Argument writing is an essential skill in the real world, notwithstanding what lies in the future of a student. The standards of the Common Core supports teaching argumentative writing, and all students from elementary school up who understand how to support their claims adequately with facts effectively will benefit in the long run.
Besides the long term benefits, though, teaching argument writing can help you demonstrate to your students that argumentation goes beyond just convincing the audience of your viewpoint. Numerous other useful factors come into play, including proper research of issues, adequately gathering facts, and creating a valid claim. But how can you teach argument writing?
In this post, we will outline six effective ways on how to teach argument essay.
Define and distinguish Argumentative Essay from Persuasive Writing
Many students deem argument and persuasion as the same. Surprisingly, this is not the case. As such, before you start your lesson plan on writing argument essays, you must focus on helping your students understand the main difference between argumentative and persuasive writing.
In simple terms, persuasive writing seeks to persuade the audience at all costs. This writing is primarily focused on the viewpoints of the speaker, which they support aggressively. With persuasive or opinion writing, nothing is compelling the writer to consider their credibility, or substantiate the claims with evidence. It is all about persuasiveness!
Contrastingly, Augmentative writing is based on evidence. It usually considers viewpoints beyond just those of the writer. The speaker/writer must also establish credibility and must consider the emotional reaction of the audience, among other factors.
You can ask your students to visit this useful site for an even better definition and more information on these two forms of writing, during their free time. After clarifying this misconception, then you can introduce your students to the basics of writing a superb argument.
Use Mentor Texts as a Starting Point
You can start teaching argumentative writing by having your students evaluate mentor texts. A practical approach would be using picture books since they are not only short but perfectly easy for students to analyze ably.
You can offer your students some quick questions to start, such as: What concepts are being argued? Or who is your audience?
Mostly, it is usually more comfortable for the students to collaborate with a partner in their analysis, and you can even assign distinct groups to analyze different texts.
After they are done analyzing, allow your students to share everything they have discovered with the rest of the class. Similarly, you can use some simple summarizing questions such as: How did the writer use evidence? Or what makes this argument convincing?
As your students finish their scrutiny and observations, you can build a list of ‘elements that make a good argument’ which they can write down in their notebooks. This way, the students can have a checklist for reference as they progress.
Generate ideas
For this step, you can try asking your students to list down several things they cannot live without, several other things they don’t want to live without, as well as several things they want to live without.
After this, take all these lists and create some ideas you can provide them to argue on. For instance, if students mention food as something they cannot live without, think of some ideas related to this like Vegetables vs. Fruits.
Take the ideas and create debatable topics that the students can argue on, such as ‘Between vegetables and fruits, which is better than the other? Allow the students to brainstorm their ideas and produce as many as they can to expand their ‘idea tree.’
Narrow down the focus
More often than not, students struggle with writing a compelling argument, especially when the topics are not narrowed down adequately.
When your students start choosing what they should research and eventually write on, ensure you check with them. Are their topics sufficiently narrow? You can ask them to produce several questions they must answer as per their subjects. Help them narrow down their list, all while ensuring their questions are abundant enough also to avoid being too shallow.
Address counterclaims
What is the opposition saying? Responding to counterclaims is among the crucial trademarks of proper argument writing.
To help your students better understand this, you can pair them up and have some students share their arguments, outlining to their audience or partners why they think the argument is valid. As their partners listen, they should make a list of counterclaims or questions.
The primary role of the partners is to challenge the speaker with gaps or questions in their arguments. This engagement and feedback is vital as it will help you create a model outlining how a sufficient counterclaim entails.
Write
After all these activities, it is time for you to assess the progress of your students by asking them to draft their argument essays. While they are at it, check in with each of them to ensure they are right on track. This is also to ensure that they are including research in their writings-you can ask them to underline or highlight their research.
Depending on how they perform, you can also create writing mini-lessons and workshops for continued writing activities. After all, like with all other forms of writing, practice does make perfect!
Conclusion:
If you are not teaching argument writing, you are not instilling essential life skills in your students as per the Common Core. This Core aside, all teachers must teach argument writing not just for examination purposes but because it is an essential life skill with remarkable real-world application. With these few tips on how to teach argument writing, you should have no problem molding discerning soon to be adults, especially when it comes to creating and consuming media.
Good Luck!!
Author’s Bio
Jeff Blaylock is a renowned personal development coach and an accredited freelance author. He is the holder of a Master’s degree in Psychology. Besides authoring, Jeff is also involved in many motivational programs helping individuals cultivate their personality.
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