Sept. 18, 2013
● William Zinsser’s “College Pressures”
● Paragraph Structure
● Logical Fallacies
Next Week:
● Argument essay #1
● Picture money due: Sept. 25
● Half-Day: Sept. 25
“College Pressures”
In his essay, “College Pressures”, William
Zinsser claims that college students suffer from
four types of pressure: economic, parental,
peer, and self-induced.
In a well-written essay, take a position on
which kind of pressure plays the biggest role in
the lives of today’s college students, using your
own reading, observations, or experience for
support.
Support Paragraph Structure
● Effective paragraphing can be
achieved in a number of ways, but
whichever structural pattern you
choose, you need to be aware of its
particular demands.
Support Paragraph Structure
Option #1
● Assertion (topic sentence)
○ Evidence 1
■ Commentary 1
○ Evidence 2
■ Commentary 2
●
Conclude and Transition
Support Paragraph Structure
Option #2
● Assertion (topic sentence)
○
○
○
○
Evidence 1
Evidence 2
Commentary 1&2
Conclude and Transition
Support Paragraph Structure
Option #3 (Two paragraphs)
● Assertion (topic sentence)
○ Evidence 1
○ Evidence 2
○ Transition
● New Paragraph
○ Commentary 1 & 2
○ Conclude and Transition
Logical Fallacies
1. Ad Hominem
● means literally “to the man”
● a person’s character is attacked
rather than their argument
Logical Fallacies
2. Ad Populum Fallacy
● means literally “to the crowd”
● a misconception that a widespread
occurrence of something is
assumed to make it right or wrong
Logical Fallacies
3. Begging the question
● assuming in a premise that which
needs to be proven
● Example
○ “Because profane books corrupt
the minds of children, they
should be banned.”
Logical Fallacies
4. Post hoc, ergo propter hoc
● Means literally “after this, therefore
because of this”
● Assuming that because incident A
occurred before incident B, A is the cause
of B