In your essay, you will state an opinion about an academic topic and persuade readers to agree with your opinion.
Remember that after you do enough preliminary research to brainstorm and choose your focus, you should do more detailed research about your topic so that you can make your outline.
When you research for an argumentative essay, look for the opinions of the supporters, but also look for the opinions of the opponents. To best support your opinion, you will need to consider all of your audience, even those who have different opinions. A strong argument often acknowledges the opposite point of view.
You can use a mind map, a free write, general internet search, or a discussion group if you are having a difficult time thinking of things to write about.
As you brainstorm, you may want to consider the following questions:
1. Opinion: What do I think?
2. Reason: Why do I think it?
3. Evidence: How do I know?
4. Appeal: How can I convince my reader of my opinion?
Questions 1-3 adapted from (Sedita, 2017, para. 7)
While it is okay to choose a personally difficult or sensitive topic to write your essay on if given the choice of choosing your own topic, you may find it more difficult as you continue researching, writing, and revising. It is okay in those situations to talk with your teacher and switch your essay topic to a different one. If you feel comfortable writing about the topic, feel free to continue to do so, but if dealing with that topic becomes too much, it is okay to change topics.
Make sure the topic isn't too broad to cover in your essay. If you choose to state a broad opinion, you will need a lot of evidence to support the broad opinion that you have. Furthermore, when you have a broad topic, your readers will likely have more doubts about your opinion because they can think of more exceptions or other reasons that your opinion might not be true. Therefore, it is easier to defend an opinion with a more narrow focus and to do so with the time and word count restraints of a school assignment.
You can use these questions to find the focus of your essay:
As you determine your focus, also determine which of the effective rhetoric appeals would best help you support the narrowed topic you choose. Would ethos, pathos, or logos best convince your reader that your opinion is right? You can use one, two, or all three appeals if you think it will help your argument. For more information on effective rhetoric Purdue OWL's resources on this topic.
Also begin an outline for your essay. As you research about your topic, start organizing your findings. Some people begin an outline by listing topics and quotes. Others write topic sentences and supporting sentences. A persuasive essay follows typical essay organization, but you may find the body paragraphs don't always follow the regular 5-paragraph essay rules. You may need to plan for more or fewer body paragraphs depending on the support you need for your opinion.
Your introduction should start by describing any background that will be important for the reader to know.
Here are some questions that can help you think about background information that the reader needs to be able to understand the problem:
At the end of your introduction paragraph, you should give your thesis. The thesis should clearly state the opinion that you will defend in your essay.
Although many people feel the choice to smoke in public places is completely an individual matter, the government should monitor and restrict smoking in public places for the safety of the public.
Review the characteristics of an effective thesis as needed. For a persuasive essay, it is especially important that you don't simply state a fact; your thesis should be an opinion. You can tell if it is an opinion by asking if someone else could have a different opinion on the topic. For example, "Dogs are animals." is a fact, but "Dogs are the best pets ever." is an opinion. Someone else could think that cats or some other animal are the best pets, so you can tell it is an opinion.
An effective thesis statement...
Your body paragraphs should give reasons that support your thesis. As you plan your essay, you should think about what type of appeal you will use to convince your reader your opinion is correct. You will need to use effective rhetoric to convince the reader.
Rhetoric is "the art of speaking or writing effectively" using principles of composition made by ancient critics to communicate and persuade (Merriam-Webster, 2022). Rhetoric was created by the ancient Greeks to effectively communicate and persuade (Sloane and Perelman, 2022). Aristotle, a famous Greek philosopher, divided rhetorical appeals into what we now call ethos, pathos, and logos (Sloane and Perelman, 2022).
Ethos is the appeal to authority. This is where you use experts or show yourself to be an expert in order to get the reader to trust you and believe your opinion.
Pathos is the appeal to emotion. This is where you use the emotions of the reader, specifically their emotional response to what you write, to convince them to agree with your opinion
Logos is the appeal to logic. This is where you use logical reasoning and evidence to show readers why they should believe your opinion. This is one of the most common appeals you will use in academic writing.
Watch this video from Texas A & M University Writing Center. Can you identify the different examples of ethos, pathos, and logos in the video?
Appeal | Example |
Ethos | An ad for a toothpaste brand that claims 4 out of 5 dentists recommend it. |
Pathos | A teenage asks his parents for a new car saying that if they cared about his safety, they would get him an updated car. |
Logos | Using statistics about recent oil pollution to prove that drilling oil in the ocean is harmful for the environment. |
As you try to persuade your reader, you can use these appeals to convince them. You can use one, two, or all of the appeals in the defense of your opinion.
Optional Opposition Paragraph
Another way to support your opinion in the body paragraphs is actually to add a counterargument that shows how other people may disagree with you. This is optional in a persuasive essay. You follow this counter-argument with your reply or rebuttal about why your opinion is still good despite what the other opinion may be. This can be done in its own paragraph(s) or worked into the supporting paragraphs. A counterargument is usually followed by evidence for the counterargument and then a rebuttal with evidence for the rebuttal. When writing the counterargument, make sure you keep a respectful tone in your writing.
Example Opposition Paragraph:
1. Counterargument | Some people say that regulations on guns are unwise because.... |
2. Evidence | The evidence they offer in opposition to these regulations includes.... |
3. Rebuttal | However, ... |
4. Evidence | There is evidence to support this such as... |
If you use a counterclaim, you will want your counterclaim to be strong so your rebuttal can stand out and give really good support to your opinion. If you give a good rebuttal to a strong and fairly presented counterclaim, your opinion will be even more convincing to the reader.
Your conclusion paragraph should start by restating your thesis to remind your reader of your main idea, your opinion. Then you should discuss your problem more generally and apply your opinion to the general context you established in your introduction. The middle part of your conclusion could be a summary or it could build on the information from your body paragraphs to apply the ideas of your essay to a bigger community.
You can end with a closing statement that is a suggestion, prediction, or opinion. For persuasive essays, you might also try using a call to action, asking your readers to join you in your cause.
Call to Action Examples:
Make an outline for the example essay "Music Education" at the start of this unit.
Make an outline for an essay with the following prompt.
Prompt:
Your outline could include any of the following parts in the order that you think would be most effective for convincing people of your opinion.
Optional
Read the titles of persuasive essays below. Consider the topic of the essay, and then write an effective thesis sentence for each one. Your thesis statement should clearly state your opinion.
Identify which appeal is being used in each sentence. Write E for ethos, P for pathos, and L for logos. If more than one appeal is being used, you can write more than one letter.
1. _____ Graffiti is writings or drawings in public places. It helps the community look beautiful. Sometimes, when a tourist comes to visit a town, they will take pictures with graffiti art and artists.
2. _____ Research compiled by analysts from NASA, as well as organizations from five other nations with space programs, suggests that a moon colony is viable with international support.
3. _____ I'm not just invested in this community - I love every building, every business, every hard-working member of this town.
4. _____ More than one hundred peer-reviewed studies have been conducted over the past decade, and none of them suggests that this is an effective treatment for hair loss.
5. _____ If my 20 years as a Marine taught me anything, it's that caution is the best policy in this sort of situation.
6. _____ Where would we be without this tradition? Ever since our forefathers landed at Plymouth Rock, we've celebrated Thanksgiving without fail, making more than cherished recipes. We've made memories.
Write a topic sentence to answer the prompt below as though you were writing a persuasive paragraph. Then write 1-2 sentences of support for your opinion using ethos, pathos, and logos.
Prompt: Artificial Intelligence is gaining popularity and is becoming more and more capable. In your opinion, should we allow developers to keep fully developing AI, or should there be some regulations in place?
Write a rebuttal for the counterclaim below.
Thesis Opinion: College education should be mandatory beause it will help people become better citizens, give them more opportunities, and help them develop their strengths and skills.
Counterclaim: College itself it not a measure of success. There are many successful people who didn't study in college, like Steve Jobs.
Read the titles of essays below and write a call to action for each one.
1. Face-to-Face Courses Cannot Be Replaced by Online Learning
2. Aircrafts' Excess Weight Charges Need to be Prohibited.
3. Elon Musk: Brilliant Mind or Insane Person?
4. Digital World Cybersecurity
Read the outline for an essay about technology. Evaluate it. What would make the outline more effective? Revise the outline to better support an opinion.
TH = thesis statement, TS = topic sentence, RTH = restated thesis statement
What advice would you give to the author of the following student outlines?
Outline #1: Government involvement online
Outline #2: Salary differences by gender
Go to procon.org and choose a topic that can be debated easily from two points of view. Briefly read about the topic and create two outlines: one outline in support of the issue and one outline in opposition to the issue. (Alternatively, you could work with a partner and each take one side of the issue). Compare your outlines.
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Access it online or download it at https://open.byu.edu/up_writing_summer/prewritingx.