In Reading Argumentative Texts I did not dwell on the relationship between reading argumentative texts and writing an argumentative text (an essay, opinion piece, letter to the editor, etc.). Nonetheless, many of you likely came away with this insight: virtually everything I wrote in Reading about reading argumentative texts is applicable, directly or indirectly, to writing an argumentative text. Utilizing the tools we discussed in Reading will make you a better reader and that will make you a better writer. In turn, being a better writer will make you a better reader. Writing argumentative texts is a good tool to improve your reading of argumentative texts.
The “easiest” way to get started on writing an argumentative text is to write an essay that uses a Road Map introduction (see Reading, Chapter 5), and in which the body of the essay follows the Road Map. Alternatively, use the five-paragraph essay format which I discussed in my blog entry of September 4, 2022 (“Introductions and the Five-Paragraph Essay”); modify that template as necessary if your essay is longer than five paragraphs.
I put “easiest” in quotes in the preceding paragraph because if you are new to writing an argumentative piece, you will find out that writing a good argumentative piece is not easy. Typically it is a challenge. Here are a few suggestions to make the task less of a challenge.
Write a first draft of your argumentative piece. Let it sit for a few days, to give yourself some perspective on what you have written. Read and rewrite it, because your first draft is sure to need improvement. Go back to your second draft in a couple of days and rewrite again as necessary.
Use that write/step away/rewrite/step away/rewrite again process with every argumentative essay you write.
In writing and rewriting your essay, you will repeatedly be asking yourself two key questions, namely: (1) what do I know (believe to be true)? and (2) how do I know it (what’s the basis for my knowledge or belief)? You will recall that these are the same two questions that I urged you to ask of the authors of all argumentative texts and which, if you can answer them, constitute your understanding of the argument of a text. (See Reading, Chapter 3.) In attempting to answer these questions while writing, you likely will find that your understanding of your subject is satisfactory in some areas and incomplete in others. When you start plugging those knowledge gaps, you may find that you need to modify or limit your thesis to conform to newly learned facts. That is not a problem; it’s just part of arguing for a position that is defensible based on and limited to what you and others actually know.
What should you write about to become a better reader? I suggest that you start with a subject matter which you already know something about, as opposed to one which is new to you. Use the writing process to deepen and expand your knowledge of that subject matter. This allows you to use what you know to spot the flaws and gaps in your argument and to learn more readily what facts or concepts are needed to remedy those issues so that your argument is well constructed.
At some point, you likely will need to write on a subject matter about which you have relatively little knowledge, as when a college professor gives you a writing assignment. Your lack of familiarity with the subject matter will make the task more challenging; you will have to learn more new material to pull it off successfully. But your task is far from impossible unless the subject matter is just way out of your league (e.g., a topic in quantum mechanics or rocket science).
As you go through this process, you will be reading and thinking about what others have written on the same topic. In doing so, you likely will come to a better appreciation of the thesis and the grounds for that thesis that an author proposes in writing on your topic. For example, suppose you are arguing that George Washington was an ineffective general during the Revolutionary War and that the thirteen colonies won that War in spite of Washington’s many mistakes on the battlefields. One source you may use to support this thesis is David McCullough’s military history 1776. In reading this history and others on the question of Washington’s effectiveness or lack of effectiveness as a general in the Revolutionary War, you will come to a deeper appreciation of the many factors that McCullough and other authors took into account in addressing this question, what weight they gave to each of those factors, whether an author was biased in any respect, whether any one of these authors reached the right conclusion, and so on.
In staking out an intelligent and defensible position on Washington’s military skills, you will need to understand the arguments of others on the subject. That will increase your knowledge of the subject matter you are writing about, will improve your analytic reading skills, will make you a better reader of such texts, and will improve your writing skills for this and future essays.
In sum, writing and reading argumentative texts are two sides of the same coin. The more you do of one, the better you will be at the other.
Reading Argumentative Texts 