You will most likely get these essays as part of your social sciences coursework. As the name suggests, you have to stick to an opinion and present it supported by facts and evidence, but you cannot use emotions and personal opinions to sell your argument. The only tools that you can use to build or counter your argument are hard, verifiable facts. A thesis statement of these essays will defend or challenge a stance.

This blog post highlights what is an argumentative essay, why is it needed, and how you can write one.

What is an Argumentative Essay?

An argumentative essay is an essay writing technique that prompts writers to take a stance about a matter, event, concept, or practice after researching it, and to present it with supporting facts. A good argumentative essay includes more than the evidence supporting your stance. Instead, you will see strong argumentative essays also highlighting counter-arguments and reasons why these counterarguments aren’t strong enough to hold against the argument you have presented.

Why are Argumentative Essays Important?

Argumentative essays are written by scholars to discover facts and uncover rationales behind events and practices. Another reason that makes these essays popular among scholars is that their structure and process allow the author to dissect the stance and develop an opinion based on facts.

Many lecturers want students to use this writing device to develop their critical thinking as well as communication skills. You see, you need to assess the facts to reach an opinion that will make your thesis statement. You may have seen instructors choose controversial and unconventional thesis statements for these argumentative essays for the students to pull them out of their bubble of thought and force them to view the world from a different perspective.

On the literary front, this essay style prompts students to be respectful and polite while presenting facts that may not align with their opponents.

How to Write Argumentative Essays?

Unlike persuasive essays, argumentative essays are built on facts. This makes research and analysis a crucial aspect of writing argumentative essays. You may mistake that you only need to study your side of the argument. However, doing so will seriously limit your argument and will leave it weak and easy to be countered.

In short, build your essay argument on solid research. Here are the complete steps to writing a winning argumentative essay.

Research

As mentioned above, research is the backbone of any essay writing exercise and it remains so for argumentative essays. You will start researching the broad topic before narrowing it down to the stance and viewpoint you are taking. So, before you dive into whether Einstein helped the invention of the atomic bomb or not, ask about the invention of the atomic bomb and its functioning. Once you have collected the material on how this invention came into being and how it relates to Einstein’s work, you are ready to study Einstein’s purpose behind his theory of relativity.

Build a Thesis Statement

Don’t jump on writing a thesis statement before you have conducted deep research on the topic. Note that your attempt at thesis statement writing doesn’t indicate that you cannot research or study the topic more. Research is a continuous argumentative essay writing help uk that will only end when you submit your essay.

However, you can build your thesis statement after gaining a reasonable understanding of the topic. Your thesis statement should introduce the topic and your stance while also briefly indicating why you chose that stance.

Start Writing 

Most beginner essayists go with five-paragraph essays because they encourage conciseness, are brief, and are easy to write. You can choose longer essays if you will.

Once you have selected the essay structure, develop and outline. This outline will tell you what idea will you discuss in the body paragraphs. As a rule of thumb, you must cover no more than one idea in one paragraph.

Make sure that you dedicate some text to detailing the counterargument. This will build readers’ trust in your research. Don’t let the counter-argument hang, you will want to bypass it with another fact or theory that counters it and supports your viewpoint.

Remember that in argumentative essays you are allowed to express your opinions only when they are backed by facts, so don’t include your beliefs and opinions and never use first-person pronouns to describe a concept. For example, you would want to avoid transitioning phrases such as I believe, in my opinion, and similar ones.

Edit

Once you have written the essay with the right blend of arguments and counterarguments, you should revise and fact-check it. Again, the phase of fact-checking should include research as an integral part. Once you have checked your facts and traced them back to their sources, proceed to edit and then proofread the document.

Here, you will also want to consider the logical flow of your essay. Feel free to eliminate a few sentences and change the order of others to make your essay more appealing. Here, you may want to hire professional essay writing help to improve your essay for you.

Wrapping Up

Argumentative essays are more subjective than many other essay types because they allow the writer to form an opinion and present it. However, its subjectivity is limited by its dependence on facts, and this is the feature that differentiates it from persuasive essays.

Writing an argumentative essay isn’t difficult once you understand the topic and feel strongly about your stance. Make sure to avoid using emotions in your writing or else it will lose its integrity and credibility. Use this blog post to learn the complete process of writing an argumentative essay.