Organizing Your Research
Keeping the concepts of “Pathos, Ethos, and Logos” in mind, paying attention to the ideas from
the article “Three Ways to Persuade”, aligning your research with the elements of RADAR,
using critical reasoning skills like deduction, avoiding fallacies, and utilizing your own internal
sense of logic and reason–start researching and organizing the most important facts,
background, history, and essential information for your Arguments Overview Essay. Please feel
free to talk during class, help each other in your groups, and give/get feedback from each other
as you’re working independently.
Please follow these steps:
1. First, think about and list as many important “sub-issues” as you can that connect or overlap
with your issue. For example, with the issue of vegetarianism/veganism, a few “sub-issues”
might be health, diet, meat-eating, factory farms, etc.
2. Next, take notes about the various “angles” or opinions about this issue and its sub-topics.
This could be a simple “pro” and “con” list, but not all subjects are “binary”–in other words,
sometimes there are more than “two sides”, so there may be multiple perspectives or “views” on
this issue and its sub-topics. Try to “flesh out” the various perspectives and opinions that might
exist about your issue and its sub-topics, regardless of what you think about it. In other words,
list what you think are authentic viewpoints about your primary issue and its sub-topics,
including viewpoints that aren’t your own. Bottom line: try to distance yourself from your own
views and ideas and create an honest and genuine overview of as many “angles” on this issue
as you can.
3. Then, start searching online for factual and meaningful research information that you’ll be
able to incorporate into your essay. I’d like you to start with this–make a list of ways you’ll be
utilizing pathos, ethos, and logos in your research for your primary controversial issue and the
related sub-topics you’ve chosen. Here’s what I mean:
a) for PATHOS: make a list of emotional appeals from the various “sides” of this issue and its
sub-topics–in other words, the emotional reasons for how different people might feel about your
primary issue, the arguments on both/all sides, and the sub-topics you’ve chosen…whether you
agree or not with these feelings…
b) for ETHOS: make a list of the names of websites for online sources where you’re able to
find valid and intelligent information about your primary issue and the sub-topics you’ve chosen,
accompanied by the actual names of the authors and/or organizations whose research you’ll
use. The more valid and authentic sources you have, the better…so I want a long list of usable
sites here.
c) for LOGOS: make a lengthy list of facts, legitimate background or history, and any other
sort of reason-based information you can find that you’ll use to “explore the angles” of your
issue and the sub-topics you’ve chosen. As with the list of websites and sources, I want a long
list of usable facts, the background and history of this issue, and other useful information
here…the more, the better.
IMPORTANT: Read from multiple sources, be careful to research authentically, and avoid
“confirmation bias” and other less honest methods of understanding your issue. Learn to rely on
research primarily from legitimate and established journalistic institutions, from educational and
governmental agencies, and from respectable websites where people’s actual names (first and
last) are attached to them. Try doing a search on the names of the people involved in presenting
information about your topic and sub-topics to establish and validate their background,
credentials, and ethos.
Feel free to copy-and-paste the numbers here for your Text Entry Submission.
1.
2.
3
a. b.
c.