Crafting an Argument Essay

Death of the "Walk-through" Essay

WRITING YOUR OWN ESSAY WITH YOUR OWN ARGUMENT

A common structural flaw in college ARGUMENT essays is the "walk-through" essay. Some instructors will note this incorrect writing style as “report writing,” the “issue summary” writing, or even the “issue description” writing). You will not want to write a “walk-through” essay. You want to write a clearly logical argument essay in academic writing classes.

ACADEMIC WRITING IS YOUR WRITING

Walk-through essays follow the structure of their sources rather than establishing their own structure to drive the writing. Remember, it is YOUR writing; therefore, your ideas need to provide the flow for the essay. The sources are little tidbits in the writing, not the main attraction. Let your argument dominate the writing and develop the argument in the body paragraphs in your own voice—yet in 3^rd person.

GATHERING IDEAS

To keep yourself from writing a Walk-through essay, you must first start with analyzing your audience. AUDIENCE ANALYSIS will make it easy to figure out what you are writing, who you are writing for, and how it will be proven.

SORTING IDEAS LOGICALLY

Once you have the audience figured out and how you want to approach the issue, you will want to organize your ideas through an OUTLINE. If you fill out a basic OUTLINE form to put your ideas into a logical argument flow, you will meet five requirements for writing a good paper:

1. You will be sure that your writing is appropriate (content) and follows the logical flow (structure).

2. You will be sure that your topic is on the correct issue (such as the opioid crisis, genetic modification, or effects of social media).

3. You will be sure you have written in the assigned writing style (such as a proposal, ethical, or cause/effect argument).

4. You will be sure that you have met general academic writing standards for formal writing (no contractions, slang, questions, improper voice).

5. You will be sure that your instructor will be able to see your lessons in action through your writing, thus resulting in a higher score.

ARGUMENT ORDER

You need to clearly establish your argument through a thesis that is supported in the body paragraphs. Again, it is important to remember that this is YOUR essay; therefore, it should contain 70-80% of your ideas and insights into a given subject. The other 20-30% of the essay will be outside sources that work to support what you were already arguing about an issue. You do not create an essay based on outside sources you found researching the overall topic. You must first begin with a CLAIM. Your goal is to create your own writing based on the CLAIM (thesis statement) and follow it with brief EVIDENCE to defend your CLAIM. The Hamburger Method is an excellent structural flow to follow that helps you to write out your CLAIM and then go back through the essay to insert EVIDENCE (source content) that defends what you are already asserting.

WRAP UP

If you begin with your ARGUMENT issue clearly explained through logical progression in your OUTLINE, it will make it so that your essay development is not only easy to write but clear for the audience to follow. Start by ASSESSING YOUR AUDIENCE, filling out an OUTLINE based on the assigned writing style, making sure that you have a clear CLAIM (Thesis Statement) and defend the argument in little bites (EVIDENCE) in each body-paragraph using the HAMBURGER METHOD.

REMINDER!!

Submitting the Assignment

When you are satisfied with the quality of your essay, post it to Blackboard via the SafeAssign link for grading. Do not forget to write your degree program and whether you are using current MLA, APA, or Turabian on the title page and in the “Submission Title” field when submitting your paper. Every paper coming in for review should have a TITLE PAGE that provides basic information, even if you are using MLA.

IMPORTANT: Fully cite all quotations, summaries, and paraphrases used within your essay, or those excerpts will be regarded as plagiarism and will result in a “0” on your essay and possible course failure.

1. For writing to not be considered plagiarism, it needs to integrate sources properly using both in-text and parenthetical phrases.

2. Furthermore, signal phrases need to be used to indicate information about who the author is so that this is reliable and credible support for the point being proven. Using signal phrases helps to integrate outside sources more smoothly.

3. Moreover, when outside sources are followed by assessment and evaluative information about how the source content connects to the point of the essay and proves part of the argument you are making, it creates the required academic flow for the argument and establishes it as your own argument of the issue.

Plagiarism often occurs when students do not write their own argument and then defend that argument through a few precise outside sources. [Review this online lesson about SOURCE SUPPORT to help you learn ways to properly use sources as support--not as your argument, but as SUPPORT.]