BIO 220 final report Task 2: opposing position guide

Task 2 adds two new elements to what you produced in Task 1, and they are graded separately. State the opposing position on the issue in one to two paragraphs, and state your rebuttals to that position in one to two paragraphs. Everything else in the instructions is either carried forward from Task 1 or is housekeeping. Notice the plural in rebuttals: you are expected to answer more than one opposing argument, which means the opposing section needs to contain more than one. Plan the two sections as a matched pair, so that every argument you set out on the other side has a response, and the reader can see which rebuttal answers which claim. Two opposing arguments and two rebuttals is the minimum that satisfies the plural, and three of each is comfortably within one to two paragraphs if each is stated in a sentence or two.

The single thing that decides your mark here is how honestly you state the opposition. There is a strong temptation to present the weakest version of the other side, because it is easier to knock down, and it is immediately visible to anyone who knows the topic. A rebuttal to an argument nobody actually makes proves nothing. So find the best version: what does the most credible person on the other side say, and what is their strongest evidence? If the opposing case rests on cost, give the figure. If it rests on livelihoods, name whose. If it rests on scientific uncertainty, say what specifically is uncertain rather than dismissing uncertainty as an excuse. A strongly stated opposition makes your rebuttal worth reading, and it is what the assignment is training. The habit has a name outside the classroom too: an argument you can only defeat in its weakest form is one you have not actually engaged with, and readers notice the difference immediately.

Rebuttals come in a small number of shapes and knowing them makes this section much easier to write. You can dispute the evidence, by showing the opposing claim rests on data that is outdated, unrepresentative or contradicted by better studies. You can accept the evidence but dispute its weight, by agreeing that a cost is real while arguing that it is smaller than the harm avoided. You can dispute the framing, by showing the choice is not the binary the opposition presents. Or you can accept the point and narrow your own position, which is a legitimate and often the most honest move. Say which kind of rebuttal you are making in each case, because a reader who can see the structure will follow the argument without having to reconstruct it. It also stops the section drifting into repetition of your original position, which is the commonest thing to find in a weak rebuttal.

The instruction about revision is easy to miss and it tells you something about how this report works. Task 2 is similar to Task 1, but revisions should be made based on feedback comments and proofreading. That means you are not submitting a standalone Task 2; you are submitting an improved version of Task 1 with Task 2 added to it. Go back through the returned Task 1, act on every comment, and fix anything you noticed yourself. Markers who left comments on the first submission will look for them, and a repeated error that was flagged the first time costs more than the same error made once. Treat the comments as a checklist and tick them off, because the marker who wrote them almost certainly has the earlier version open beside your new one.

On sources, the brief asks for one or more articles that oppose your position, and one is the minimum rather than the target. Two or three is safer for a simple reason: a single opposing article makes it easy to argue that you found the one outlier, and it gives you only one line of argument to rebut when the instruction asks for rebuttals in the plural. Look for opposing material of a different type from your Task 1 sources, since an industry or agency perspective often carries the practical objections that peer-reviewed work does not address. Keep everything you find, because the final part of this report requires a minimum of six references and you are accumulating them now rather than at the end. A source you discard today because it is not quite right for Task 2 may be exactly what the synthesis needs later.

Two mechanical points. The reference list goes at the end and follows the GCU Style Guide rather than APA, and by this task the list should contain your Task 1 sources and your new opposing ones together, correctly formatted as one list. And review the grading rubric before you begin, as the brief says, because the rubric describes the finished report rather than this instalment, and reading it now will show you which parts of Task 2 carry the most weight. In most versions of this rubric the rebuttal section is worth more than the description of the opposing view, which is worth knowing before you allocate your paragraphs, since the two sections are allowed the same length but are not worth the same number of marks. Write the opposing section efficiently and spend your effort on the answers to it.