Page 25 - 2021-bfw-shea-all-2e

3. Ideas that you have gained from your general experiences based on your race,
gender, age, ethnicity, participation in school, work, particular groups, and so on.
4. Feelings that you have about a topic, rooted in a specific incident or experience. skill workshop

Writing Using Personal Experience as Evidence activity

1. Return to the topic that you chose in response to the activity on pages 7–8. Write
down experiences you’ve had in connection with this topic — as many as possible.
At this point do not worry about relevance or effectiveness, just try to get a lot of
ideas down on paper. The list above of what might qualify as personal experiences
can help you generate ideas.
2. Now focus on the claim you developed in response to the activity on pages 7–8.
Choose one or two of your best examples and explain to a partner why you think
they might be effective in helping you to prove your claim. Provide and receive
feedback on how effective and relevant these experiences might be for your topic.

Balancing Personal Experience with Other Evidence

Of course, relying too much on personal experience is risky. If, for example, you argue
for a later start to your school day and support your argument with a detailed, emotional
account of how hard it is for you to get out of bed and how much coffee you have to
drink just to get yourself to class even five minutes late, any members of your audience
who are “morning people” won’t relate at all to what you are saying. They might not find
that evidence convincing because their experience is completely different.
Your voice and your experiences matter a great deal, but when your personal
experience is connected to and supported with additional types of evidence, your
argument becomes even stronger and more difficult for critics to dismiss. So, in your
argument about the later school start time, maybe you sandwich your experiences between
university research that explains how sleep patterns differ for adolescents and adults and
data from your school showing attendance is the worst for first period. Additional evidence
does not suggest that your own experience is not valid. Your personal experience will
humanize your argument, giving your audience a chance to connect emotionally, but the
other types of evidence will act as a balance to your experiences, helping to convince your
audience that your argument is valid because it is grounded in more than just your opinion.
For example, reread the following excerpt from Yousafzai’s speech and notice how
the paragraph begins and ends with her personal experiences, but in between are
references to other people and ideas:

I do not even hate the Talib who shot me. Even if there is a gun in my hand and he stands
in front of me[,] I would not shoot him. This is the compassion that I have learnt from
Muhammad — the prophet of mercy, Jesus Christ and Lord Buddha. This is the legacy of
9 9
Copyright © Bedford/St. Martin’s. Uncorrected proofs have been used in this sample chapter.
Distributed by BFW Publishers. Strictly for use with its products. Not for redistribution.

sheaall2e_24428_ch05_002_095.indd 9 09/07/20 5:30 PM