Hi, my name is Katie, and today, we'll discuss an argumentative writing overview. We'll begin today's lesson by describing what I mean when I say argumentative writing, and I'll make sure to define this term in the context of writing an academic research paper. Next, we'll talk about a variety of writing modes, which could be useful for argumentative writing, such as informative, persuasive, and argumentative.
Finally, we'll take a look at a sample argument and talk about how we can use the rhetorical appeals of logos, ethos, and pathos to enhance my argument. But let's begin with the definition. Most academic writing is driven by an argument, but what we mean when we say argument in this context is not a traditional emotionally charged exchange. Instead, it's helpful to visualize this as a debate.
Imagine your essay as a conversation between thoughtful people, who truly want to look at all the information that's in front of them and arrive at the most convincing result. The key to creating a successful argument in academic writing is to create a clear, focused thesis based on a debatable question that is supported by reasoning, and of course, credible research. And when you think about this credible research, make sure that you include both evidence to support your argument and evidence to refute any counter argument.
It's important not to ignore opposing positions. Instead, you want to address them in a balanced and fair way. A truly well-written academic research paper uses both credible research and rhetorical appeals to convince the reader of the author's position. Argumentative writing, of course, is written in an argumentative mode. However, both the informative mode and the persuasive mode can also be helpful to you in accomplishing your goal to present your argument fairly.
Let's take a look at a sample paragraph here to demonstrate what I mean by these modes. The informative mode is exactly what it sounds like. This is an objective way to present information. My tendency as a writer is to use the informative mode to establish a foundation of knowledge for my reader.
You can see here in answering this prompt, what does it mean to be an effective world language teacher, that my introductory sentence is written in the informative mode. I write it is difficult to measure the effectiveness of a class without defining exactly what effective means for teacher and students. Now while this claim is pretty easy to accept just in the informative mode as it is, if I wanted to strengthen it, I could also identify a credible source that proves this claim, and I could cite it here in my essay.
As I progress further into my argument, however, I begin to use the persuasive writing mode. Persuasive mode is very similar to argumentative writing, because it does attempt to persuade the reader to take a particular action or a particular point of view. However, unlike argumentative writing, persuasive writing tends to put a greater emphasis on pathos, which is an appeal to emotion.
See here in this sentence, I've written, personally, I found that having clear outcomes in mind will help both students and teacher create meaningful learning experiences. So you can see how I appeal to emotion in this sentence by giving the term personally, and also, using this very subjective term meaningful. This obviously is an audience of teachers, so the idea of creating meaningful learning experiences will certainly push a few buttons to get teachers to see things from my perspective.
So that's an example of how to employ both the informative and persuasive writing modes in your argumentative composition. But like many other forms of writing, argumentative writing is strengthened by using multiple forms of rhetorical appeals. So now, we need to talk about not only what rhetorical appeals are, but also, I'll show you some examples of how to apply rhetorical appeals to the same argument.
A rhetorical appeal is basically just an argument style. This word pathos is a Greek word, which contemporary writing uses to define appeals to emotion. This applies to the example that I just showed you with a persuasive writing, where I tried to get some emotional terms in there to make teachers get on my side of the argument.
Another rhetorical appeal is ethos. You can see that this term looks like our word ethics, and that's because it's an appeal to credibility. This is where you would cite information from a credible source to show your readers that not only is your argument well researched, but that other researchers might agree with your perspective.
Finally, there's the rhetorical appeal of logos, and you can see that this term is very similar to our word logic. That's because this is an appeal to logical thinking. This is where you would use if then statements or very mathematical or linear reasoning.
For example, we'll use the same prompt that we were just using to show the informative and persuasive modes, where my thesis was, effective teachers consider student input when creating classroom goals. If I were to appeal to pathos, for example, I could write something like both teachers and students find classes with shared goals much more enjoyable. This idea of being enjoyable is something that people can really relate to, something that people would really find pleasurable.
It draws your reader in, because of course, my audience, teachers, want both student and teacher to enjoy the time spent in the classroom. I could strengthen this argument by now appealing to ethos. We could say research shows that it is possible and beneficial to incorporate students sentiments in the process of goal setting.
This little term research shows is really handy for me when I'm trying to appeal to credibility, because it sounds very scientific. And immediately, it alerts the reader to the fact that you're citing a credible source. Of course, when I incorporate this into the body of my essay, as you'll see in a minute, I need to either identify within the body of my text, which research shows this, or I need to give a parenthetical reference, so that my reader can see where I access the information from.
Finally, we need to appeal to logos. Personally, logical appeals really work for me, so I tend to rely on them very heavily in my writing. And other writers obviously find this very useful, because logical appeals are the primary appeals used in argumentative writing. So for example, here, I could say it makes sense that students would want to achieve goals, which they set for themselves.
You can see how this sort of walks a fine line of an appeal to credibility, because naturally, you would want to use a source that supports the solid reasoning. Now let's take a quick look at my writing sample to show how I incorporate these arguments into the text of my response. As I mentioned before, I've already incorporated the rhetorical appeal of pathos, the appeal to emotion, by trying to convince my pedagogical audience to agree with me by using this very subjective term meaningful and really trying to get them to see how much they would personally enjoy these meaningful experiences with their students.
It's really easy to visually identify where I incorporate ethos, the rhetorical appeal to credibility. Because you can see my parenthetical reference, where I give my reader citation information of where my credible source is from. I say current studies demonstrate that this is indeed possible and beneficial to student learning. And then I give the author's name and the page number.
So my readers can look at my works cited page and find exactly where I pulled that information from. Finally, I appeal to logic, and you can see here how a logical appeal is strengthened by the use of credible supporting evidence. Because my proposed solution is that teachers should discuss the five C's, which are some Connecticut state standards that I've accessed.
So here, I have the parent federal reference Connecticut, which my readers can access to find where exactly what these five C's are. And then I sort of use an if then statement. I say, with this in mind, so if students know the five C's, then teachers and students can work together to create learning plans. So now you can see how these three worked together to really hit the reader from all angles to really make my argument nice and tight.
First, I try to get my readers emotionally invested. Then I prove to my readers that my opinion is credible by citing the research of others that supports my opinion. Finally, I hit them with logic, saying, look, I have these credible sources, these standards from the Connecticut Board of Education. And if I share them with my students, then they'll be able to help me develop objectives, which will achieve the goals outlined in these standards.
It makes sense to my readers. Then they see that I have readable supporting evidence to back up my information. In today's lesson, we gave a brief overview of argumentative writing. We began by defining argumentative writing and realizing that in the context of an academic research paper, this is not a shouting match. But it's more like an educated debate, where both sides really want to find the most convincing answer to the problem or research question.
Next, we took a look at the informative and persuasive writing modes and not only identified the differences between these modes and a general argumentative writing mode, but also, modeled how to employ these modes to introduce your topic and begin to convince the reader of your perspective. Finally, we discussed the rhetorical appeals of pathos, ethos, and logos, and gave some examples of how to craft your argument according to these appeals, and analyzed the way that authors can utilize these and make them interact together in order to create a very tight, convincing argument. As with all points of writing craft, your argumentative writing skills will improve as you practice. So I encourage you to practice applying these different modes and rhetorical appeals to your theses and see which work best for you as a writer. I hope that this overview was helpful. Thank you very much for joining me today.
