A detailed expedition into the world of Argumentative Essay writing

You are given an essay topic where you are asked to compare between A and B, or you are asked to place your explanation of why A is the best in certain circumstances. What will you do? Certainly, you will look into both A and B from several angles, or in the second case, you will gather information on the effectiveness of A in the given environment and then place your explanation and preference. These kinds of essays are called “Argumentative Essays”. In argumentative essays, a student’s points of view on a certain matter are tested. You need to be very particular in the interpretation and findings.

There are three parts to the argumentative essays:

• Investigate the topic
• Collect, evaluate, and generate evidence
• Establish your position with a simple explanation

Essential aspects of argumentative essays

Argumentative essays need a literature review, sometimes elaborately. A literature review helps to understand what kinds of research works have been done so far and where lies the gap. If there is a gap in the literature, you may need to undertake empirical research with a relevant survey for primary data. Even if the literature review offers sufficient secondary data on the subject, you may still need to find the situation in the current situation. Apart from surveys, in empirical studies interviews, observations, and experiments in the controlled environment also work well depending on the topic. If it is a scientific topic, it might need experiments whereas, in sociology or management, observations or surveys work well. It also performed controlled experiments in management studies and social sciences, like for finding consumer behaviour in a situation.

Thus, in argumentative essays, data is collected in two processes:

• Literature reviews
• Empirical studies

Regardless of the subject type, an argumentative essay needs a clear thesis and sound reasoning to establish your point.

Structure of an argumentative essay

An essay writing is composed of the following aspects:

• General discussion over the topic – As the topic is given, you need to explain the relevance of the topic, why it is discussed here, where lies the issues, how the world is seeing the issues, why the issues need proper investigation. This is like introducing the essay.
• Thesis statement – After the primary discussion, you must establish the thesis statement. The thesis statement must be conscious and clear. If the thesis statement is contradictory or confusing, the crux of the essay will remain unattended.
• Methodology of the research – In this part, you need to mention what methodology you are going to follow with proper reasoning. You may want a literature review for finding the previous research outcomes in a similar situation or gathering secondary data. You may need to undertake empirical study as well. Whatever it is, mention the methodology and why it’s important.
• Body of the essay – It contains several parts depending on the subject and topic chosen. In the body, you mention the literature review and how primary data is collected. In the literature review, you must follow the citation as per the guidelines. While choosing or performing the empirical study, you must keep in mind the guidelines too.
• Evidential support – An argumentative essay needs in-depth research and analysis of the thesis with the help of evidential support. Such evidential support could be analytical, statistical, logical, or circumstantial, or a combination of two or more of these research aspects. It should also include evidence that is not supporting or partially supporting the essay in it.

In argumentative essays, as discussed above, the essay flows in two basic forms:

• Rogerian Argument–It follows a negotiating strategy where the purpose of the topic is identified and then opposing it explains views.
• Toulmin Argument–It has six parts, viz. Claim, grounds, warrant, qualifier, rebuttal, and backing.

Follow the process as the essay needs, and as the guidelines ask you to follow. Argumentative essays are hugely popular in academia.