Microtheme topics

English112: Using Evidence and Avoiding Fallacies

BLOG

A microtheme is a short (250-500) word essay in which you simply state your thesis (rather than leading up to it), and defend it with two or three succinct paragraphs. Rather than an exercise in general writing techniques, this assignment asks you to focus only on persuasive techniques. There are a few different types of microthemes. For this assignment, you will be writing a thesis-support microtheme, in which you will practice framing a particular type of evidence to support your thesis.

Directions: For this weblog assignment, I am asking you to write a microtheme in which you must only use personal experience, interviews, or data from a brief survey in order to defend your claim. Be sure to think about how you want to frame this type of evidence.

Step 1: Choose a topic about which you will write. You may choose one of these topics, argue the complete opposite of one of these topics, manipulate one of these topics, or generate your own topic. Be sure, however, you do not choose a topic for which you will have to conduct research other than the above in order to support.

1. An employee’s use of social networking sites both in and out of work can cause him or her to be overlooked for promotions and/or fired in some cases.

2. A child’s open access to the internet without monitoring can cause him or her great harm.

3. If children are not involved in sports or activities during their preteen and teenage years, they will be more likely to engage in self destructive behavior.

4. Any claim of your choice that can be supported with personal experience, interviews, or data from a brief survey.

Step 2: Since this type of essay insists upon brevity, please follow the following three-part structure for your microtheme, which differs from an extended essay:

First, you will present your thesis or the question you want to answer.

Second, you provide specific evidence.

Third, you will relate the evidence back to the thesis and(or) show how the evidence answers the question.

Step 3: Write a brief paragraph about how one might use a specific fallacy to defend your claim and discuss the type of fallacy as well as how the use of this particular fallacy detracts from the persuasive appeal of your argument.