Critical Skills: Argumentative Essay

Overview

An argumentative essay is academic writing that requires writers to research a topic, evaluate information, and develop a position. Argumentative essays may be as short as five paragraphs or many pages long. However, the five-paragraph essay—which contains one introductory paragraph, three body paragraphs, and one concluding paragraph—is a common format in academia. Because an argumentative essay is academic writing, it should be based on high-quality research materials and properly cite the sources the writer used while producing the essay.

Argumentative essays are a form of persuasive writing, which is writing that expresses a claim or an opinion and supports it with facts. Because an argumentative essay is persuasive, the writer not only states information but also attempts to convince the reader to adopt the position being laid out in the writing. The writer attempts to persuade readers by including the strongest, most reasonable evidence available. In an argumentative essay, the author presents a claim and uses evidence compiled and synthesized from research to support it.

Like most essays, the structure of an argumentative essay includes three main parts—the introduction, the body, and the conclusion. In the essay’s introduction, the writer briefly describes the topic and may explain its importance. An introductory paragraph should end with a thesis statement in which the writer states his or her position and provides a reason for it. The second part of the argumentative essay is the body. This should support the claim made in the thesis statement. A well-written argumentative essay for academia will include reasons and evidence that support the main claim. It should also acknowledge and address counterclaims—those that disagree with the author’s position. The argumentative essay’s third part is the conclusion. This part of the essay restates the thesis and summarizes the reasons and evidence listed in the body.

Writing an argumentative essay is significant in the academic field because in this type of essay, a writer clearly develops and presents a well-reasoned argument that is supported by evidence. Writers are expected to learn from data and develop positions based on what they learn. Furthermore, in argumentative essays, writers must successfully support their ideas with evidence without committing logical fallacies. Argumentative writing is also important because some research suggests that improving one’s academic writing skills may help one improve other skills, such as critical thinking skills (Sato, 2022).

Core Skills & Competencies

Effectively conducting research is important for writers when developing argumentative essays. Researching requires a writer to search for, locate, analyze, synthesize, organize, and use information from other sources. The information a writer gathers and uses in the research process must be high-quality and relevant to the topic for the research to adequately support the essay’s argument. People can conduct numerous types of research, including through their own observations and experiments; however, research conducted for argumentative essays is usually done by searching for academic or peer-reviewed articles relating to the topic. Writers conducting research should be sure to use high-quality sources of information, as the writer’s claim will be persuasive only if the writer uses strong research and evidence from reliable sources.

Critical thinking is another skill writers use when crafting argumentative essays. Critical thinking requires a person to analyze and make judgments about facts and evidence. It is reflective thinking in which a person creates a belief. Critical thinking is required in various parts throughout the essay-writing process. A writer must use critical thinking when developing the essay’s thesis, as he or she must fully understand all the collected evidence and data to form a position. The writer must analyze the information to understand what the evidence suggests. He or she must also use critical thinking when including the reasons and evidence that will support the thesis. The writer will use critical thinking to ensure that a piece of evidence strongly supports the overall claim.

A writer should also be able to follow the five-step writing process when writing an argumentative essay. The first step in the process is prewriting. In this step, the writer generates ideas, conducts research, develops a thesis statement, and plans the writing (often by using an outline or a graphic organizer). The second step in the writing process is the first draft of the essay. The writer should structure the essay with its three main parts and attempt to include the best information. The third step is revising. Once a writer completes the first draft of an essay, he or she should review it. Writers often need to restructure parts of a first draft to ensure that the pieces are in the most logical order. Revision also requires a writer to remove extraneous information that does not work with the rest of the text. Writers may need to go through the revision step more than one time. The fourth step in the writing process is editing and proofreading. In this step, the writer should review the essay for grammar, usage, and spelling mistakes. The final step is publishing the writing. When writing for a class, publishing the work may mean submitting it for a grade.

Using logic and avoiding logical fallacies are two more important skills that writers use when crafting argumentative essays. Logical fallacies are errors in reasoning that often make arguments weak. Writers who can identify and eliminate their own logical fallacies will improve their support and overall product. Furthermore, writers who can identify logical fallacies in counterclaims will show the weakness of those counterclaims. A writer who can dismiss a counterclaim as a logical fallacy may also help convince readers of the accuracy of the essay’s claim. Numerous types of logical fallacies exist. For example, the bandwagon fallacy occurs when someone tries to convince people to think a certain way simply because other people think this way. Pointing out an idea’s popularity does not help prove the idea to be true. Another logical fallacy is the ad hominem attack. This type of fallacy criticizes the character of the person making a claim instead of providing evidence or reasons why the claim is incorrect or misguided.

Research & Theory

Research indicates that critical thinking and high-quality argumentative writing are closely linked. For example, a study among college students studying education indicated a positive correlation between low-level critical thinking skills and an inability to construct an effective argumentative essay (Ma and Li, 2022). Another study indicated that critical thinking skills and argumentative writing skills are positively correlated in study (Sato, 2022). The study agreed with previous research that implies that this correlation should be expected since certain tasks in the argumentative writing process (e.g., analyzing sources) require critical thinking skills. The study also asserted that improving critical thinking skills is important as students are usually required to produce argumentative writing so fostering those skills is important.

Some research also suggests how educators can best help students who are writing argumentative essays to do their best. One such study focused on college students who were writing the essays in a second language. The study found that the writers did best when they focused on the content of their claims rather than on writing long or complex sentences (Yang, 2022). The authors of the study also suggested that educators should help students create high-quality introductions, as students with poor introductions seemed to struggle with writing the remainder of the essay. Another study suggested that educators should provide individual advice and tools for different writers based on their skills and learning styles (Oktoma et al., 2021). This finding indicates that educators can help students produce their best possible work by tailoring their instruction and providing the most effective learning strategies.

Although many research studies have indicated that being able to effectively craft arguments is a positive skill, some studies have pointed out possible negative effects of argumentative writing assignments. For example, one researcher suggested that argumentative writing can make a person less open-minded (Southworth, 2021). The researchers asserted that the format of the argumentative essay, which encourages writers to search out only the best evidence and discount counterclaims motivates writers to ignore evidence that may not support their ideas. The researcher suggests that writers’ critical thinking skills might be harmed by this type of writing assignment because writers are incentivized by the format of the writing to remain close-minded and focused only on ideas that support their theses (Southworth, 2021).

Bibliography

Hamad, Sa’ad Saleh, et al. “Argumentative Tactic of Rhetorical Fallacies in Political Discourse.” Journal of Language & Linguistics Studies, vol. 18, no. 2, 2022, pp. 66–86. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=157195196&site=ehost-live. Accessed 29 June 2022.

Kim, James S., et al. “Improving Elementary Grade Students’ Science and Social Studies Vocabulary Knowledge Depth, Reading Comprehension, and Argumentative Writing: A Conceptual Replication.” Educational Psychology Review, vol. 33, no. 4, Dec. 2021, pp. 1935–64. EBSCOhost, doi.org/10.1007/s10648-021-09609-6. Accessed 17 June 2022.

“Logic in Argumentative Writing.” The Writing Lab and OWL at Purdue and Purdue U, 2021, owl.purdue.edu/owl/general‗writing/academic‗writing/logic‗in‗argumentative‗writing/index.html. Accessed 17 June 2022.

“Logical Fallacies.” The Writing Lab and OWL at Purdue and Purdue U, 2021, owl.purdue.edu/owl/general‗writing/academic‗writing/logic‗in‗argumentative‗writing/fallacies.html. Accessed 17 June 2022.

Oktoma, Erwin, et al. “Learning Strategies and Thinking Skills in English Argumentative Writing Skills.” Review of International Geographical Education Online, vol. 11, no. 9, Sept. 2021, pp. 1242–58. EBSCOhost, doi.org/10.48047/rigeo.11.09.107. Accessed 17 June 2022.

Sato, Takanori. “Assessing Critical Thinking through L2 Argumentative Essays: An Investigation of Relevant and Salient Criteria from Raters’ Perspectives.” Language Testing in Asia, vol. 12, no. 1, Apr. 2022, pp. 1–19. EBSCOhost, doi.org/10.1186/s40468-022-00159-4. Accessed 17 June 2022.

Southworth, James. “How Argumentative Writing Stifles Open-Mindedness.” Arts & Humanities in Higher Education, vol. 20, no. 2, Apr. 2021, pp. 207–27. EBSCOhost, doi.org/10.1177/1474022220903426. Accessed 17 June 2022.

“Stages of the Writing Process.” The Writing Lab and OWL at Purdue and Purdue U, 2021, owl.purdue.edu/owl/english‗as‗a‗second‗language/esl‗students/key‗concepts‗for‗writing‗in‗north‗american‗colleges/stages‗of‗the‗writing‗process.html. Accessed 17 June 2022.

Yang, Rui. “An Empirical Study of Claims and Qualifiers in ESL Students’ Argumentative Writing Based on Toulmin Model.” Asian-Pacific Journal of Second & Foreign Language Education, vol. 7, no. 1, Apr. 2022, pp. 1–17. EBSCOhost, doi.org/10.1186/s40862-022-00133-w. Accessed 17 June 2022.