Writing Argumentative Essay Links

Below are a few more links that might be helpful for writing the argumentative essay:

Writing Persuasive or Argumentative Essays
Argumentative Essay

About Argumentative Essays (#1)

The function of an argumentative essay is to show that your assertion (opinion, theory, hypothesis) about some phenomenon or phenomena is correct or more truthful than others'. The art of argumentation is not an easy skill to acquire. Many people might think that if one simply has an opinion, one can argue it successfully, and these folks are always surprised when others don't agree with them because their logic seems so correct. Argumentative writing is the act of forming reasons, making inductions, drawing conclusions, and applying them to the case in discussion; the operation of inferring propositions, not known or admitted as true, from facts or principles known, admitted, or proved to be true. It clearly explains the process of your reasoning from the known or assumed to the unknown. Without doing this you do not have an argument, you have only an assertion, an essay that is just your unsubstantiated opinion.

Notice that you do not have to completely prove your point; you only have to convince reasonable readers that your argument or position has merit; i.e., that it is somehow more accurate and complete than competing arguments.
Argumentative essays are often organized in the following manner:

1. They begin with a statement of your assertion, its timeliness, significance, and relevance in relation to some phenomenon.
2. They review critically the literature about that phenomenon.
3. They illustrate how your assertion is "better" (simpler or more explanatory) than others, including improved (i.e., more reliable or valid) methods that you used to accumulate the data (case) to be explained.

Finally revise and edit, and be sure to apply the critical process to your argument to be certain you have not committed any errors in reasoning or integrated any fallacies for which you would criticize some other writer.
Additionally, you will want to find out how your readers will object to your argument. Will they say that you have used imprecise concepts? Have you erred in collecting data? Your argument is only as strong as the objections to it. If you cannot refute or discount an objection, then you need to rethink and revise your position.
Popular argumentative essay topics could be:

• Animal testing
• Capital punishment
• Security cameras and privacy
• Homeschooling
• Retirement age
• The use of animals in scientific research
• Government and family planning

All these essay topics give you a chance to develop an argument in your future essay. The best idea is to choose essay topics that really matter to you. You have to have the strong personal opinion on the topic you are planning to discuss in your argumentative essay.

Writing 2 Class Notes -- March 27

Greetings!

We had an enjoyable class yesterday.  I really enjoy working with these bright, homeschool students.  I had purchased a magnetic Scrabble Game that we used for our Quick Write.  Each student took a turn to build a word using their 7 - 8 tiles.  It wasn't the creative writing opportunity that the Quick Writes often are, but it was a chance to "play" with words -- the building blocks for our writing.

I had handed back their final copies of their Evaluation Essays.  I enjoyed reading these essays; I always learn about so many interesting topics.  Each of the students is improving.  The papers not only have fewer grammatical errors, they are more clearly and thoughtfully written.

We had only 2 Short Stories to discuss this week:  "With Other Eyes" by Luigi Pirandello (Italian); "A Piece of String" by Guy de Maupassant (French).  In the first story, nothing really "happens," but characters are developed and back story is important.  In the second, we took a deeper look at themes.  I especially like short stories because they allow us to talk about all of the various elements of fiction in smaller doses.

The next writing assignment is a Argumentative Essay.  I think this is a harder paper for the students to wrap their heads around.  All year we've written thesis-driven essays which are essays in which the writer takes a stand and makes a statement that they must back up with supporting evidence.  An Argumentative Essay is similar, yet different.  On the blog, I'll post some entries that might be helpful.

Assignments for April 10.
-- Read "Sanctuary" by Nella Larsen (p. 110); "The Egg" by Sherwood Anderson (p. 1); "Squire Petrick's Lady" by Thomas Hardy (p. 56)
-- No Worksheets for these stories.
-- Rough Draft of Argumentative Essay.

Have a great Spring Break!
Mrs. Prichard

About Writing Argumentative Essays

Below is a list of websites that will give helpful information about writing an Argumentative Essay.  This kind of essay is a bit different from a simple persuasive essay.  Check out these websites for extra help and explanations.

From the Purdue website
From Homework Help from About.com
From the Easy Writing Help site.
From the eNotes site for writing instruction
From the Roane State site
From the Writing at UNC

Writing 2 Class Notes -- March 20

Greetings!

We had a good class today.  The students were alert and well-engaged.  For our Quick Write today the students had the following prompt:  "A Spring Mystery."  Some students found it an easy assignment while others drew a blank.  I guess that shows us that inspiration is an important aspect of writing.

The students handed in their final copies of their Evaluation Essays.  I also have them hand in their rough drafts along with the final copies so that I can see how they made the corrections.  I enjoy seeing their writing improve as they figure out how to rewrite sentences.  A couple of students are a bit behind because of absences, difficulties with printers, etc.  Any old assignments should be handed in next week.

The students were assigned to read 4 short stories for this week, and we discussed each of them.  Many times a student will comment that he or she didn't like a certain story.  Another will comment about enjoying the story.  Both opinions lead us to ask "why?" and help us analyze the stories.  One of the stories, "The Silk Stockings" by Kate Chopin, instigated an interesting discussion.  In this story, a frugal mother on a tight budget splurges on silk stockings, new boots, gloves, a fancy lunch, and an evening at the theater.  The students thought she was irresponsible; I could relate to a hard-working mom who always has to act responsibly.

The next writing assignment is an Argumentative Essay.  These essays are more than persuasive essays because the writer is to reason through various claims to come to a conclusion.  I will post a couple of blog posts to continue to clarify the writing of this type of essay.

Assignments for Next Week:
-- Read the short stories by Pirandello (p. 149) and de Maupassant (p. 134).
-- No worksheets this week.
-- Work on pre-writing for the Argumentative Essay.

Have a great week!
Mrs. Prichard

Writing 2 Class Notes -- March 13

Greetings!

Happy Pi Day!  Besides eating a nice piece of pie, you could learn a song or rap for the day!

Yesterday was a good day for the class.  For the Quick Write, we expanded a short paragraph by adding adjectives and adverbs.  The end results were somewhat overburdened with wordiness, but it was a good exercise.

We spent time going over the rough drafts of their Evaluation Essays.  As a class, we discussed some of the common problems that came up as I corrected them.  It seems that the same difficulties have come up over the last few papers, so I'm including some links to other web resources that might be helpful:
Parallel constructions:  #1 or #2 or #3
Compound Sentences:  #1 or #2
Agreement of Nouns and Pronouns:  #1 or #2 or #3

After our writing discussion, we looked at the short stories assigned for today:  "The Egg" by Sherwood Anderson; "The Veteran" by Stephen Crane; "A White Heron" by Sarah Orne Jewett; and "The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" by Mark Twain.  I had 4 different students lead the discussions.  It was a good opportunity for them to think about forming critical thinking questions for others to answer.


Assignment for Next Week:
-- Read "A Pair of Silk Stockings" by Kate Chopin (p. 30); "The White Silence" by Jack London (p. 122); "Germans at Meat" by Katherine Mansfield (p. 130); and "If I Were a Man" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (p. 50).
-- Fill out a Theme/Setting worksheet for one of the stories.
-- Fill out a Short Story worksheet for each of 2 other stories.
-- Finish final copy of Evaluation Essay.

Have a great week!  Enjoy this incredible weather!
Mrs. Prichard

Bad Writing Samples

#1       The amount of grammer and usage error’s today is astounding. Not to mention spelling. If I was a teacher, I’d feel badly that less and less students seem to understand the basic principals of good writing. Neither the oldest high school students nor the youngest kindergartner know proper usage. A student often thinks they can depend on word processing programs to correct they’re errors. Know way!

            Watching TV all the time, its easy to see why their having trouble. TV interferes with them studying and it’s strong affect on children has alot to due with their grades. There’s other factors, too, including the indifference of parents like you and I. A Mom or Dad often doesn’t know grammer themselves. We should tell are children to study hard like we did at they’re age and to watch less TV then their classmates.

#2       The television can be helpful sometimes, especially when people watch the news, but of course we all know that you can’t get everyone to watch the news. Some people watch television to learn about things that go on in our world. And there’s people that watch it cause there’s nothing else to do. People that watch television because there’s nothing else to do are making television harmful because almost all of the shows have something wrong with them like the language, their actions, and some of the things that they show. And most of the kids that watch these shows want to be the same way. Like say that a teenager killed someone, the kids that watch it and think that’s cool and do the same thing when they get older.

            Some shows are learning experienses like a show on saving our economy, if you  watched this you could help save the economy. I think that there are too many people using television in the harmful way such as gaining weight from sitting in front of the television too much. There are also a log of people who stay away from television as often as they can and try to be more active, but still do watch the educational way of shows and that is the education way of doing it. There are also a lot of controversy going on about some of the things they on television. But it you think about it television is very helpful.

#3       As that there are alot of people (weather they are philosophers or not) there are many exceptions to moral rules or laws. One thing I find interesting about Immanuel Kant, are his strong feelings toward not lying at any time ever no matter what and not to deal with the consequences and the considerations of individual situations and circumstances and possible exceptions that need to be accounted for when making a decision of morality and ethics. Immanuel Kant felt strongly that lying was always wrong, he was against it. But whose to say? Wasn’t lying just Kants biggest how shall I say "pet-peeve"? "No lying ever, no exceptions" needs to be addressed more seriously in the future by later philosophers, if you ask me its worth a try. Immanuel Kant was probably one of the most supportive philosiphers of absolute rules in the ethical and moral decision-making systems of thought I have studied.

Writing 2 Class Notes -- March 6

Greetings!

We had an enjoyable class this week.  The first signs of spring often invigorate us and give us fresh energy for the tasks at hand.  (That is, until the change in weather makes us antsy to be done with all school work!)

Our Quick Write for this week was this:  “BREAKING NEWS:  Mrs. Prichard’s writing class has a bad case of ………”  The students must have felt inspired because they took a bit of time to finish their writing.  I also tested to see if they knew a bit of trivial information about this past Sunday.  None of them knew that the day was an “imperative” (“March forth.”) or that it was National Grammar Day.  I suppose those are details that writing teachers are more aware of.

We discussed out three short stories assigned for this week: “Dr. Heidigger’s Experiment” by Nathaniel Hawthorne; “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allen Poe; and “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” by Ambrose Bierce.  In each of the stories, readers are challenged regarding what they think really happened.  As we discussed each story, we needed to go back into the text looking for details to support what we think transpired.  Did the old people in Hawthorne’s story really return to their youth or did they just think that they did?  Was the episode with Fortunato literal or metaphorical?  At what point does the plot and sequence of events in Bierce’s story make sense?  When students especially enjoy a story, we’re able to discuss the specific artful style of that particular writer.

In our writing portion of the class, we worked on editing a sample of bad writing.  Being able to recognize and correct poor writing is a skill that will help them in editing their own work.  Every sentence in the paragraph that we looked at needed so much help that we found it hard to figure out the content and meaning that the writer intended.  Often when writing for ourselves, we struggle to put into words our particular thoughts and insights.   

The students have handed in their Evaluation Essay rough drafts.  I will correct them and have them ready next week.

Assignments for Next Week:

-- Read the four short stories – Harte (p. 64); Twain (p. 175)

Jewett (p. 87); Crane (p. 34)

-- For one story, fill out both a “Themes” and a “Setting” worksheet.

-- For another story, fill out a “The Short Story” worksheet.

      -- These worksheets are attached, are on Dropbox, and can be found on the blog.

--  Write 1 bad paragraph at least 5 sentences long.  E-mail these to me before Monday morning.  I will use them with Writing 1 for editing practice.  (I’m having other students write paragraphs for the Writing 2 class to edit.)

Have a great week!

Mrs. Prichard