How to write an argumentative essay correctly and quickly
The argued essay expresses an extended argument in favor of a specific statement of the thesis. The author takes a clearly defined position on them and builds an essay based on the scientific evidence presented in the work.
An essay is a form of consolidation and testing of knowledge and skills acquired by students during practical work at the university.
The purpose of writing an essay is to confirm students’ mastery of the basic rules on this topic, to demonstrate knowledge of relevant literature, the ability to analyze material, make generalizations, and draw independent conclusions. The essay should provide for the disclosure of a specific area of official activity, have an applied nature and practical orientation.
The tasks of essay writing are:
- study of the state of development of certain issues in the literature and publications;
- consideration of practices and approaches to solving specific problems in the context of the chosen topic;
- study of relevant information and statistical data related to the subject of the abstract, and their analytical processing;
- logical, justified presentation of the material, a generalization of experience;
- development and substantiation of a proposal to improve the work in a specific field of activity, defined by the theme of the work.
The topic is chosen by the listener independently based on the offered list. The topic should respond to the need to improve scientific solutions, based on the willingness of professionals to implement their proposals.
When do you write an argumentative essay?
You can be given the task of writing a reasoned essay on a given topic as a writing exercise at university. The teacher asks you to argue one of the two positions you need to prove. This type of essay often takes the form of a question.
In this context, you will not necessarily need to prove a reasoned essay, but evidence-based argumentation is the primary goal of most academic texts, and this should be your default approach.
Examples of argumentative essays
At the university level, all of the following suggestions offer reasoning as the correct answer.
Your research should lead you to develop a specific position on the topic of research that is raised in your essay. The essay then argues for this position and aims to convince the reader by presenting your evidence, assessment, and analysis.
Create a discussion of specific texts by comparing and contrasting how they express their thematic issues.
Approaches to argumentative essays
There are many possible approaches to arguing an essay, but there are two popular models that can help you begin your argument: the Toulmin model and the Roger model.
Toulmin’s Arguments (Toulmin’s Argumentation Model – 6 interconnected components used for the analysis of argumentation, a model of the most significant works, especially in the field of rhetoric and communication.)
Roger’s arguments. Rogerian’s model also has four steps that you can repeat throughout the work:
Discuss in the essay what is the correct opposite position from a scientific point of view, which relates to the topic of the essay, why people can take this position
Highlight issues with this item
Present your position, showing how it solves these problems
Suggest a possible compromise – what elements of your position would they win if they took the opposite position?
This model forms a clear idea of both sides of the dispute and seeks to compromise. This is especially useful when people tend to have significant differences in a given scientific issue, which allows you, as the author of the essay, to approach conflicting arguments in good faith.
Let’s say you want to argue that the Internet has had a positive impact on education. You can:
Keep in mind that students rely too much on websites like Wikipedia
The argument that teachers find Wikipedia less reliable than it is
Suppose that Wikipedia’s citation system can teach students to refer to scientific facts
Suggest critical interactions with Wikipedia as a possible task for teachers who are skeptical of its usefulness.
The content of a reasoned essay is where you elaborate on your arguments. Here you will provide evidence, analysis, and reasoning to convince the reader that your thesis presented in the essay is true.
In the standard five-paragraph short essay format, the table of contents is three out of five paragraphs. In longer essays, it will be longer paragraphs and can be divided into sections with titles.
Each paragraph covers its topic, which is preceded by a subject sentence. Each of these topics should participate in the overall argumentation; without providing inappropriate information.
Roger’s approach first recognizes the benefits of the opposite position and then highlights the issues associated with that position.
An argumentative essay ends with a conclusion that summarizes and reflects the arguments put forward in the content of the essay.
No new arguments or evidence are presented here, but in longer essays, you can discuss the strengths and weaknesses of your arguments and suggest topics for further research. In all conclusions, you must emphasize the relevance and importance of your argument.
Students can independently determine the topic of the abstract, taking into account the urgency of the problem of scientific activity.
If necessary, students can receive advisory and methodological assistance from teachers in the final formulation of the topic of work, its plan. Involvement of sources, literature, etc. The relevance of the topic of the essay is determined by the problems of improving a specific scientific field and should be based on the analysis of scientific literature and practical activities.
The scientific and theoretical level of the essay is achieved by careful analysis of the research question, taking into account the current development of the scientific activity, theoretical generalizations, operational goals, and rational considerations, giving typical examples of their solutions and more.
Practical orientation. The topic of the essay focuses on the practice of solving the current problems of the individual. The theoretical material should be emphasized when analyzing the practical activities of the unit in which the student works. This will ensure the suitability of the work and make full use of the student’s personal experience.