From Inquiry to Academic Writing A Practical Guide, 3rd edition

68 CHAPTER 3 | FRom IdEnTIFyIng ClAIms To AnAlyzIng ARgumEnTs

An Annotated student Argument

We have annotated the following essay to show the variety of claims the

student writer uses, as well as some of the other argumentative moves

he performs. The assignment was to write an argument out of personal

experience and observation about the cultural impact of a recent innova-

tion. Marques Camp chose to write about the Kindle, an electronic reading

device developed by the online retailer Amazon that allows users to down-

load books for a fee. However, the user cannot share the download elec-

tronically with other users. Camp touches on a number of issues reflected

in his claims.

As you read the essay, imagine how you would respond to his various

claims. Which do you agree with, which do you disagree with, and why?

What evidence would you present to support or counter his claims? Do you

detect a main claim? Do you think his overall essay develops and supports it?

Camp 1

Marques Camp

Professor Fells

English 1020

January 28, 20 —

The End of the World May Be Nigh, and It’s the Kindle’s Fault

“Libraries will in the end become cities.”

— Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, German polymath

The future of written human history will come, as they

will have us believe, in the form of the Amazon Kindle, all 10.2

ounces of it, all 2 GB and 532 MHz of it, all 240,000+ titles of

it, ready to change the way people read, ready to revolutionize

the way people see the world.

The Kindle is a signpost for our times, the final check-

point in our long and adventurous journey from the world of

printed paper to the twenty-first-century world of digitalization.

We first saw this paradigm shift with newspapers, where weekly

columns were taken over by daily blog posts, where 48-point

sans-serif headlines transformed into 12-point Web links. We

then moved on into television, where Must-See TV was replaced

with On-Demand TV, where consumers no longer sat around in

the living room with their families during prime time but rather

watched the latest episode of their favorite show commercial-

free from the comfortable and convenient confines of their

1

2

The student pre sents a

claim of fact that others

have made.

He lays the basis for a

counterargument by

questioning whether this

is a real threat at all, cit-

ing some technological

precedents.

03_GRE_5344_Ch3_055_079.indd 68 11/19/14 11:06 AM