death.

- Bicycle lanes should separate bike traffic from car traffic, making travel for bikers
safe.
- Safe bike paths would encourage people to ride bicycles for recreation and
transportation.

Writing your argumentative essay

Remember that your essay must have the following parts:

1. Introduction. The first part is the introductory paragraph. This presents the issue,
gives initial information necessary to develop the argument, and the thesis statement
or main idea of the essay.

2. Body. The body of the argumentative essay contains the reasons. Each paragraph
talks about one reason which includes facts or opinions. The reason is included in the
topic sentence and is supported by details or materials. These supporting materials can
be examples, statistics, personal experiences, quotations, etc.

3. Conclusion. This is the last part of the essay. This can provide a restatement of the
main claim and a concise summary of the argument.

Revising and editing

1. Read your essay.

 2. Be alert for errors in reasoning. Avoid vague statements that are difficult to prove.
Such statements have words and phrases like no one, none, everyone, every time, etc.

3. Develop the supporting material. Look for the key idea in each paragraph. Reread the
material supporting each key idea. Add reasons, facts, or statistics if needed.

4. Use precise vocabulary. Replace vague or overused words and phrases with language
that is precise and reflects your strong feelings about the subject.

5. Evaluate your completed essay based on these criteria.

Activity 7: Attack and Defend

Fill the blanks with appropriate words from the box to complete the sentences you can use for
your argumentative essay. Then arrange these sentences to produce a coherent paragraph.

a. ineffective d. tendency to test f. go

unpunished

b. means of discipline e. undisciplined g.

controlling

c. inflicted

A. Adults believe when children go unpunished

they may grow up e. undisciplined.

B. Children have d. tendency to test their parents or teachers’ parents.

C. Corporal punishment is a way of g. controlling children’s problem behavior.

D. But in shocking conclusion to one study, most teachers find corporal punishment

an a. ineffective

means of discipline.

E. Most children grew up c. inflicted

with corporal punishment at home by parents

 and school by teachers.

F. Corporal punishment is done as means of discipline .

Paragraph here:

Corporal punishment is done as means of discipling. Corporal punishment is a way of

controling childrens problem behavior. It also the deliberate infliction of physical pain or
discomfort and psychological humiliation as a response to undesired behavior by a
student or children. Children have tendency to test their parents or teacher, but in
shocking conclusion to one sudy, most teachers find corporal punishment an ineffective
means of discipline.

Activity 8: For the Win

Based on the activity above, write a one-paragraph conclusion. Remember that you need to
end with a bang in order to win the argument.

Conclusion here:

Therefore in order to win the argument you need to focus on facts and evidence, also
mind small details because sometimes it will help a thing be more clear and
understandable. We need to trust in ourselves that we can hit the point of that argument,
we need to be more confident in order to win that argument. We should state true facts
that are related to that argument so that listeners will have knowledge why we are arguing
it for.
After drafting your conclusion, rewrite your essay.

Frequent and harsh corporal punishment increases youth delinquency, making, especially males,
more aggressive, disobedient, dishonest, and destructive. It can cause a bottling up of negative
feelings that can manifest later in life as depression, suicidal thoughts, suicide in general, and
aggressive behavior. From a larger point of view, corporal punishment teaches children that: it is
okay to solve problems with violence, a terrible lesson in a increasingly globalized, yet violent
world; it is okay to for a bigger person to hit a smaller person; and it creates a fear and anger
towards parents and authority figures in general. Children do not learn how to exercise their
internal controls, they do not learn why what they did was wrong, and they do not learn how to
take responsibility for their actions.

It puts children in a situation where they are helpless to defend themselves, prompting them to
later do the same to others and allow it to happen to themselves again, teaches them no real moral
lessons, increases suicidal tendencies, depression, anxiety, impulsiveness, lower self-esteem,
makes children frightful of their parents, lowers than intelligence, and causes mental disorders; it
does not even work as a punishment, and to top it all off, it violates two fundamental human
rights. Corporal punishment is a completely inappropriate, pragmatically problematic, morally
repugnant act that is completely indefensible on all levels, and anyone who supports it cannot
receive support from me.

Bringing children into the fold really doesn't seem all that magnanimous if we keep in mind that
we've already been willing to share the shelter of our umbrella of Assault laws with even the most
vicious of hardened adult criminals. After all, children are the very last segment of our shared
human collective who still remain as fair game for being subjected to acts of physical aggression.
We display a strange sense of priorities when we don't allow the prison guard to break-out a
paddle and start whacking away on the disobedient buttocks of a sociopathic death-row inmate
who kills for the rush it gives him, yet we find helpless, defenseless young children as deserving
of such treatment. The fact is, we define corporal punishments of prison inmates as cruel and
unusual punishment, Guard brutality, or aggravated assault. And, should the physical
punishments be repeated as a routine punitive measure, such a treatment of prisoners would fall
under the definition of torment .As we evolve as a society, we have to keep in mind that
historically there was a time when it was acceptable to legally own other people.

Therefore, we no longer permit these punishments. The time has come for us to yet further our
level of social sophistication by coming to a general agreement that any degree of physical
punishment used against children is as socially unacceptable and repugnant as those past violent
behaviors we have chosen to put behind us.