ENG 111, 112: Arguments & Evidence (Annandale)

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Using Evidence

Successful arguments use evidence or support to strengthen themselves. Evidence and support come from information in a variety of forms. When you think of the term evidence, you might think of fingerprints at a crime scene used as evidence of someone's involvement in said crime. When you think your argument, you might think of information that supports one or more claims that make up your argument. For example, when arguing that a given restaurant is a good place to eat, you might tell stories about the many times you've been there or you might bring up online reviews with other people telling of their experiences. 

Examples of evidence encountered regularly

• your own experiences
• online reviews
• family and friend opinions
• social media posts from politicians
• news articles (print and online)
• how to videos (e.g., YouTube and TikTok)

Some types of evidence and support are based on individuals' experiences, such as online reviews and family/friend opinions. Some come from experts interpretations of events (such as voting predictions based on polling surveys). Others still come from experts observations, experiments, and studies, which are usually shared in scholarly journals and magazines.

Expert evidence available for an argument often depends on where we encounter that evidence. In other words, are we finding it on a social media post, a newspaper article, a magazine article, a report, or a peer-reviewed article in a scholarly journal?

In Class Activity

The point of this activity is to demonstrate how evidence can vary from source to source, and how the quality of the evidence changes based on where we encounter it. In other words, location matters in terms of where we find information to use as evidence and argument support.

Instructions

You'll be working in groups of 2-3 people to briefly review two of the sources below. Each source is related to study released by researchers at the University of Washington in 2022. For each source, answer the following questions:

1. What type of source do you think you're working with? How did you come to that conclusion (what is the evidence you're using to support that conclusion)?
2. Is the source making an argument? Informing you of something or reporting on something? Asking a question? What's your evidence?
3. Of the two sources you reviewed, which of them would you use in a paper arguing to keep or get rid of Daylight Savings Time.

All groups will review Source #1 and then either #2, #3, or #4. Each group will present their answers to the above questions and we will discuss as a class.

Sources

1. "Permanent daylight saving time would reduce deer-vehicle collisions"

2. "Daylight Saving-Time Ends This Weekend. What to Know Before the Clocks Change. Some states are pushing to end clock changes because of growing evidence they hurt people's health"

   1. what this source might look like if you encountered it online

3. "Permanent daylight saving time would reduce deer-vehicle collisions, study shows"

4. Screen grab of source

These databases are great for learning about your topic and other things related to your topic. In other words, these databases can help you identify keywords that will make your searching easier.

Academic Search Complete is great for finding sources across a broad range of topics or if your research topic crosses multiple academic disciplines (English Literature is an example of a discipline as is Political Science or Health). Subject specific databases are helpful to use when you want to dive deeply on a topic in a specific subject.

ProQuest Research Library & Global Newsstream is ideal if you are searching for newspaper and magazine articles related to your topic. Newspapers and magazines, which are not scholarly sources, are better than academic sources for finding information on current events and rapidly evolving contemporary issues. 

The Library Catalog is where you search to find books held by NOVA Libraries, in print and electronic form. Books provide more in depth information about a topic than do scholarly articles, which are focused on one aspect of a research question. Books cover multiple aspects of a research area and/or cover a single aspect in more detail than is possible for an article to cover.