When I was re-acquainted with Q.A.S.I., I felt that it was very close in nature to the way Carol and I are currently teaching the Toulmin method of argumentation, but when I broke down the analogy, I found that Q.A.S.I. is missing an important piece from Toulmin, and that’s the Warrant. This is where students state some sort of reason for their belief:
e.g.: “[I think that] Marc Antony was just in betraying Brutus and Cassius because it was pretty clear that they were going to use the same means to deal with Marc Antony that they used in dealing with Caesar.”
Q.A.S.I. has Support, but this is actually much closer in spirit and in letter to the Evidence section of Toulmin. Where Q.A.S.I. shines in a much more supportive way is that it stipulates that “quotes, paraphrases, and summaries” are to be used as support. In this area, Toulmin, while giving greater liberty as to what constitutes “Evidence” can actually be vexing for students who need extra help with responding to prompts.
In the end, I had to disabuse myself that Toulmin is just a more sophisticated version of Q.A.S.I.—the two are incredibly useful and helpful insofar as being scaffolds for students to use with their writing, but they aren’t quite as analogous as I first thought.
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