Like most of you, I did not find anything to revolutionary about "Arguing Differently," partly because taking a conciliatory stance is what I have been taught as a "member of the advanced tract." I had a course in college that was basically built around Elbow's "Believing and Doubting Game," a more theoretical version of this argument which uses lots of "cursory" examples from different areas of study to make his point. Anyway, like Devin, I had the whole semester to produce an argument in which I show that I had considered the other side (metaphorically speaking--I don't think there are literally two sides). However, even in this advanced course I basically got out of the course what I put into it. What I got out was a introduction to the allnighter. A couple days before the essay was do I started actually considering the other side, and I became really convinced by argument that undercut my premise. After a frantic search the other side of the argument which I had not been looking for before, I completely overhauled the essay from one that was dogmatic to one that was basically conciliatory if not quite as subtle as Kroll advocates for.

My point is maybe there are good and bad ways to organize a course where you experiment with other types of arguments. Devin, I like your suggestions. Learning about different types of argument through reading together should held the student or their peer-reviewers or their profs diagnoze the approach that was used. Many times an adversial approach will be used when it is not appropriate or the claims and evidence are not that strong, but students feel forced into one way of arguing.

Though the student that seem to get the most from Kroll's approach seem to be the one that was most prone to be adversiarial, we should take sometime to consider another kind of student who doesn't use either approach well. Should we backtrack and try to teach that student the kind of argument that student rely to much on so we can then try to teach them not to rely on, or does the order they learn these things really matter. From my experience in the writing center, teacher seems to be thrusting the students in the world of argument and telling them not use exposition. Are students going to know how to arguing a thing from more than one side if they do not have reading comprehension skills and know how to summarizes those points. I know we have focused on the creative or inventive process so far but maybe we should pay some more attention to the exposition side of the course.