Abstract

This essay is a first step in a larger project that attempts to integrate argumentation theory into the pedagogy of teacher response to student writing, especially the writing of freshman composition students expected to meet course outcome goals. Relying on Toulmin’s model for the layout of argument, I begin to point a way toward a refiguring of teacher response as situated argument. I claim that Toulmin’s model, when synthesized with the pragma-dialectic ideal of argument as critical discussion, would provide a better way for writing teachers to conceptualize their response practices and would form a better match between response practices and intended outcomes of the freshman composition course.