Paper Assignment 3: Argumentative Claim

For paper 3 you will make the third critical move in college and academic writing: making a
claim. Whereas in paper 1 you showed how you could read a difficult passage closely from a
particular position, and in paper 2 you found, described, and situated what other readers and
scholars say about a particular problem, in paper 3 you will look at the conversation two
scholars are having about a particular phenomenon and you will join that conversation. aper 1
describes and defines and demarcates a very particular difficulty; paper 2 discovers and explains
a conversation others are having about a difficult question or problem; in paper 3 you summarize
a conversation and add your thinking to it. A shorthand way of describing these critical and
intellectual moves in college writing goes like this:

• What’s the problem? (embrace the difficulty)
• What do they say? (discover the conversation, describe the conversation)
• What do I say? (distill, summarize, then make a move, join the conversation)

The intellectual move from they say to I say is what you do in paper 3.