Argumentation Persuasion Essay

Argumentation Persuasion Essay

As you begin to gather ideas for your essay, thinking through these three points of argument can ensure that you don’t make any unwarranted assumptions and that the support that you do provide relates to your main idea (claim).

Now, it’s time to look at the structure of the argumentation-persuasion essay. When thinking about the essay’s structure, make sure you include the following:

1. The Introduction: There are several ways you can handle the introduction to your argument essay. First, you may want to establish why the issue you are writing about is important. If your readers are uninterested in the issue at hand, it can be useful to give some reasons why they should be concerned with this issue. Second, if you believe your audience is not knowledgeable about your issue, you could use the introduction to give some background information on your topic. Third, you can use the introduction to establish your credibility as a writer (ethos).
2. Thesis statement: In the thesis for an argument essay, you must both establish the issue you are discussing and then state your position on the issue. For instance, Stephen Klugewicz’s thesis in “The Oppression Lobby” is “Oppression is everywhere, and everyone on campus is supposedly being oppressed or oppressing someone else, either consciously or unconsciously, at any moment.” The issue is oppression on college campuses and Klugewicz’s position is that oppression exists on all campuses.
3. Arrangement of Points: In general, there are two main ways you can organize your points in an argument essay. The first way is to use progressive order and arrange your ideas from the least interesting or compelling to the most interesting or compelling. The second way is to place your strongest ideas in the first and last paragraphs so you have a very persuasive introduction and conclusion. Having specific topic sentences that relate to your thesis will be especially helpful in maintaining unity in your essay.
4. Concluding Paragraph: Depending on the organizational strategy you used in the previous step, you can state your final, most conclusive point; summarize your main ideas (don’t include the supporting details you used for each idea); or restate the thesis from the introduction. Or you could speculate about what could happen if your ideas are/aren’t adopted.