Guide to writing argumentative essays for international schools

In the international curriculum system (AP/IB/AL/IG, etc.), academic writing is an ability that every student must master. Among them, argumentative essays are the most commonly examined writing style in senior grades.

Systematically studying and continuously practicing argumentative essay writing will not only help students' school performance and future college entrance examinations, but also cultivate students' logical and critical thinking abilities.

Many students feel "bald" in the early stages of learning argumentative writing because they don't know how to write. Over time, we have developed a "fear of difficulty" mentality towards argumentative essays. How does our advanced academic writing course help students overcome the difficulties of argumentative essays step by step?

"The argumentative essay you write and the argumentative essay the topic requires you to write may not be an argumentative essay."

To say goodbye to the "difficulty of writing", we can start by learning "what is an argumentative essay".

An argumentative essay, as the name suggests, is to develop an argument around a point of view.

However, there are two types of argumentative essays, namely, persuasive essay and argumentative essay. The former is to write to persuade, allowing readers to accept the author's point of view. The latter is write to argue, which means that for the same issue, the author needs to give equal space to the pros and cons.

Since the writing purposes of these two types of argumentative essays are different, we must adapt to the situation and adopt corresponding rhetorical techniques. For example, argumentative essays generally use Logos more. Our teachers will lead students to master these knowledge points in class by analyzing different literary styles through examples and trying to create short essays using rhetorical techniques.

"If you have ink in your belly, you will naturally have ideas in your head."

Many students think that it is difficult to write argumentative essays. They don’t know what to write and their minds are empty when they get the questions.

Don't worry, we can start with reading.

Read excellent argumentative essay examples and first see how others build their frameworks. We can also imitate others' frameworks when writing.

However, reading is not simply scanning. We need to analyze the purpose and function of specific sentences and paragraphs in the sample essay.

For example, if a certain sentence in a model essay uses a certain rhetorical technique, we can analyze why the author used it in this way? You can also practice it next time you write.

This is also an important way for our argumentative essays to lay a solid foundation for students' writing: "Learning by reading."

We use model reading with analysis questions, so that students can quickly start reading and analyzing, taste the author's intention during the process, and apply it appropriately when doing their own creative output; at the same time, our homework questions will limit students' answers. The word count allows everyone to develop a good habit of concise sentences when reading, and when outputting, they can write what they want to express clearly in concise words as much as possible.

"Step by step, from paragraph to written document"

Intensive reading of articles and mastering writing skills are part of it, but it is also necessary to practice writing exercises, continue to practice, and constantly revise.

However, in our argumentative essay course, we do not ask students to write a complete argumentative essay from the beginning. Instead, we start from sentences and paragraphs.

For example, when analyzing a model essay, we will assign some subjective questions to the students, allowing them to use this article as the basic material, divergent thinking, and try to produce their own opinions.

In addition, one of the difficulties in argumentative essay writing is to find strong and sufficient evidence for the point of view.

Our courses always emphasize that the evidence supporting a point of view should be relevant, accurate and sufficient. To this end, we provide students with specific exercises through which students can continuously practice how to find suitable arguments and at the same time, combine arguments and logically rigorously discuss their opinions.

Improving your argumentative essay writing is not achieved overnight, but it is not difficult to reach the sky either.

Summer is a good time to check for gaps and intensively train writing skills. Learn new skills, keep practicing, keep revising, from concise to written, step by step, your progress will be visible to us.

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