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• How to write an argumentative essay | Examples & tips

How to Write an Argumentative Essay | Examples & Tips

Published on July 24, 2020 by Jack Caulfield . Revised on July 23, 2023.

An argumentative essay expresses an extended argument for a particular thesis statement . The author takes a clearly defined stance on their subject and builds up an evidence-based case for it.

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Table of contents

When do you write an argumentative essay, approaches to argumentative essays, introducing your argument, the body: developing your argument, concluding your argument, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about argumentative essays.

You might be assigned an argumentative essay as a writing exercise in high school or in a composition class. The prompt will often ask you to argue for one of two positions, and may include terms like “argue” or “argument.” It will frequently take the form of a question.

The prompt may also be more open-ended in terms of the possible arguments you could make.

Argumentative writing at college level

At university, the vast majority of essays or papers you write will involve some form of argumentation. For example, both rhetorical analysis and literary analysis essays involve making arguments about texts.

In this context, you won’t necessarily be told to write an argumentative essay—but making an evidence-based argument is an essential goal of most academic writing, and this should be your default approach unless you’re told otherwise.

Examples of argumentative essay prompts

At a university level, all the prompts below imply an argumentative essay as the appropriate response.

Your research should lead you to develop a specific position on the topic. The essay then argues for that position and aims to convince the reader by presenting your evidence, evaluation and analysis.

• Don’t just list all the effects you can think of.
• Do develop a focused argument about the overall effect and why it matters, backed up by evidence from sources.
• Don’t just provide a selection of data on the measures’ effectiveness.
• Do build up your own argument about which kinds of measures have been most or least effective, and why.
• Don’t just analyze a random selection of doppelgänger characters.
• Do form an argument about specific texts, comparing and contrasting how they express their thematic concerns through doppelgänger characters.

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An argumentative essay should be objective in its approach; your arguments should rely on logic and evidence, not on exaggeration or appeals to emotion.

There are many possible approaches to argumentative essays, but there are two common models that can help you start outlining your arguments: The Toulmin model and the Rogerian model.

Toulmin arguments

The Toulmin model consists of four steps, which may be repeated as many times as necessary for the argument:

• Make a claim
• Provide the grounds (evidence) for the claim
• Explain the warrant (how the grounds support the claim)
• Discuss possible rebuttals to the claim, identifying the limits of the argument and showing that you have considered alternative perspectives

The Toulmin model is a common approach in academic essays. You don’t have to use these specific terms (grounds, warrants, rebuttals), but establishing a clear connection between your claims and the evidence supporting them is crucial in an argumentative essay.

Say you’re making an argument about the effectiveness of workplace anti-discrimination measures. You might:

• Claim that unconscious bias training does not have the desired results, and resources would be better spent on other approaches
• Cite data to support your claim
• Explain how the data indicates that the method is ineffective
• Anticipate objections to your claim based on other data, indicating whether these objections are valid, and if not, why not.

Rogerian arguments

The Rogerian model also consists of four steps you might repeat throughout your essay:

• Discuss what the opposing position gets right and why people might hold this position
• Highlight the problems with this position
• Present your own position , showing how it addresses these problems
• Suggest a possible compromise —what elements of your position would proponents of the opposing position benefit from adopting?

This model builds up a clear picture of both sides of an argument and seeks a compromise. It is particularly useful when people tend to disagree strongly on the issue discussed, allowing you to approach opposing arguments in good faith.

Say you want to argue that the internet has had a positive impact on education. You might:

• Acknowledge that students rely too much on websites like Wikipedia
• Argue that teachers view Wikipedia as more unreliable than it really is
• Suggest that Wikipedia’s system of citations can actually teach students about referencing
• Suggest critical engagement with Wikipedia as a possible assignment for teachers who are skeptical of its usefulness.

You don’t necessarily have to pick one of these models—you may even use elements of both in different parts of your essay—but it’s worth considering them if you struggle to structure your arguments.

Regardless of which approach you take, your essay should always be structured using an introduction , a body , and a conclusion .

Like other academic essays, an argumentative essay begins with an introduction . The introduction serves to capture the reader’s interest, provide background information, present your thesis statement , and (in longer essays) to summarize the structure of the body.

Hover over different parts of the example below to see how a typical introduction works.

The spread of the internet has had a world-changing effect, not least on the world of education. The use of the internet in academic contexts is on the rise, and its role in learning is hotly debated. For many teachers who did not grow up with this technology, its effects seem alarming and potentially harmful. This concern, while understandable, is misguided. The negatives of internet use are outweighed by its critical benefits for students and educators—as a uniquely comprehensive and accessible information source; a means of exposure to and engagement with different perspectives; and a highly flexible learning environment.

The body of an argumentative essay is where you develop your arguments in detail. Here you’ll present evidence, analysis, and reasoning to convince the reader that your thesis statement is true.

In the standard five-paragraph format for short essays, the body takes up three of your five paragraphs. In longer essays, it will be more paragraphs, and might be divided into sections with headings.

Each paragraph covers its own topic, introduced with a topic sentence . Each of these topics must contribute to your overall argument; don’t include irrelevant information.

This example paragraph takes a Rogerian approach: It first acknowledges the merits of the opposing position and then highlights problems with that position.

Hover over different parts of the example to see how a body paragraph is constructed.

A common frustration for teachers is students’ use of Wikipedia as a source in their writing. Its prevalence among students is not exaggerated; a survey found that the vast majority of the students surveyed used Wikipedia (Head & Eisenberg, 2010). An article in The Guardian stresses a common objection to its use: “a reliance on Wikipedia can discourage students from engaging with genuine academic writing” (Coomer, 2013). Teachers are clearly not mistaken in viewing Wikipedia usage as ubiquitous among their students; but the claim that it discourages engagement with academic sources requires further investigation. This point is treated as self-evident by many teachers, but Wikipedia itself explicitly encourages students to look into other sources. Its articles often provide references to academic publications and include warning notes where citations are missing; the site’s own guidelines for research make clear that it should be used as a starting point, emphasizing that users should always “read the references and check whether they really do support what the article says” (“Wikipedia:Researching with Wikipedia,” 2020). Indeed, for many students, Wikipedia is their first encounter with the concepts of citation and referencing. The use of Wikipedia therefore has a positive side that merits deeper consideration than it often receives.

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An argumentative essay ends with a conclusion that summarizes and reflects on the arguments made in the body.

No new arguments or evidence appear here, but in longer essays you may discuss the strengths and weaknesses of your argument and suggest topics for future research. In all conclusions, you should stress the relevance and importance of your argument.

Hover over the following example to see the typical elements of a conclusion.

The internet has had a major positive impact on the world of education; occasional pitfalls aside, its value is evident in numerous applications. The future of teaching lies in the possibilities the internet opens up for communication, research, and interactivity. As the popularity of distance learning shows, students value the flexibility and accessibility offered by digital education, and educators should fully embrace these advantages. The internet’s dangers, real and imaginary, have been documented exhaustively by skeptics, but the internet is here to stay; it is time to focus seriously on its potential for good.

If you want to know more about AI tools , college essays , or fallacies make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!

• Ad hominem fallacy
• Post hoc fallacy
• Appeal to authority fallacy
• False cause fallacy
• Sunk cost fallacy

College essays

• Choosing Essay Topic
• Write a College Essay
• Write a Diversity Essay
• College Essay Format & Structure
• Comparing and Contrasting in an Essay

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An argumentative essay tends to be a longer essay involving independent research, and aims to make an original argument about a topic. Its thesis statement makes a contentious claim that must be supported in an objective, evidence-based way.

An expository essay also aims to be objective, but it doesn’t have to make an original argument. Rather, it aims to explain something (e.g., a process or idea) in a clear, concise way. Expository essays are often shorter assignments and rely less on research.

At college level, you must properly cite your sources in all essays , research papers , and other academic texts (except exams and in-class exercises).

Add a citation whenever you quote , paraphrase , or summarize information or ideas from a source. You should also give full source details in a bibliography or reference list at the end of your text.

The exact format of your citations depends on which citation style you are instructed to use. The most common styles are APA , MLA , and Chicago .

The majority of the essays written at university are some sort of argumentative essay . Unless otherwise specified, you can assume that the goal of any essay you’re asked to write is argumentative: To convince the reader of your position using evidence and reasoning.

In composition classes you might be given assignments that specifically test your ability to write an argumentative essay. Look out for prompts including instructions like “argue,” “assess,” or “discuss” to see if this is the goal.

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Caulfield, J. (2023, July 23). How to Write an Argumentative Essay | Examples & Tips. Scribbr. Retrieved July 5, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/academic-essay/argumentative-essay/

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• Writing an effective essay: Cambridge B2 First

• Posted on 28/02/2018
• Categories: Blog
• Tags: B2 First , C1 Advanced , C2 Proficiency , Cambridge CAE Certificate of Advanced English , Cambridge CPE Certificate of Proficiency in English , Cambridge Exams , Cambridge FCE First Certificate of English , Learn English

Students take language certifications like the Cambridge B2 First qualification for lots of different reasons. You might do it to motivate yourself to improve your language abilities, to prove your level of English to an employer, or even to achieve an ambition like travelling around the world and going to live in an English-speaking country.

The Cambridge B2 First exam includes a two-part writing section, which can be daunting for some people. So if you’re thinking about taking an exam like this, we have some top tips to help you write an excellent exam essay.

Most of the advice in this article can also be applied to any exam where you have to write an essay, such as the C1 Advanced, C2 Proficiency or IELTS .

Writing test structure

Before we get into the details, let’s take a look at the structure of the writing paper. You have 80 minutes to write two texts – and it will go quickly!

The first part is the essay; the second part is an article, email, letter, report, or review.

You will be given the essay title and two ideas or prompts . It’s essential that you include both of these ideas in your essay, as well as another relevant idea that you have to come up with yourself .

You have to write 140-190 words in each part and it shouldn’t take you more than 40 minutes per answer .

Writing an essay in three steps

Take a look at this example from a sample paper and then think about how you would answer it in an exam:

Essay title:

Some parents teach their children at home rather than sending them to school. Is this a good or a bad thing for the children?

• 1. having a parent as a teacher
• 2. making friends
• 3. …..

Question taken from http://www.cambridgeenglish.org/exams-and-tests/first/exam-format/ (Cambridge Assessment English, Feb 2018).

What could the third idea be? Stop reading, grab a pen and write down some ideas! Keep them general, but relevant. When you’ve finished, scroll down to the bottom of the page to see some of our ideas * .

Step One: plan it (10 minutes)

That’s what my old history teacher used to tell me. I hate to admit it, but he was right! If you don’t usually plan before you start writing, you really need to get into the habit . Ten minutes may seem a lot, but the more time you spend planning, the clearer your ideas will be and the quicker the writing process will be.

A good place to start is to brainstorm keywords and phrases related to the topic.

Next, you should think about how you’re going to begin ( the introduction ), how you’re going to connect the three main ideas ( the body ) and how you’re going to finish ( the conclusion ). If you know where you’re headed , you’re much less likely to get lost along the way!

Step Two: write it (25 minutes)

OK, you’ve got our plan – you’re good to go ! It’s important to know what the examiners are looking for. The mark you get for the essay is based on the following four aspects :

Content: Have you included all three ideas? Remember, all content should be 100% relevant to the topic, so don’t go off on a tangent !

Communicative achievement: Is the style or tone of your essay appropriate? It should be neutral and quite formal, so avoid contractions (e.g. it’s, don’t, they’ll) and first person pronouns (e.g. I, me, my, we, us, our).

Organisation: Does your essay follow a logical order? To help your writing flow , try to include linking words. Here’s a website with some examples.

Language: Have you used a variety of vocabulary and grammatical structures? Don’t always write the first word that comes to mind – look for synonyms . Using some complex structures (e.g. different verb tenses, passives, inversion) will boost your marks, but be sure to use them correctly!

Step Three: check it (5 minutes)

This final step is essential. It’s your chance to read (and re-read) your essay to identify any mistakes. No matter how careful you’ve been, there are probably a few things that you can improve. Check for spellings. Check for plurals. Check for verb agreement . Basically, check everything!

5 quick tips to improve your proofreading

• Keep a list of (your) frequent mistakes, so you know what to look out for
• Read it slowly
• Use your finger to guide your eyes
• Correct one thing at a time (e.g. only punctuation, then only spelling)
• Focus on the little words (pronouns, articles, prepositions, etc.)

Still not sure if this is the right exam for you?

There are many benefits of earning an English certification, but before you decide to do so, it’s very important to check your English level . This will help you select the right exam course and make sure you don’t waste time completing one that’s too hard or too easy for you.

If you decide to do an exam preparation course with us, one of our trained level testers will work with you to assess your level. But, if you can’t wait until then, here’s a multiple-choice test for you to complete to give you some idea.

This article also outlines the differences between the Cambridge and IELTS exams to help you decide which exam is for you.

Glossary for Language Learners

Find the following words in the article and then write down any new ones you didn’t know.

Daunting (adj): something that worries you because it might seem difficult to do.

Prompts (n): something serving to suggest or remind.

To come up with (pv): to think of something such as an idea or a plan.

To get into the habit (exp): to begin to do something regularly or often.

Headed (adj): destined for.

You’re good to go! (exp): you’re ready!

To go off on a tangent (exp): to start doing, discussing, or thinking about something completely different.

To flow (v): to proceed smoothly and continuously.

adj = adjective

pv = phrasal verb

exp = expression

*Example ideas: ‘group work’, ‘bullying’, ‘class sizes’, ‘working parents’, ‘free curriculum’

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Ultimate Resource For Cambridge Assessment International Education

Argumentative essays.

Argumentative Essays – Tips & Tricks

• Read the topic carefully. Underline the main point of the topic (such as Politics).
• Decide ‘for’ or ‘against’ (i.e. are you in favour or against?).
• Jot down all the RELEVANT & LOGICAL points related to your opinion. Spend 5-10 minutes doing this in the form of notes. No emotional reasons should be included. As we say in Urdu, don’t be “ jazbaati “.
• Starting – No quotes are needed; some books/resources will tell you to state your opinion at the start or by the end. In the paper, state it at the BEGINNING of your essay, most preferably in the opening paragraph.
• Ease into the topic then generally give your opinion. For example: “The trend of social media has greatly increased over the last four years. Nowadays, it has become a necessity for teenagers. I personally believe ……..”
• Start directly by exclaiming a valid point and giving your opinion. “Social Media, recently, has had a great negative/positive impact on teenagers. My personal opinion is that ……..”
• General “For” Argument – Include all valid points that are logical and EMPHASIZE on them – All points must be in favour of your opinion and they should be your STRONGEST points.
• Counter Argument – Pick out you’re strongest counter arguments and state them. Be completely logical and honest when pointing the counter arguments. The reason for this is that if you’re writing in favour, someone else will write against. You have to give both sides of the argument and prove yourself right.
• Disputing Counter Arguments – After writing the counter arguments, you must dispute them and prove them to be either wrong or not STRONG enough to win the argument. Here’s an example:

A counter argument could be “ Social media is required for teenagers, it forms a platform for conversations, discussions and sharing valued information “.

Disputing this counter argument “ Although it does provide a medium for communication, teenagers waste most of their precious time in procrastinating since they needlessly read comics/have useless discussions. Social media is one of main reasons why teenagers procrastinate. “

You can also add the fact that other mediums of communication such as e-mail, messaging are also available.

• Conclude your essay by restating your opinion in a different perspective, i.e. you could say, “Other resources of communication should be adopted such as messaging and teenagers should be encouraged to have outdoor activities rather than sit home and stick their heads to the computers.”
• After disputing you’re counter arguments – finish on a high by adding a strong ending sentence to conclude your essay. For example “Hence all these points show that Social media is indeed an unnecessary part of life which has been forcibly indulged into the life of teenagers.”
• You’re not listing points or stating your opinion. You’re trying to CONVINCE the examiner that you’re opinion is correct using LOGICAL points.
• Don’t get emotional and carried away over the course of your writing. Don’t be prejudiced.
• DO NOT EMPHASIZE TOO MUCH ON VOCABULARY. Sentence structures, punctuation, tenses are all equally as important as vocabulary. Don’t forcibly use strong words if you don’t know their correct usage.
• You’re not making a list of your points. Don’t use “firstly, secondly, thirdly and finally”. Remember, you’re language is being tested. Use good expressions and connectives such as “Furthermore, In addition to this”.

http://www.slideshare.net/englishbites/useful-argumentative-essay-words-and-phrases

Here is a great website concerning words and expressions. Do read it.

Difference b/w Discursive and Argumentative Essays:

In Discursive essays, you present a balanced argument that contains ‘for’ and ‘against’ points. You do not state your opinion.

In Argumentative, you give your opinion and convince the reader on your point of view.

Example Argumentative Essay:

Some people say that the Internet does more harm than good. What is your view? To majority of teenagers and working adults, the Internet has been regarded as one the most innovative achievements of humankind. Since the invention of the internet, its pervasive and life-altering influences can be felt in many aspects of people’s daily lives. While mostly beneficial in areas such as communication, trade and research, the internet has also caused a proliferation of vices such as pornography and hacking. Despite the negativity associated with the internet, I strongly believe that Internet does more good than harm.

Communication all over the world has been considerably improved thanks to the Internet. With the widespread availability of messengers and social networks like Yahoo and Facebook, people can easily communicate irrespective of their geographic locations. Gone are the days when international communication meant a delay of several days to months. Today, interaction through the Internet is not only much cheaper and more convenient than traditional modes of communication, it also has options to allow face to face interaction such as through the use of Skype. Now, family members and businesses can not only have instantaneous communication, they can also have the added personal touch even if they are in different continents or in any remote part of the world.

The Internet is one of the key contributors to the global free trade. When the transnational corporations want to open business in the other countries, they first have to contact partners in those countries before officially making a deal. In such case, the Internet certainly does a great job. Furthermore, the internet is instrumental in reducing operation costs for businesses where employees can be easily hired from developing countries and work remotely from their native land. For example, many transnational companies set up call centres in countries like Philippines or India where workers are cheaper to employ. The same benefits are applied to people’s daily lives. With the omnipresence of online shops, many people are able to save their precious time shopping. Instead, they have more time to do other important things such as helping their children do homework or having a short visit to their parents’ house.

On the other hand, objectors of the Internet argue that it spoils the young generation by spreading pornography and violence, which is considered rampant nowadays. There is no doubt that pornographic websites and violence videos are ubiquitous online, but whether the young is spoilt by it depends on the young themselves. Owing to the continual warning of using the Internet on many cyber education programs, the youths are supposed to know about all the boon and bane effect of surfing webs. Thus, once they have heightened awareness, there is likelihood that they will not be attacked by cyber hackers. Moreover there is a variety of information for their researches on line. Instead of spending hours of flipping over hundreds of books in the libraries, one may easily obtain necessary documentation within a second of mouse click.

Similar to any other technological inventions, the Internet has both pros and cons; nonetheless, its benefits far outweigh its harms. With recent upgrading Internet security software and substantial improvements on its use, I am firmly convinced the Internet is more a blessing than a curse.

Here are some pointers from the IGCSE Examiner Tips:

• Be clear about the difference between an argumentative and a discursive essay. When asked directly to give your own opinion you should commit yourself to a line of argument. When asked to give a range of possible views then you are being discursive and may or may not choose to say what you personally believe.
• Mention counter arguments – and dispute them. A strong argument includes refutation of the other point of view. This way you can show that you are not being purely ignorant or prejudiced in your response. It is important to show balance in presenting the argument.
•  If you are having difficulty finding enough points to support your stance you should consider arguing the opposite view – it might be easier!
• Aim for an effective introduction which captures attention and makes the topic and context clear
•  You should end on the side you are arguing for structure your essay so that you deal with the other side first and end strongly to clinch your argument with a final convincing point . Do not repeat yourself – ‘To sum up’ and ‘In conclusion’ are not strong endings as you won’t be saying anything new to convince your reader.
• It is generally advisable to argue your own personal viewpoint as it is likely to sound more convincing. It is however, possible, to argue effectively for or against an argument which you have never considered before, provided that you can marshal some evidence from the media, facts, statistics and experience. These are the areas from which you draw your supporting detail and illustration.
• Do not get too passionate about the topic as this will make your essay sound too emotional and subjective, and therefore less persuasive.
• Sometimes there is a single word in the question which alters the emphasis of the argument, for instance the word ‘compulsory’. Make sure you pay attention to the key words in questions when you are planning and answering – it is worth underlining key words to remind you.
• Try using personal pronouns – ‘I’, ‘you’ and ‘we’ can make your argument seem more authentic and inclusive.
• Do not start each paragraph with a numbered point- firstly, secondly, thirdly and so on- as this can get tedious for the reader and sound quite artificial if the ideas are not in fact sequential. Use other paragraph linking words, the ones which show whether your argument is continuing in the same direction (e.g. ‘furthermore’, ‘in addition’) or changing direction (e.g. ‘nevertheless’, ‘on the other hand’). The key is to make sure that your argument is “building” as you go. Use your connectives to help you take your reader with you so that they can follow your train of thought all the way through.
• Three-point structures (sometimes called tricolons) can sound authoritative, e.g. ‘involving the learners, the teachers and the parent’. More than three of anything becomes a list; fewer lacks persuasive impact and overuse of tricolons is rarely effective.

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where your rebuild Naaya

I have a confusion in writing an effective thesis statement.

how do you differentiate between the two topics?

I have only one confusion that at the end of all 3 body paragraphs we are supposed to write a counterargument or only in the last body paragraph?

It is often looked upon, that “reflective writing” contains, opinions, on a specific topic, while argumentative contains “real solid ‘arguments’ “, that is you argue on a specific idea, generally a stereotype. That being said, the sample provided, concludes, upon argumentative, and reflective, if the two aren’t to be referred to as one “body”, while referring to the sample. Accordingly, should it be then taken up from this, that argumentative can allow, opinions, perhaps that reflective sums up to the creative writing, partially?

It is just awesome Sir/Ma’am. It is really helpful. Even though it is good but I have a confusion, I have researched from different websites but no one has talked about the word limit and that how much words should be in one paragraph. It would be so nice of you if you can answer this question. Looking forward for your reply. Again it is a superb work piece. Thank you !

There is no set limit for the number of words in a particular paragraph. The word limit for the entire essay is mentioned in the question prompt — try to adhere to that given word limit and make sure that paragraphs are of almost uniform length.

I hope this answers your question.

Respected Sir/Maam I have a question that do the word limit matters?? like if it is 300 to 450 than is it compulsory to write in between them and also what if we cross the words limit..?? will our marks be deducted?? or does it matters to take care of this?? I shall be very thankful to you ….. Thanks for the entire essay writing tips…

1. Intro 2. For 3. For 4 .against and refute. 5. Conclusion Why is there two “for” para. ? This is the only doubt i have.

Hi! I am definitely not that good or capable to reply you’er question but in my point of view I think we write 5 paragraphs from which,

1.Intro 2.Now it depends that are you going for the topic or against it. For example if you want to go against the topic so you will write 2nd and 3rd para for against points and vice versa. 3.Again if you go with against so you will write this para accordingly. 4.According to the example I have given we will write “f or ” the topic whatever it is. 5.Conclusion. I hope this was helpful. I explained it in the simplest words I could.

u will be given a choice of 3 which r argumentative, narative or, descriptive

If I would write this in my exams…I will get at least 19/20 by the ICSE Examiner…Lol

dear your sentence structure is not correct.

Exquisitely explained!

Commendable effort👍

This is really helpful..

how do I know from the question if I should write openion or argumentative essay

Good question, Answer: it will ask to state your opinion and there must be two sides, this would give you the judgement to chosse argumentative essay or writing atleast what im aware of doing 511 english as second lang. IGCSE CAIE, to test this view cheack the past papers of your subject code whether 500 first lang. Or whatever cheack the past papers avalable to test this view, normally multiple past papers

but can you tell me that what is the correct way of writing an Argumentative essay that what should be the best way to give a better starting and ending??

Essay – examples & model answers | B2 First (FCE)

FCE Essay Examples:  Topic (Environment) 

Example exam task:.

Example Answer (Grade: 3)

Example answer:.

I think that my country has problems with pollution to the environment like all other countries. This problem is normal for Russia. We have big problems with transport because there are too much cars in our country. And because of that we have problems with atmospeer, air in my city and in all Russia is really dirty and sometimes I can’t make a sigh because it smells around me and of course around that cars on the road. I’ve heard about tradition of one country. They don’t go anywhere by car one day a month or a year, they just use bycicle or their feet. I think it could be very good if we had a tradition like that.

So, what about the rivers and the seas? Yeah, there are some really good and clean rivers and seas where you can go, but there are not many of them. Once I saw the river OB in my city, it was about two years ago but I stil remember that in some places it was not blue, it was green or purple I didn’t really understand because it had different colours.

I don’t know what should we do. Maybe we should just open our eyes and look what we did. But Russian people don’t care about the world around them many people care only about themselves an that’s all.

So, the best idea is look around and try to do something good for our planet and for us and our children.

FCE, CAE, CPE

Practice, write & improve, examiners comments & grade:.

Example Answer (Grade: 3-4)

To begin with pollution and damage to the environment is the most serious and difficult problem for countries of all over the world. Scientists of different countries predict a global ecocatastrophe if people won’t change their attitude to our planet.

First of all a huge damage to the environment brings a transport. People can’t imagine their living without cars, buses, trains, ships and planes. But it’s an open secret that one of disadvantage of these accustomed things is harmful exhaust. Needless to say that use of environment friendly engines helps us to save atmosphere from pollution.

In addition to this our rivers and seas are in not less danger situation. It’s a fact of common knowledge that numerous factories and plants pour off their waste to ponds. Obviously that cleaning manufacturing water helps to avoid extinction of ocean residents.

Apart from this I’m inclined to believe that every person can and must contribute to solving this important problem. Doing a little steps for protection our environment every day we will be able to save our Earth. And it’s a task of each of us.

Model Answer (Grade: 5)

DEVELOPMENT VS ENVIRONMENT

If we surf the web looking for pollution and environmental catastrophes, we will find out that every country in the world suffers them. This is a natural consequence of the struggle between development and environment.

If a country decided to live isolated from the rest of the world, living on what it can naturally grow and produce, it surely wouldn’t be highly polluted. But we all want exotic food and technological items from all over the world, so we have to pay the price.

Investing on electrical transport would benefit the environment a lot. Even more if this electricity came from a natural source of energy like wind, rivers and solar boards. It’s difficult to achieve this because petrol companies will fight against these actions.

We also have to take care of our rivers and seas. We all have heard about factories throwing highly toxic substances to rivers, without minimizing their poisoning effects. A really strict law should be applied to fine these factories and make them change their policy.

But what about ourselves? We also can do a lot! If, when possible, we bought larger packs of food, we would be producing less rubbish. And this is only an example!

FCE Essay Examples: Topic (Fashion) 

In today’s world, the fashion industry has a strong importance in people’s lives. The fashion industry say to the society what to wear and creates new types of clothes all the time.

Some people claim that the fashion industry has a bad effect on people’s lives, they say that the fashion industry creates clothes that the society has to wear. Furthermore, the clothes’ price is extremely high and people, who can’t afford it, should not be in the society.

In the other hand, the fashion industry guide the people to be in a good appearance, because, nowadays, the appearance of the person is more important than the person itself.

In my opinion, the fashion industry doesn’t has a bad influence on people’s lives. It’s something which was created to help people what to wear.

Example Answer (Grade: 4)

Fashion industry is very a discussed subject nowadays: they create and design new clothes everyday in order to satisfy some people needs.

There are many people who claim that the fashion industry is important and good for society. According to them, this industry design beautiful clothes and thanks to that every person can wear shirts, trousers or any acessory which is on today’s fashion.

On the other hand, the fashion industry in some people opinion, controls the market of clothes and because of that they can’t wear what they want to. In addition, the industry can increase the price of clothes, forcing people who don’t want to be “oldfashioned” to buy and pay a large amount of money to keep “beautiful”.

In my opinion, we can’t let the fashion industry decide what we must or musn’t wear. We shouldn’t judge people for its appearance,because that is not important. We must wear whatever we like, want and feel confortable with.

The society we live today is characterised by technology in constant development, fast speed processes, information travelling and getting to people at a blink of an eye and a complex web of social networking. In this context, the fashion industry is becoming increasingly important and having a more and more paramount role in our lives.

On one hand, the fashion industry is undeniably a source of profit and income. It hires millions of people all over the world and generates millions of dollars every year. Furthermore, such profitable business is also believed to be able to spread and make known the culture of a people, encouraging and enhancing a better understanding of each other.

Nevertheless, for those who are neither impressed nor motivated by numbers and figures, the fashion industry is seen as one which segregates people, isolating those who not fit their laws and commands. It is stated that people place too much importance on appearance and the material, world, sadly true, and the fashion industry just spurs on such situation. Moreover, not only are the costs of fashion item unrealistically high, it is thought to be a money better spent on more pressing issues, such as poverty and hunger.

I do believe that the fashion industry, as it is today, has a harmful effect, because it values a minority of people in detriment to the majority. However, it has such a wide reach that, it put into a good use, it can save lives.

FCE Essay Examples: Topic (Languages) 

“There are more reasons to learn a foreign language than to pass a test”

Everything around us revolves around language(s), it is the most important thing in our lives. Society would just not function without it. They are It is our future and I would personaly love to learn as many as I possibly can.

Not everything in life is done because it is necessary. Learning a new language can be a lot of fun. Many people only do it as a hoby, or their knowledge is something that brings them pride and pleasure.

Secondly, we have people who do it simply to challenge themselves. Truly I believe that having a great outcome that stems from your hard work and dedication to learn something new is a wonderful way to challenge prove your ability to yourself and others. Then there is travelling. It is very important to be able to understand and have a conversation with someone abroad, unless you would like to get lost or worse.

To conclude, I think that learning a new language is an amazing thing no matter why you do it. It is always better to do things out of enjoyment, but even if you do it for a test, that knowledge will always be useful.

Learning a a foreign languages is very important nowadays. English, in particular, is essential because it allows is spoken all over the world. That’s the reason why we start studying it from the age of six years old. Going abroad and being able to speak to native people is very satisfying and that’s why I want to improve my knowledge about foreign languages.

I decided to take this exam to know how high my level of English is, but also because I need this certification to go abroad next summer. I really want to come back to Cornwall, an amazing region in the South-West of England. I’ve been there twice with my family, but now I want to go alone. Only being there to England I can really improve my English comprehension and speaking skills.

Fortunately I can will have some English lessons which taught in English at university and I can’t wait for it because it will be an interesting challenge for me. Studying foreign languages is essential to live and to travel. It isn’t simple and I surely have to challenge myself everyday, but the result is so satisfying that we I can’t do without it.

FCE Essay Example: Topic (History) 

A very common topic that is being discussed nowadays is wether schools should teach subjects that some may consider useless later in life. A clear example is history, since it is quite difficult to learn and does not help us in day-to-day activities.

However, many people do not realize the importance of it or that it affects our lives today. For example, our political system would not be this way if it weren’t for the Ancient Greeks, numerous politicians and wars who helped shape democracy and our constitution. Yet it is still thought that it’s useless.

In addition, it is very important that we never forget about our past since we must know where we were standing years ago. Moreover, there are some things, such as World War II, that we have to remember to prevent them from happening again. We should also know where we we were standing a century ago: our origins, our identity. The more you learn about your ethnicity, the better.

All in all, I think that it is extremely important to learn about one’s own country’s history. Anyone who gets the chance to do this should not waste it, since they are very fortunate to have this opportunity

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Argumentative Essay Examples & Analysis

July 20, 2023

Writing successful argumentative or persuasive essays is a sort of academic rite of passage: every student, at some point in their academic career, will have to do it. And not without reason—writing a good argumentative essay requires the ability to organize one’s thoughts, reason logically, and present evidence in support of claims. They even require empathy, as authors are forced to inhabit and then respond to viewpoints that run counter to their own. Here, we’ll look at some argumentative essay examples and analyze their strengths and weaknesses.

What is an argumentative essay?

Before we turn to those argumentative essay examples, let’s get precise about what an argumentative essay is. An argumentative essay is an essay that advances a central point, thesis, or claim using evidence and facts. In other words, argumentative essays are essays that argue on behalf of a particular viewpoint. The goal of an argumentative essay is to convince the reader that the essay’s core idea is correct.

Good argumentative essays rely on facts and evidence. Personal anecdotes, appeals to emotion , and opinions that aren’t grounded in evidence just won’t fly. Let’s say I wanted to write an essay arguing that cats are the best pets. It wouldn’t be enough to say that I love having a cat as a pet. That’s just my opinion. Nor would it be enough to cite my downstairs neighbor Claudia, who also has a cat and who also prefers cats to dogs. That’s just an anecdote.

For the essay to have a chance at succeeding, I’d have to use evidence to support my argument. Maybe there are studies that compare the cost of cat ownership to dog ownership and conclude that cat ownership is less expensive. Perhaps there’s medical data that shows that more people are allergic to dogs than they are to cats. And maybe there are surveys that show that cat owners are more satisfied with their pets than are dog owners. I have no idea if any of that is true. The point is that successful argumentative essays use evidence from credible sources to back up their points.

Argumentative essay structure

Important to note before we examine a few argumentative essay examples: most argumentative essays will follow a standard 5-paragraph format. This format entails an introductory paragraph that lays out the essay’s central claim. Next, there are three body paragraphs that each advance sub-claims and evidence to support the central claim. Lastly, there is a conclusion that summarizes the points made. That’s not to say that every good argumentative essay will adhere strictly to the 5-paragraph format. And there is plenty of room for flexibility and creativity within the 5-paragraph format. For example, a good argumentative essay that follows the 5-paragraph template will also generally include counterarguments and rebuttals.

Introduction Example

Now let’s move on to those argumentative essay examples, and examine in particular a couple of introductions. The first takes on a common argumentative essay topic —capital punishment.

The death penalty has long been a divisive issue in the United States. 24 states allow the death penalty, while the other 26 have either banned the death penalty outright or issued moratoriums halting the practice. Proponents of the death penalty argue that it’s an effective deterrent against crime. Time and time again, however, this argument has been shown to be false. Capital punishment does not deter crime. But not only that—the death penalty is irreversible, which allows our imperfect justice system no room for error. Finally, the application of the death penalty is racially biased—the population of death row is over 41% Black , despite Black Americans making up just 13% of the U.S. population. For all these reasons, the death penalty should be outlawed across the board in the United States.

Why this introduction works: First, it’s clear. It lays out the essay’s thesis: that the death penalty should be outlawed in the United States. It also names the sub-arguments the author is going to use to support the thesis: (1), capital punishment does not deter crime, (2), it’s irreversible, and (3), it’s a racially biased practice. In laying out these three points, the author is also laying out the structure of the essay to follow. Each of the body paragraphs will take on one of the three sub-arguments presented in the introduction.

Argumentative Essay Examples (Continued)

Something else I like about this introduction is that it acknowledges and then refutes a common counterargument—the idea that the death penalty is a crime deterrent. Notice also the flow of the first two sentences. The first flags the essay’s topic. But it also makes a claim—that the issue of capital punishment is politically divisive. The following sentence backs this claim up. Essentially half of the country allows the practice; the other half has banned it. This is a feature not just of solid introductions but of good argumentative essays in general—all the essay’s claims will be backed up with evidence.

How it could be improved: Okay, I know I just got through singing the praises of the first pair of sentences, but if I were really nitpicking, I might take issue with them. Why? The first sentence is a bit of a placeholder. It’s a platitude, a way for the author to get a foothold in the piece. The essay isn’t about how divisive the death penalty is; it’s about why it ought to be abolished. When it comes to writing an argumentative essay, I always like to err on the side of blunt. There’s nothing wrong with starting an argumentative essay with the main idea: Capital punishment is an immoral and ineffective form of punishment, and the practice should be abolished .

Let’s move on to another argumentative essay example. Here’s an introduction that deals with the effects of technology on the brain:

Much of the critical discussion around technology today revolves around social media. Critics argue that social media has cut us off from our fellow citizens, trapping us in “information silos” and contributing to political polarization. Social media also promotes unrealistic and unhealthy beauty standards, which can lead to anxiety and depression. What’s more, the social media apps themselves are designed to addict their users. These are all legitimate critiques of social media, and they ought to be taken seriously. But the problem of technology today goes deeper than social media. The internet itself is the problem. Whether it’s on our phones or our laptops, on a social media app, or doing a Google search, the internet promotes distracted thinking and superficial learning. The internet is, quite literally, rewiring our brains.

Why this introduction works: This introduction hooks the reader by tying a topical debate about social media to the essay’s main subject—the problem of the internet itself. The introduction makes it clear what the essay is going to be about; the sentence, “But the problem of technology…” signals to the reader that the main idea is coming. I like the clarity with which the main idea is stated, and, as in the previous introduction, the main idea sets up the essay to follow.

How it could be improved: I like how direct this introduction is, but it might be improved by being a little more specific. Without getting too technical, the introduction might tell the reader what it means to “promote distracted thinking and superficial learning.” It might also hint as to why these are good arguments. For example, are there neurological or psychological studies that back this claim up? A simple fix might be: Whether it’s on our phones or our laptops, on a social media app, or doing a Google search, countless studies have shown that the internet promotes distracted thinking and superficial learning . The body paragraphs would then elaborate on those points. And the last sentence, while catchy, is a bit vague.

Body Paragraph Example

Let’s stick with our essay on capital punishment and continue on to the first body paragraph.

Proponents of the death penalty have long claimed that the practice is an effective deterrent to crime. It might not be pretty, they say, but its deterrent effects prevent further crime. Therefore, its continued use is justified. The problem is that this is just not borne out in the data. There is simply no evidence that the death penalty deters crime more than other forms of punishment, like long prison sentences. States, where the death penalty is still carried out, do not have lower crime rates than states where the practice has been abolished. States that have abandoned the death penalty likewise show no increase in crime or murder rates.

Body Paragraph (Continued)

For example, the state of Louisiana, where the death penalty is legal, has a murder rate of 21.3 per 100,000 residents. In Iowa, where the death penalty was abolished in 1965, the murder rate is 3.2 per 100,000. In Kentucky the death penalty is legal and the murder rate is 9.6; in Michigan where it’s illegal, the murder rate is 8.7. The death penalty simply has no bearing on murder rates. If it did, we’d see markedly lower murder rates in states that maintain the practice. But that’s not the case. Capital punishment does not deter crime. Therefore, it should be abolished.

Why this paragraph works: This body paragraph is successful because it coheres with the main idea set out in the introduction. It supports the essay’s first sub-argument—that capital punishment does not deter crime—and in so doing, it supports the essay’s main idea—that capital punishment should be abolished. How does it do that? By appealing to the data. A nice feature of this paragraph is that it simultaneously debunks a common counterargument and advances the essay’s thesis. It also supplies a few direct examples (murder rates in states like Kentucky, Michigan, etc.) without getting too technical. Importantly, the last few sentences tie the data back to the main idea of the essay. It’s not enough to pepper your essay with statistics. A good argumentative essay will unpack the statistics, tell the reader why the statistics matter, and how they support or confirm the essay’s main idea.

How it could be improved: The author is missing one logical connection at the end of the paragraph. The author shows that capital punishment doesn’t deter crime, but then just jumps to their conclusion. They needed to establish a logical bridge to get from the sub-argument to the conclusion. That bridge might be: if the deterrent effect is being used as a justification to maintain the practice, but the deterrent effect doesn’t really exist, then , in the absence of some other justification, the death penalty should be abolished. The author almost got there, but just needed to make that one final logical connection.

Conclusion Example

Once we’ve supported each of our sub-arguments with a corresponding body paragraph, it’s time to move on to the conclusion.

It might be nice to think that executing murderers prevents future murders from happening, that our justice system is infallible and no one is ever wrongly put to death, and that the application of the death penalty is free of bias. But as we have seen, each of those thoughts are just comforting fictions. The death penalty does not prevent future crime—if it did, we’d see higher crime rates in states that’ve done away with capital punishment. The death penalty is an irreversible punishment meted out by an imperfect justice system—as a result, wrongful executions are unavoidable. And the death penalty disproportionately affects people of color. The death penalty is an unjustifiable practice—both practically and morally. Therefore, the United States should do away with the practice and join the more than 85 world nations that have already done so.

Why this conclusion works: It concisely summarizes the points made throughout the essay. But notice that it’s not identical to the introduction. The conclusion makes it clear that our understanding of the issue has changed with the essay. It not only revisits the sub-arguments, it expounds upon them. And to put a bow on everything, it restates the thesis—this time, though, with a little more emotional oomph.

How it could be improved: I’d love to see a little more specificity with regard to the sub-arguments. Instead of just rehashing the second sub-argument—that wrongful executions are unavoidable—the author could’ve included a quick statistic to give the argument more weight. For example: The death penalty is an irreversible punishment meted out by an imperfect justice system—as a result, wrongful executions are unavoidable. Since 1973, at least 190 people have been put to death who were later found to be innocent.

An argumentative essay is a powerful way to convey one’s ideas. As an academic exercise, mastering the art of the argumentative essay requires students to hone their skills of critical thinking, rhetoric, and logical reasoning. The best argumentative essays communicate their ideas clearly and back up their claims with evidence.

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Dane Gebauer is a writer and teacher living in Miami, FL. He received his MFA in fiction from Columbia University, and his writing has appeared in Complex Magazine and Sinking City Review .

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• > Journals
• > Natural Language Engineering
• > Volume 28 Issue 6
• > Annotating argumentative structure in English-as-a-Foreign-Language...

Article contents

• Introduction
• Related work
• Discourse model for EFL essay
• Structure-based agreement metrics
• Corpus annotation

Annotating argumentative structure in English-as-a-Foreign-Language learner essays

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 August 2021

Argument mining (AM) aims to explain how individual argumentative discourse units (e.g. sentences or clauses) relate to each other and what roles they play in the overall argumentation. The automatic recognition of argumentative structure is attractive as it benefits various downstream tasks, such as text assessment, text generation, text improvement, and summarization. Existing studies focused on analyzing well-written texts provided by proficient authors. However, most English speakers in the world are non-native, and their texts are often poorly structured, particularly if they are still in the learning phase. Yet, there is no specific prior study on argumentative structure in non-native texts. In this article, we present the first corpus containing argumentative structure annotation for English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) essays, together with a specially designed annotation scheme. The annotated corpus resulting from this work is called “ICNALE-AS” and contains 434 essays written by EFL learners from various Asian countries. The corpus presented here is particularly useful for the education domain. On the basis of the analysis of argumentation-related problems in EFL essays, educators can formulate ways to improve them so that they more closely resemble native-level productions. Our argument annotation scheme is demonstrably stable, achieving good inter-annotator agreement and near-perfect intra-annotator agreement. We also propose a set of novel document-level agreement metrics that are able to quantify structural agreement from various argumentation aspects, thus providing a more holistic analysis of the quality of the argumentative structure annotation. The metrics are evaluated in a crowd-sourced meta-evaluation experiment, achieving moderate to good correlation with human judgments.

1. Introduction

Argument mining (AM) is an emerging area in computational linguistics that aims to explain how argumentative discourse units (e.g. sentences, clauses) function in the discourse and relate to each other, forming an argument as a whole (Lippi and Torroni Reference Lippi and Torroni 2016 ). Argumentative structure is particularly useful for computational models of argument and reasoning engines. AM has broad applications in various areas, such as in the legal domain (Ashley Reference Ashley 1990 ; Yamada, Teufel, and Tokunaga Reference Yamada, Teufel and Tokunaga 2019 ), in news (Al-Khatib et al . Reference Al-Khatib, Wachsmuth, Kiesel, Hagen and Stein 2016 ), and in education (Stab and Gurevych Reference Stab and Gurevych 2014 ; Wachsmuth, Al-Khatib, and Stein Reference Wachsmuth, Al-Khatib and Stein 2016 ; Cullen et al . Reference Cullen, Fan, van der Brugge and Elga 2018 ).

It is common in AM to use well-written texts by proficient authors, as do Ashley ( Reference Ashley 1990 ), Peldszus and Stede ( Reference Peldszus and Stede 2016 ) and Al-Khatib et al . ( Reference Al-Khatib, Wachsmuth, Kiesel, Hagen and Stein 2016 ) among others. However, there are more non-native speakers than native speakers of English in the world (Fujiwara Reference Fujiwara 2018 ), yet there is no specific prior study in AM focusing on non-native texts. It is well known that texts written by non-native speakers suffer from many textual problems, especially in education area, where language learners are still learning how to write effectively. It has been observed that student texts often require improvement at the discourse level, where persuasiveness and content organization are concerned (Bamberg Reference Bamberg 1983 ; Silva Reference Silva 1993 ; Garing Reference Garing 2014 ; Zhang and Litman Reference Zhang and Litman 2015 ; Carlile et al . Reference Carlile, Gurrapadi, Ke and Ng 2018 ). Texts written by non-native speakers are also less coherent and less lexically rich, and exhibit less natural lexical choices and collocations (Kaplan Reference Kaplan 1966 ; Johns Reference Johns 1986 ; Silva Reference Silva 1993 ; Rabinovich et al . Reference Rabinovich, Nisioi, Ordan and Wintner 2016 ).

In this article, we are interested in the application of AM for non-native speakers of intermediate-level language proficiency. Particularly, we annotate the argumentative structure in English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) essays written by college students in various Asian countries. The following example shows an argumentative essay written by a Chinese student in response to the prompt Footnote a “ Smoking should be banned at all the restaurants in the country ” (ICNALE (Ishikawa Reference Ishikawa 2013 , Reference Ishikawa 2018 ) essay “W_CHN_SMK0_275_B2_0_EDIT”; we refer to this essay as “high-quality example”):

Successful argumentative essays such as this example typically introduce the discussion topic (here, S1–S2), state their stance on the topic (S3), support their stance by presenting reasons from various perspectives (S4–S10), and then provide a conclusion (S11) (Silva Reference Silva 1993 ; Bacha Reference Bacha 2010 ). The author of the above example was at upper-intermediate to advanced proficiency and had a TOEFL iBT Score of 98. However, not all EFL students posses the skill to write at this level.

Consider the following essay, which was written in response to the prompt “ It is important for college students to have a part-time job ”, by an Indonesian student with lower-intermediate to intermediate proficiency (ICNALE essay “W_IDN_PTJ0_050_A2_0_EDIT”; we refer to this essay as “intermediate-quality example”):

In this study, we work on essays of intermediate quality, such as this second example; this essay differs from the high-quality example above in at least two respects. First, the intermediate-quality example does not adhere to the typical English argumentation development strategy. For instance, the discussion topic is not introduced, and the stance (underlined) is given at the end of the essay, rather than at the beginning. This contrasts with a more straightforward structure in the high-quality example, which presented the stance right at the beginning. Second, the intermediate-quality example presents the argument only from a single viewpoint (arguing in favor of part-time jobs for financial reasons), whereas the high-quality example considers another as well (arguing in favor of banning smoking for health and cultural reasons). We can observe that due to the poorer structure of essays written by intermediate-level writers, they are likely to pose more challenges to any automatic treatment.

Our long-term goal is to help EFL students improve their essays to the native level, and we see creating an annotated EFL corpus as the first step towards building an automatic AM system for better EFL education. The traditional use of an annotated corpus is to train a supervised machine learning system, but in the EFL context, such a corpus in and of itself can already support the theoretical and practical teaching of how to argue. Kaplan ( Reference Kaplan 1966 ) introduced a teaching strategy based on contrastive rhetoric , where the idea is to show EFL students the differences between the structures of their writings and native (and thus presumably “good”) writings. Our corpus can be used for theoretical studies in contrastive rhetoric, and it can also be used practically in the classroom today. This should prove particularly effective if combined with visualization of the structure (Cullen et al . Reference Cullen, Fan, van der Brugge and Elga 2018 ; Matsumura and Sakamoto Reference Matsumura and Sakamoto 2021 ).

The main contributions of this article are twofold:

• We introduce an annotation scheme for argumentative discourse structure of EFL essays and an associated corpus called ICNALE-AS . Footnote b This corpus contains 434 annotated essays written by Asian learners and is publicly available. Footnote c Inter-annotator and intra-annotator agreement studies were conducted that showed a reasonable level of agreement considering the difficulty of the task. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first corpus of EFL texts annotated with argument structure. The use of EFL texts differentiates our study from most existing AM studies which employ well-structured coherent texts written by proficient authors.

• We present several structure-based metrics for the calculation and better interpretation of inter-annotator agreement for argument structure analysis, including a meta-evaluation via crowd-sourcing, which quantifies the reliability of these proposed metrics in comparison to existing ones.

The rest of this article is organized as follows. Section 2 gives an overview of related work. Our annotation scheme is then introduced in Section 3 . Section 4 explains the shortcomings of traditional inter-annotator agreement metrics in the context of discourse structure analysis. We propose and meta-evaluate several structure-based inter-annotator agreement metrics. Section 5 describes the corpus resulting from our annotation effort. Finally, Section 6 concludes this article.

2. Related work

This section gives an overview of related work, including argumentative discourse structure analysis, the connection between argumentative structure and text quality, the role of such structural analysis in teaching, and a description of existing corpora annotated with argumentative structure.

2.1 Discourse structure and argument mining

Discourse theories aim to explain how individual discourse units (e.g. sentences or clauses) relate to each other and what roles they play in the overall discourse (Grosz and Sidner Reference Grosz and Sidner 1986 ; Mann and Thompson Reference Mann and Thompson 1988 ; Wolf and Gibson Reference Wolf and Gibson 2005 ; Prasad et al . Reference Prasad, Dinesh, Lee, Miltsakaki, Robaldo, Joshi and Webber 2008 ). The automatic recognition of discourse structure is attractive as it benefits various downstream tasks, for example, text assessment (Feng et al . Reference Feng, Lin and Hirst 2014 ; Wachsmuth et al . Reference Wachsmuth, Al-Khatib and Stein 2016 ), text generation (Hovy Reference Hovy 1991 ; Yanase et al . Reference Yanase, Miyoshi, Yanai, Sato, Iwayama, Niwa, Reisert and Inui 2015 ; Al-Khatib et al . Reference Al-Khatib, Wachsmuth, Hagen and Stein 2017 ), and summarization (Teufel and Moens Reference Teufel and Moens 2002 ).

Different types of discourse structure have been proposed over the years (Webber, Egg, and Kordoni Reference Webber, Egg and Kordoni 2012 ). Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST) modeled the relations between adjacent discourse units, which form a tree (Mann and Thompson Reference Mann and Thompson 1988 ). The Penn Discourse Treebank project (Prasad et al . Reference Prasad, Dinesh, Lee, Miltsakaki, Robaldo, Joshi and Webber 2008 ) analyzed local discourse relations and the discourse markers that signal the relations. Wolf and Gibson ( Reference Wolf and Gibson 2005 ) observed that texts often contain various kinds of crossed dependencies between sentences as well as nodes with multiple parents. As a result, they modeled text as a graph. In contrast, Hearst ( Reference Hearst 1997 ) segmented text into a linear sequence of thematically coherent topics.

While the theories mentioned above are designed to be general across genres, discourse structure analysis is also often tailored to the target text genre and the research goal. Since we are trying to analyze argumentative essays written by EFL students, we approach the discourse structure analysis from the argumentation perspective.

Traditionally, the annotation of argumentative discourse structure consists of two main steps (Lippi and Torroni Reference Lippi and Torroni 2016 ). The first is argumentative component identification , which determines the boundaries of discourse units. The units are then differentiated into argumentative and non-argumentative components. Argumentative components (ACs) function to persuade readers, while non-argumentative components (non-ACs) do not (Habernal, Eckle-Kohler, and Gurevych Reference Habernal, Eckle-Kohler and Gurevych 2014 ). Non-ACs are often excluded from further processing because they do not contribute to the argumentative structure. ACs can be further classified according to their roles in argumentation, for example, claim and premise (Peldszus and Stede Reference Peldszus and Stede 2013 ; Habernal et al . Reference Habernal, Eckle-Kohler and Gurevych 2014 ). These roles can be extended according to the application context. For example, Stab and Gurevych ( Reference Stab and Gurevych 2014 ) used major claim , claim , and premise for persuasive essays, whereas Al-Khatib et al . ( Reference Al-Khatib, Wachsmuth, Kiesel, Hagen and Stein 2016 ), working on news articles, differentiated between common ground , assumption , testimony , statistics , anecdote , and other .

The second step is argumentative discourse structure prediction . This step establishes labeled links from source to target ACs to form the text structure, which can be a tree (Stab and Gurevych Reference Stab and Gurevych 2014 ) or a graph (Sonntag and Stede Reference Sonntag and Stede 2014 ; Kirschner, Eckle-Kohler, and Gurevych Reference Kirschner, Eckle-Kohler and Gurevych 2015 ). Typically, all ACs must be connected to the structure, while all non-ACs remain unconnected. Links (also called edges) can be directed (Stab and Gurevych Reference Stab and Gurevych 2014 ) or undirected (Kirschner et al . Reference Kirschner, Eckle-Kohler and Gurevych 2015 ). The links are then labeled according to the relationship between the source and target ACs, for example, using the labels support and attack (Stab and Gurevych Reference Stab and Gurevych 2014 ). Similar to the variations in AC labels, previous studies in AM have also tailored relation labels to specific research goals and needs. For example, Kirschner et al . ( Reference Kirschner, Eckle-Kohler and Gurevych 2015 ) proposed the detail relation that roughly corresponds to the elaboration and background relations in RST (Mann and Thompson Reference Mann and Thompson 1988 ). Skeppstedt, Peldszus, and Stede ( Reference Skeppstedt, Peldszus and Stede 2018 ) observed another frequent relation, namely restatement , which applies in those cases when an important part of the argument, such as a major claim, is repeated and summarized in strategically important places, such as at the end of the essay.

2.2 Argumentative structure and text quality

Writing coherent argumentative texts requires reasoning and effective framing of our opinions. A coherent argumentative text has to contain the desired argumentative elements; ideas should be clearly stated, connected to each other, and supported by reasons. The ideas should also be logically developed in a particular sequencing, such as by time or importance, and accompanied by appropriate discourse markers. Only then can the writing ultimately communicate the desired ideas as a whole (Silva Reference Silva 1993 ; Reed and Wells Reference Reed and Wells 2007 ; Bacha Reference Bacha 2010 ; Blair Reference Blair 2012 ; Peldszus and Stede Reference Peldszus and Stede 2013 ; Wachsmuth et al . Reference Wachsmuth, Naderi, Hou, Bilu, Prabhakaran, Thijm, Hirst and Stein 2017 ).

The idea that there is a close connection between argumentative structure (and discourse structure in general) and text quality has been applied in text assessment studies. Persing, Davis, and Ng ( Reference Persing, Davis and Ng 2010 ) provided an automatic organization score based on the patterns of rhetorical-category transitions between sentences. Wachsmuth et al . ( Reference Wachsmuth, Al-Khatib and Stein 2016 ) also used a similar strategy when scoring various aspects of argumentation. Discourse structure also correlates with text coherence, and various coherence models have been developed that rely on this interaction. For example, Lin, Ng, and Kan ( Reference Lin, Ng and Kan 2011 ) and Feng et al . ( Reference Feng, Lin and Hirst 2014 ) measured text coherence based on discourse relation transition bigrams.

It has been argued that discourse structure forms a plan to order sentences (Hovy Reference Hovy 1991 ). Hence, many natural language generation studies attempted to produce coherent and persuasive texts by following certain discourse patterns. Yanase et al . ( Reference Yanase, Miyoshi, Yanai, Sato, Iwayama, Niwa, Reisert and Inui 2015 ), for instance, ordered sentences in debate texts using a “ claim - support ” structure. In the claim–support structure, the first sentence describes an opinion, which is followed by support sentences expressing reasons for the opinion. On the other hand, Al-Khatib et al . ( Reference Al-Khatib, Wachsmuth, Hagen and Stein 2017 ), working on news editorial texts, assumed that a persuasive argument can be built based on fixed argumentation strategies; they identified several such argumentation strategies in the form of common patterns of N-grams over component types. In another NLG approach, El Baff et al . ( Reference El Baff, Wachsmuth, Al Khatib, Stede and Stein 2019 ) pooled text pieces from many different texts and then generated text as a slot-filling process. Their system proceeded by selecting one discourse unit after the other from the pool if it satisfied the rhetorical function needed in the template. In the final output, only a small proportion of all available sentences were used.

2.3 The role of argumentative structure analysis in teaching

Many existing studies have attempted to correct spelling and grammatical errors (e.g. Hirst and Budanitsky Reference Hirst and Budanitsky 2005 ; Han, Chodorow, and Leacock Reference Han, Chodorow and Leacock 2006 ; Yuan and Briscoe Reference Yuan and Briscoe 2016 ; Fujiwara Reference Fujiwara 2018 ), but studies at the discourse and argumentation level are still limited. Teaching students how to argue effectively can be difficult, particularly if the medium of expression is not their first language (Silva Reference Silva 1993 ; Bacha Reference Bacha 2010 ). Cullen et al . ( Reference Cullen, Fan, van der Brugge and Elga 2018 ) showed how teaching to argue can be supported by annotating the implicit argumentative structure. They performed a controlled study where one group of students were taught to annotate argumentative structure in a visual manner, whereas the control group was taught traditionally, that is, through written or verbal explanation. When measuring the improvement of both groups in a logical reasoning test before and after the teaching sessions, they found a larger increase in the visually-taught group than in the control group, suggesting that learning to annotate arguments led to improvements in students’ analytical-reasoning skills.

The analysis of argumentative structures enables writers to check completeness ( are all necessary parts there? ) and coherence ( do relations among parts make sense? ) (Bobek and Tversky Reference Bobek and Tversky 2016 ). Such analysis also facilitate discussions between students and instructors about text structure because students can share their interpretations through the annotated structure. This allows instructors to quickly identify gaps in students’ understanding of the learning material and then provide relevant feedback to the students (Cullen et al . Reference Cullen, Fan, van der Brugge and Elga 2018 ). For example, instructors may check whether an argument is balanced and contains the necessary material (Matsumura and Sakamoto Reference Matsumura and Sakamoto 2021 ) or, if not, encourage a student to find new relevant material and to incorporate it into the essay. We are more interested in a situation where the necessary material has already been provided by the student, but it is possibly in a sub-optimal order. Rather than organizing a text from scratch, we are therefore interested in reorganization of sentences in the text, an aspects which EFL students often struggle with.

Studies in contrastive rhetoric investigate how students’ first language might influence their writings in the second language. Many studies found that non-native speakers tend to structure and organize their texts differently from native speakers (Kaplan Reference Kaplan 1966 ; Johns Reference Johns 1986 ; Silva Reference Silva 1993 ; Connor Reference Connor 2002 ). If EFL students use the customs, reasoning patterns and rhetorical strategies of their first language when writing in the second language, there is a danger that the different organization of ideas can violate the cultural expectations of native speakers (Kaplan Reference Kaplan 1966 ). For example, in writings by Asian students, it is sometimes observed that reasons for a claim are presented before the claim, which is not common in Anglo-Saxon cultures (Silva Reference Silva 1993 ). This can result in a situation where writings of Asian students may appear less coherent in the eyes of native readers. The instructional approaches for argumentation strategies also vary among cultures. For example, Liu ( Reference Liu 2005 ) found that American instructional approaches encourage the consideration of opposing ideas, while the Chinese approaches describe the importance of analogies, and epistemological and dialogical emphases. Therefore, studies argued that EFL students need specific instructions to account for cultural differences in L1 and L2 (Kaplan Reference Kaplan 1966 ; Silva Reference Silva 1993 ; Connor Reference Connor 2002 ; Bacha Reference Bacha 2010 ). Argumentative structure analysis helps EFL students to understand and bridge the cultural gaps between writing strategies in their native languages and English, but no AM study before us has provided support for this specific task.

2.4 Existing corpora annotated with argumentative structure

There exist corpora covering various aspects of argumentation analysis, for instance, argument strength (Persing and Ng Reference Persing and Ng 2015 ), type of reasoning (Reed et al . Reference Reed, Palau, Rowe and Moens 2008 ), and argumentative relations (Kirschner et al . Reference Kirschner, Eckle-Kohler and Gurevych 2015 ). Considering our target domain, the most relevant corpora for the current work are the microtext corpus by Peldszus and Stede ( Reference Peldszus and Stede 2016 ) and the persuasive essay corpus Footnote d by Stab and Gurevych ( Reference Stab and Gurevych 2014 , Reference Stab and Gurevych 2017 ).

The microtext corpus is a collection of 112 short texts that were written in response to various prompts. The texts contain roughly five ACs per text with no non-ACs present. Each text is centered around a single major claim, while other ACs act as proponent (defending the major claim) or opponent (questioning the major claim). All components form a single tree structure, whereby the links can be of three types: support , rebuttal , and undercut . The texts in the original study were written in German and then translated into English, but in a follow-up study (Skeppstedt et al . Reference Skeppstedt, Peldszus and Stede 2018 ), crowd workers were employed to write in English. Efforts were made to create argumentation of the highest possible quality; texts with possible lower-quality argumentation were removed.

Neither of these corpora is appropriate for our task. The authors of the microtext corpus were assumed to be fully competent in writing argumentative texts or the texts were filtered so that only high-quality texts remain. Additionally, the persuasive essay corpus is problematic for our research purpose because it does not distinguish between native and non-native speakers and gives no information about the (assumed or observed) quality of the essays. In our study, we specifically target intermediate-level non-native speakers. To this end, we strategically sample our target essays from an Asian EFL essay corpus, namely ICNALE, on the basis of ratings by professional ICNALE assessors.

3. Discourse model for EFL essay

We now turn our attention to the annotation scheme we developed for the ICNALE-AS corpus.

3.1 Target domain

Our target texts are sourced from ICNALE Footnote e (Ishikawa Reference Ishikawa 2013 , Reference Ishikawa 2018 ), a corpus of 5600 argumentative essays written in English by Asian college students. The vast majority of these are written by non-native English speakers, although 7.1% of the essays are written by Singaporeans, for whom English is typically the first language. ICNALE essays contain 200–300 words and are written in response to two prompts: (1) “ It is important for college students to have a part-time job ” and (2) “ Smoking should be completely banned at all the restaurants in the country .” Note that the students are asked to write their essays in a stand-alone fashion, that is, under the assumption that the prompt is not deemed as part of the essay and therefore not read together with it.

Following Skeppstedt et al . ( Reference Skeppstedt, Peldszus and Stede 2018 ), an important aspect of our work is that we treat a student’s argumentation skills as separate from their lexical and grammatical skills. There is a subset of 640 essays in ICNALE that have been corrected in terms of grammatical and “mechanical” Footnote f aspects, and which we can take as the starting point for this study.

From this subset, we exclude low-quality essays, those with extremely poor structure or so little content that they are hard to interpret. We use the preexisting scoring system in the 640-subset to this end. Essays are scored with respect to five aspects, namely content, organization, vocabulary, language use, and mechanics; the five scores are then combined into a total score in the range of [0,100]. Footnote g We manually investigated the quality of randomly sampled essays to check the total score at which the quality drops to a point where it is hard to understand what the students want to convey. We identified that point as a score of 40 points, affecting 4.1% of all essays. Essays scoring below this point would require a major rewrite before they could be analyzed.

At the other end of the spectrum, we also exclude essays that are of very high quality. The annotation of such already well-written essays would be of limited use towards our long-term goal of improving the writing of EFL students who have not yet reached this level. We found that essays scoring 80 points or more (15.2% of the total) are already well written and coherent. Of course, it might be possible to improve their quality and persuasiveness even further, but we believe they are comparable with essays written by advanced or proficient writers. The remaining 517 essays scoring between 40 and 80 points (80.8% of the total) should therefore be what we consider intermediate-quality essays. We had to manually discard a further 63 essays for the reason that they contained a personal episode related to the prompt instead of a generalized argument or they lacked a clear argumentative backbone for some other reason. While the 454 surviving texts are sometimes still far from perfect, they are quite clear in almost all cases in terms of what the author wanted to say. These essays also contain a plan for an argument that is at least roughly acceptable, as well as the right material for the plan.

The average length of the texts in our corpus is 13.9 sentences. We used 20 essays for a pilot study not reported here, Footnote h which left us with 434 essays; these constitute the pool of essays we use in this article (hereafter referred to as “ICNALE essays” or “ICNALE corpus”).

3.2 Annotation of argumentative structure

Following common practice in AM (cf. Section 2 ), our annotation consists of two steps. The first is argumentative component identification , where we identify sentences as ACs and non-ACs. The second step is argumentative structure prediction , where we identify relations between ACs. These relations then form a hierarchical structure. For other genres, such as scientific papers (Kirschner et al . Reference Kirschner, Eckle-Kohler and Gurevych 2015 ) and user comments (Park and Cardie Reference Park and Cardie 2018 ), annotation schemes are sometimes based on graphs rather than trees. For our argumentative essays, however, we observed that a simple tree structure suffices in the overwhelming number of cases and that it most naturally expresses the predominant relation where a single higher-level statement is recursively attacked or supported by one or more lower-level statements (Carlile et al . Reference Carlile, Gurrapadi, Ke and Ng 2018 ).

In a departure from existing work, where the textual units of analysis are represented at the clause level, the units (ACs and non-ACs) in our scheme are always full sentences. Textual units smaller than sentences but bigger than words, such as clauses, are hard to define in a logical and linguistically clear manner suitable for annotation. Despite many attempts in the literature (e.g. Fries Reference Fries and Coulthard 1994 ; Leffa and Cunha Reference Leffa and Cunha 1998 ; Huddleston and Pullum Reference Huddleston and Pullum 2002 ), there is still no easily applicable annotation instruction for capturing meaningful argumentation units at the sub-sentential level. In practice, annotation studies often use an idiosyncratic definition of which textual units constitute an argumentative component (Lippi and Torroni Reference Lippi and Torroni 2016 ), resulting in a lack of interoperability between annotation schemes. While we acknowledge that our use of sentences in this article is a theoretical simplification, it is well-motivated from the computational perspective. In fact, existing works in AM also operate at the sentence level, for example, Teufel, Carletta, and Moens ( Reference Teufel, Carletta and Moens 1999 ), Carstens and Toni ( Reference Carstens and Toni 2015 ), Kirschner et al . ( Reference Kirschner, Eckle-Kohler and Gurevych 2015 ), Wachsmuth et al . ( Reference Wachsmuth, Al-Khatib and Stein 2016 ). When defining units, we certainly cannot go beyond the sentence level toward larger units. Students may have added paragraph breaks, but these are not recorded in the ICNALE corpus. In any case, paragraphs would certainly be too large as atomic units given that the ICNALE essays only have an average length of 13.9 sentences.

3.2.1 Non-argumentative material

In this study, we mark discourse units as ACs and non-ACs. Traditionally, non-ACs refer to units that do not function argumentatively. In another departure from existing work, we use a more fine-grained model of non-ACs, as follows:

(a) Disconnected sentences. We exclude isolated sentences, that is, those that do not function argumentatively and thus are not connected to the logical argument. Such sentences might convey an opinion about the prompt statement, for example, “ this is a good question to discuss. ”, or a personal episode regarding the prompt.

(b) Meta-information. We exclude sentences which make statements about other sentences without any new semantic content because such sentences contribute nothing substantial toward the argument. An example is “ I will explain my reasons. ”

(c) Redundant material. We also exclude repetitions of low-level argumentative material such as facts. For instance, “ a barista has to interact with lots of people. ” might be repeated as “ baristas have much contact with customers. ” In our scheme, one of these sentences (most often the second one) would be marked as non-AC.

3.2.2 Directed relation labels

We use three directed relation labels: support ( sup ), detail ( det ), and attack ( att ). In our scheme, these relations are defined as going from child node (here also called source sentence) to parent node ( target sentence).

Support is a commonly used relation label in AM. Here, the source sentence asserts the reasons why readers of an essay should believe the content of the target sentence. This is done by providing argumentative material in support of the target, such as supporting evidence, and this material should be new to the argument. Attack is another commonly used relation label, denoting a source sentence that argues for the opposite opinion of the target sentence.

The detail label is less common, but there is precedent for it in the work of Kirschner et al . ( Reference Kirschner, Eckle-Kohler and Gurevych 2015 ). In our scheme, it is applied if the source sentence does not provide any new argumentative material. This typically happens in two cases: (1) when the source sentence presents additional detail, that is, further explanation, examples, description or elaboration of the target sentence or (2) when the source sentence introduces the topic of the discussion in a neutral way by providing general background. Thus, it is the presence or absence of new argumentative material that differentiates the labels detail and support . There is an interesting distinction between detail and support when it comes to the ordering of sentences. The canonical ordering in a support relation places the target sentence before the source sentence (Kaplan Reference Kaplan 1966 ; Silva Reference Silva 1993 ; Bacha Reference Bacha 2010 ; Yanase et al . Reference Yanase, Miyoshi, Yanai, Sato, Iwayama, Niwa, Reisert and Inui 2015 ). Things are a little more nuanced with detail. When a source sentence in the detail relation appears before its target, we tend to regard it as background information, while we tend to regard it as a further elaboration if it appears after the target sentence.

3.2.3 Restatement

We noticed that in many cases, the major claim is restated in the conclusion section of an essay, summing up the entire argument. Skeppstedt et al . ( Reference Skeppstedt, Peldszus and Stede 2018 ) also noticed this and coined the name restatement to model this phenomenon. In our scheme, the Restatement relation holds between two sentences if the second one repeats high-level argument material that has been previously described by the first, without adding a new idea into the discourse. Restatements repeat key argumentative material at a high level in the argument (claims or main claims, not premises or mere facts), and they do so at strategic points in the linear text. This can reinforce the persuasiveness of the overall argument.

Here, we distinguish redundant material (Section 3.2.1 ) from restatements, which we consider ACs although they do contain repeated information—the difference is that in the case of a restatement, we can assume the repetition is intentional and aimed at affecting the flow of argumentation.

Unlike support , attack , and detail , the restatement relation (which we express by the symbol “ =”) is an equivalence relation and therefore non-directional. Source and target sentences convey the same meaning; they are not in a hierarchical relationship. As a result, we treat the two sentences as an equivalence class with respect to all outgoing and incoming relations they participate in.

In argumentative structure annotation, implicit relations can arise which follow semantically from other annotations even though those relations are not explicitly stated. Restatements introduce one particular kind of such implicit relations. In order to correctly interpret the argument, it can be necessary to also consider the implicit relations.

Figure 1. Closure over restatement relation. Solid links are explicit, dashed lines implicit. (a) Annotation A . (b) Annotation B .

This new interpretation of the semantics of restatement as an equivalence class is a conscious decision on our part, which necessitates the computation of implicit links by some additional machinery. In argumentation, other implicit links are also theoretically possible, Footnote i but we do not consider them here.

3.3 Annotation procedure and example

Annotators start by dividing the text into its introduction, body, and conclusion sections in their minds, Footnote j and then dividing the body section recursively into sub-arguments. During this process, they also need to identify the major claim.

The idea of sub-arguments is based on the observation that it is common for groups of sentences about the same sub-topic to operate as a unit in argumentation, forming a recursive structure. We instruct our annotators to start the annotation process by marking relations within a sub-argument; later, they analyze how the sub-argument as a whole interacts with the rest of the text. The connection between the sub-argument and the rest of the argument is annotated by choosing a representative sentence standing in for the group.

We now illustrate how our annotation scheme works using a fictional argumentative essay with the prompt “ Smoking should be completely banned at all the restaurants in the country .”

This essay can be divided into several parts. S1–S3 together form the introduction section of the essay. S1 provides a background for the discussion topic, and S3 serves as the major claim of the essay. S2, which describes a personal episode that does not have an argumentative function, is identified as a non-AC, and thus excluded from the argumentative structure.

S4–S5 discuss the topic of enjoyment of eating and talking, with S4 providing the introduction of this idea, and S5 giving an opinion on the topic. Sentence S6 then presents an argument about the number of customers; it supports the opposite opinion of S3. S7 repeats some high-level information that has already been stated before as well as introduce a new health-related argument. Because we cannot assign two relations for S7 as a source sentence, we have to make a choice. Our rule is to always give preference to the new argument; here, this is the material about health. Hence, S7 is marked as attacking S6 (and not as restatement). Finally, S8 concludes the whole argument, by restating the major claim, which this time we can mark as a restatement (expressed by “=”). Figure  2 illustrates the argumentative structure of the essay and shows how it relates to the typical essay development plan.

Figure 2. Argumentative discourse structure annotation of example text from page 19.

4. Structure-based agreement metrics

In Section 5 , we will perform an agreement study with the newly defined scheme. However, we first need to turn our attention to the question of which agreement metrics would be appropriate for structural annotation scheme such as ours. In addition to the conventional metrics (Section 4.1 ), we develop new metrics specifically for the study at hand (Section 4.2 ), and later describe the evaluation of these newly-developed metrics (Section 4.3 ).

4.1 Conventional agreement metrics

In the context of this study, there are three aspects of agreement which can be expressed in terms of categorical classification:

• Argumentative component identification. Each sentence is categorized as either “AC” or “non-AC”.

• Existence of links between sentences (“ sentence linking ”). A binary label (“linked” vs. “not linked”) is assigned to all non-identical sentence pairs in the text (Kirschner et al . Reference Kirschner, Eckle-Kohler and Gurevych 2015 ).

• Relation labeling. For all sentence pairs that have been confirmed as being connected by annotators, we measure whether annotators agree on the relation label that holds between them.

4.2 Structure-based Inter-annotator agreement metrics

The second problem concerns implicit links. As we have argued in Section 3.2.3 , we have to consider implicit links as the result of the semantics of the restatement label. Conventional metrics are not suitable for closure structures because they cannot distinguish between explicit and implicit links; they treat implicit links as if they are explicit. If implicit links in annotation A do not appear in annotation B , they will be treated as mismatches, and conventional metrics will assign a penalty to the score. Therefore, there might be a large difference in agreement scores between a situation in which only explicit links are used and one in which both explicit and implicit links are used, which is undesirable. We also think that the fairest treatment of implicit links is to reward in situations where an implicit link is correct without punishing in situations where the link is incorrect. We will now explain this asymmetry.

Figure 3. Example of restatement closures. Solid links are explicit, dashed lines implicit. (a) Annotation A . (b) Annotation B . (c) Closure of A . (d) Closure of B .

4.2.1 Link-based MAR

4.2.2 Path-based MAR

4.2.3 Descendant set-based MAR

Figure 4. Example of descendant set matching between annotation A (left) and B (right). Exact-matching scores in red (to the left of each node); partial-matching scores in green to the right. Gray nodes represent non-AC.

There are two types of matching: exact and partial. Under exact matching, a binary score is calculated and two annotations are required to have identical descendant set in order to score a value of 1. For example, the exact matching score for the descendant set rooted in node 2 between annotation A and B in Figure  4 is 0. Partial matching, in contrast, returns continuous scores based on the recall of the descendant set of one annotation, calculated with respect to the other annotation. Non-argumentative nodes are counted as a match if they are deemed non-argumentative in both annotations.

4.3 Meta-evaluation of structure-based agreement metrics

If one introduces a new metric, one should evaluate it against human intuition; such an undertaking, as an evaluation of an evaluation metric, is referred to as a “meta-evaluation.” We use the crowd-sourcing platform Amazon Mechanical Turk (AMT) for the meta-evaluation, and elicit similarity judgments about pairs of human annotations. In this crowd-sourcing task, workers are asked to judge two different options and to tell us which option represents the higher similarity. One option compares two argumentative structures for an essay X annotated by two different annotators A and B . The other option compares two structures for a different essay Y, again annotated by A and B . Given these two pairs of two structures (a pair for an essay), workers judge which pair is more similar according to their intuition concerning the composition of the hierarchical structures. They evaluated based on three aspects: placement of nodes in the hierarchical structure, grouping of nodes forming sub-trees and links between nodes.

In Figure  5 , which illustrates our AMT task, numbered nodes represent sentences and arrows represent argumentative relations between sentences. The structures shown to our workers contain only node IDs and directed links. We replaced undirected links with directed links in order to simplify the task for the crowd workers. We also show the structures without any text or relation labels. This is because the interpretation of the relation labels would require expertise in discourse analysis, which is not available in the crowd-sourcing paradigm. Workers therefore also cannot judge whether implicit links should hold or not, and so our evaluation uses scores which are calculated on explicitly annotated links only.

Figure 5. Illustration of an “AMT task.”

In a crowd-sourcing experiment, it is difficult to evaluate whether workers provide their responses earnestly. We employ AMT workers who have above 95% approval rating and record 30 votes in total for each question item. We consider responses made too quick or too slow as noises or spams, and to filter them, we remove responses corresponding to the 5% fastest and slowest, leaving us with the 90% of the responses in the middle.

Table 1. Evaluation result of structure-based inter-annotator agreement metrics

We have performed a preliminary meta-evaluation of our novel structure-based metrics and Kirschner’s metric that shows good results as far as the basic interpretability of these metric goes; correlation with human judgments is moderate to good. We are now in a position where we can analyze structural agreement using these new metrics, as we will do in the rest of this paper.

5. Corpus annotation

This section describes our agreement study and the annotation of the ICNALE-AS corpus. We report intra- and inter-annotator agreement scores to show that our scheme is stable and reproducible. A scheme is stable if independent annotations by the same person result in high agreement, and reproducible if independent annotations by different people result in high agreement.

5.1 Intra- and inter-annotator agreement study

We use the same 20 randomly sampled ICNALE essays as in the meta-evaluation reported in Section 4.3 . They contain a total of 266 sentences, with 3496 possible pairs of sentences to be linked. Annotation was performed with the help of the annotation tool TIARA (Putra et al . Reference Putra, Teufel, Matsumura and Tokunaga 2020 ). Footnote r

We report our agreement scores under closure because in our opinion this corresponds most closely to the truth. We also report the scores calculated on explicit links only to allow a comparison with previous argumentation schemes. However, in our opinion, the use of non-closure metrics is not advisable in situations like ours where equivalence classes are defined, which negatively affects the metrics’ interpretability.

To measure annotation stability, we employ a paid annotator (annotator A ), a PhD student in English Education with special expertise in text assessment and discourse analysis and years of experience as an EFL teacher. Although not a native speaker of English, annotator A is very familiar with reading, assessing and improving EFL texts in the course of their daily operations. It is generally accepted that it is not necessary to use English native speakers for experiments in argumentation or discourse studies because the associated tasks require cognition rather than syntactic ability.

We prepared guidelines of ten pages describing the semantics of each category, which were available to the annotator during annotation, and asked the annotator to annotate 20 essays twice from scratch over the course of a month of interim period. We assume that a month would be long enough for the annotator to have forgotten their original annotation.

The result of the intra-annotation study, shown in Table  2 , demonstrates that the annotation is stable. Footnote s Annotator A has an almost perfect agreement to themselves, including producing almost exactly the same structures (both explicit and implicit). The confusion matrix in Table  3 between the first and second versions of annotations by annotator A shows that the only difficulty faced by annotator A lay in distinguishing between the detail and support labels in a few cases.

We next performed an inter-annotator agreement study between annotator A and the first author of this paper (annotator B ) using the same texts as in the intra-annotator study. We compare the first annotation of annotator A with annotator B ’s annotations.

Table 2. Intra-annotator agreement of annotator A

Table 3. Confusion matrix of annotator A in intra-annotator agreement study

Table 4. Inter-annotator agreement results

Table 5. Confusion matrix between annotator A and B in the inter-annotator agreement study

We manually inspected the cases concerned in the confusion between these labels. One of the likely reasons we found concerns a difficulty in judging whether or not some argumentative material is new (if it is new, the correct label is support ; if it is not, detail is correct). Another reason concerns the use of examples, as these can be seen as either elaboration ( detail ) or actual supporting evidence ( support ). Consider the following excerpt (ICNALE essay W_JPN_PTJ0_005_B2_0_EDIT).

S6 can be seen as supporting S5 by bringing to light new evidence or as elaborating on what can be “ learned ”, which would make it a detail . One way to mitigate the confusion is to explicitly assign all exemplifications as detail in future guidelines. This would acknowledge that in most cases, examples are used to provide additional detail to the target sentences.

5.2 Description of resulting corpus and qualitative analysis

Production annotation was then performed by annotator A on the remaining 414 essays out of 434 ICNALE essays at our disposal (excluding the 20 already used for meta-evaluation and agreement studies).

Our final corpus, ICNALE-AS, consists of 434 essays: 414 production essays + 20 essays from the inter-annotator study. It is the annotations by annotator A that are used throughout, and there are two reasons for this. First, because annotator A is a discourse analyst and EFL teacher, we consider them the expert in the subject area. Second, by employing an external expert annotator, we expect to avoid our own bias and ensure the consistency of the annotation.

The corpus consists of 6021 sentences in total, containing 5799 (96.3%) ACs and 222 (3.7%) non-ACs (cf. Table  6 ). The argumentative discourse structures have an average depth of 4.3 (root at depth 0). Support is the most commonly used relationship (3029 instances–56.5%), followed by detail (1585–29.5%), attack (437–8.1%) and restatement (314–5.9%). This distribution is unsurprising given that students are often explicitly taught to write supporting reasons for their arguments. The number of restatement relations is lower than the number of essays, which means that some student arguments do not contain any conclusion statements anywhere.

Table 6. Statistics of the final corpus. Sentences and tokens are automatically segmented using nltk (Bird, Klein, and Loper Reference Bird, Klein and Loper 2009 )

Overall, in 78.5% of directed relations, the source sentence succeeds the target sentence in textual order (or in other words, the link was “backward”). The EFL students predominantly tend to use the “claim–support” structure, in which an opinion is stated first and then its evidence is presented afterward. Again, this is expected, as argumentative writing in English is often taught in this way (Bacha Reference Bacha 2010 ). Table  7 shows the ratio of backward and forward links for each directed relation type. For support and attack , the backward direction is strongly preferred over the forward direction. The detail label stands out because the preference between forward and backward direction is not as strong as the other labels.

Table 7. Distribution of relation direction

Figure 6. An excerpt of annotation for essay ‘W_PAK_SMK0_022_B1_1_EDIT’. (a) Original essay. (b) A potential improvement for (a).

Our annotation allows for potential argument-related problems to be flagged. Because we can point out the exact problematic sentences or relations, this information can then be used during teaching. For instance, we found 31 essays (7.1%) which contain more forward than backward relations. This contradicts the standard writing preference. These essays tend to present evidence and supporting material at the beginning of the text, followed by the major claim later. We consider this an example of a potential problem. Other cases exist in which a considerable amount of background information is presented before the start of the argument proper, another potential argument-related problem.

Figure  6 (a) shows an annotation example. In this figure, sentence S16 has been identified by our annotator as the clearest statement of the major claim; it therefore became the root of the structure. Prescriptive writing guidance for argumentation (Silva Reference Silva 1993 ; Bacha Reference Bacha 2010 ) would advise putting such a sentence early in the text. Footnote u However, the EFL student placed it at the end of the essay. This potential problem could be used as an example in a teaching session.

Another indicator of a problem is crossing links in the structure. Because argumentative relations typically hold between sentences stating similar ideas, crossing links might indicate coherence breaks in texts. Ideally, if all sentences constituting a sub-argument are presented together, few or no crossing links should occur. For example, the topic of both sentences S9 and S14 in Figure  6 (a) is nicotine, but the discussion on this topic is interrupted by several sentences discussing different topics. If sentences S9 and S14 were placed close to each other, we can expect an improvement in the textual coherence of the essay.

Figure  6 (b) shows one possible improvement of the essay by rearranging sentences in a way that would be consistent with the discussion above—sentence S16 has been moved to the beginning of the essay, Footnote v and sentences S9 and S14 are now adjacent. The improved text is more consistent with the argumentative-development-strategy in prescriptive writing guidelines; it first introduces a topic, then states its stance on that topic, supports its stance by presenting detailed reasons, and finally concludes the essay at the end (Silva Reference Silva 1993 ; Bacha Reference Bacha 2010 ).

However, an essay is not guaranteed to be problem-free, even if the major claim is placed at the beginning and there are no crossing links. The essay in Figure  7 (a) is one such case—S1 is its major claim, and S16 restates it, acting as the conclusion at the end. There are no crossing links. However, sentence S17, which supports the major claim, appears after S16. According to prescriptive guidance, reasons supporting the major claim should be placed before the concluding statement. Therefore, S17 should be placed somewhere between sentences S1 and S16, as shown in Figure  7 (b).

Figure 7. An excerpt of annotation for essay “W_CHN_SMK0_045_A2_0_EDIT”. (a) Original essay. (b) A potential improvement for (a).

6. Conclusion

In this article, we presented ICNALE-AS, a corpus of 434 argumentative essays written by Asian EFL students annotated with argumentative structures. This corpus is unique among other corpora concerned with argumentative text, for example, the microtext (Peldszus and Stede Reference Peldszus and Stede 2016 ) and the persuasive essay corpora (Stab and Gurevych Reference Stab and Gurevych 2014 ; Reference Stab and Gurevych 2017 ), in that it contains the argumentative structures of intermediate-quality texts. We employed four relation types in our scheme, namely support , detail , attack , and restatement . We proposed to encode the semantics of restatement as an equivalence class.

Our qualitative analysis revealed that the argumentative structure annotation can provide us with objective means of improving essay by indicating both potential problems and better sentence rearrangements that can lead to a more coherent text. In our future work, we would like to push this one step further by devising an algorithm for sentence rearrangement to improve the essay quality. The outcome of such a system could help EFL students by showing them how to improve their writings at the discourse level. We plan to provide an additional annotation layer for sentence rearrangement onto the ICNALE-AS corpus. A parallel corpus of original and more-coherent improved texts would enable the empirical analysis of the connections between discourse structure, sentence arrangement and coherence.

The research in this article can thus be seen as one further step away from the more conventional research focused on improving spelling and grammatical errors toward research in improving text at the discourse level.

Acknowledgments

This work was party supported by Tokyo Tech World Research Hub Initiative (WRHI), JSPS KAKENHI grant number 20J13239, and Support Centre for Advanced Telecommunication Technology Research. We are grateful to Professor Yasuyo Sawaki, Kana Matsumura, Dola Tellols Asensi, Haruna Ogawa, and Michael Frey for providing us with feedback for the annotation guidelines and annotation tool TIARA. We also would like to thank anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments.

a A prompt is a question or a sentence used to elicit an argumentative response.

b ICNALE-AS stands for “ICNALE annotated with A rgumentative S tructure”.

c https://www.gsk.or.jp/en/catalog/gsk2021-a .

d The authors use the term “persuasive” as synonymous with “argumentative.”

e http://language.sakura.ne.jp/icnale/ .

f Mechanical aspects are defined as capitalization, punctuation, and spelling.

g ICNALE assessors used the scoring rubrics proposed by Jacobs et al . ( Reference Jacobs, Zinkgraf, Wormuth, Harfiel and Hughey 1981 ) for ESL composition.

h Putra, Teufel, and Tokunaga ( Reference Putra, Teufel and Tokunaga 2019 ) contains a partial description of our pilot study.

i For instance, the “double-attack” construction, where there is an attack on an attacking claim, can in some cases be interpreted as involving an implicit support link.

j Note that this structure is a very common development plan of argumentative essays (Silva Reference Silva 1993 ; Bacha Reference Bacha 2010 ).

q Meta-evaluation relies on the availability of annotated essays; thus, we performed it chronologically after the agreement studies reported in Section 5.1 ; for this reason, the texts annotated in the agreement studies were reused here.

r https://github.com/wiragotama/TIARA-annotationTool .

s We do not report the linking results using agreement ratio. It performed badly in the meta-evaluation, and it is known to produce misleadingly high results in tasks where the distribution of categories is imbalanced. As is the case in our situation here, the number of sentence pairs that are not linked is far higher than those that are linked.

t N denotes the number of items, n is the number of categories and k represents the number of annotators.

u Note that there is also a less clear formulation of the major claim in S13, which also contains some additional argumentative material. The annotator indicated the similarity with a restatement relation between S13 and S16, but decided that S16 is the best major claim. This in a way indicates too that there is a problem; we normally assume that the real major claim occurs before its restatement. However, the directional aspect cannot be explicitly expressed in our notation, as restatements are undirected.

v Note that the anaphora starting the sentence should be replaced in the final version too, something that simple sentence rearrangement cannot achieve.

Table 6. Statistics of the final corpus. Sentences and tokens are automatically segmented using nltk (Bird, Klein, and Loper 2009)

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• Volume 28, Issue 6
• Jan Wira Gotama Putra (a1) , Simone Teufel (a1) (a2) (a3) and Takenobu Tokunaga (a1)
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1351324921000218

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IGCSE Writing Skills text types - generic

Topic outline.

This resource has been developed to support your teaching of writing skills, including teaching learners how to create and compose a variety of text types. 

The text types focused on in this resource are: article, email, report, letter, speech and essay. 

 As the resource focuses on the text type rather than the assessment no marks are given for example texts included.

Please note: These resources were not written for a specific syllabus so it  is v ery important to check which of the writing skills and text types are covered in the syllabus you are teaching. The example s  may not match the requirements in every Cambridge syllabus, for example word count and audience. The examples are not marked and do not demonstrate the standard required in the examinations.

Assignment 1: Writing to Discuss, Argue or Persuade ( CIE IGCSE English Language )

Revision note.

Assignment 1: Writing to Discuss, Argue or Persuade

Assignment 1 requires you to select and evaluate facts, opinions and arguments from a text or texts. You are also required to write in a highly effective and technically accurate style, adapting your form and language to suit your audience and purpose.

The following guide is broken into the following sections:

Assignment examples

Adapting your writing to suit form, audience and purpose.

This assignment is a piece of directed writing in response to a text or texts chosen by your teacher (or by you with your teacher’s approval). The assignment is assessed equally for both reading and writing, and to achieve top marks the examiners are looking for the following:

Reading (15 marks):

• Your ability to select, put together and evaluate facts, opinions and arguments to give a developed and sophisticated response
• Your ability to successfully evaluate both explicit and implicit ideas and opinions from your chosen text(s)

Writing (15 marks):

• Your ability to display a highly effective style of writing capable of conveying subtle meaning
• Your ability to use effective language and to structure a response carefully
• A high degree of technical accuracy (spelling, grammar and punctuation are accurate)

Depending on the choice of reading material, a typical Assignment 1 response would be to reply to the author of your chosen text(s) in the form of a letter. However, a speech or an article in which you are able to argue ideas are equally permissible. Whatever the form, you should be able to give an overview of the argument as a whole and demonstrate your understanding by commenting on specific ideas presented by the author of your chosen text or texts. This should include an explanation of any ideas of interest and an argument for or against them, as well as an examination of inconsistencies and the recognition of bias.

A copy of all texts used for Assignment 1 must be included in your portfolio.

The text or texts chosen for Assignment 1 should be of a sensible length and not include literature. They need to be texts which have plenty of ideas and opinions with which you can engage. Most of the time, the chosen text or texts are articles, but they could also be the words of speeches or even travel literature. The following are some examples of suitable assignments for this task:

Your audience for this task will be the intended recipients or audience for your piece of writing. Part of what you are being assessed on is your ability to adapt your language and tone to suit this intended audience.

For example:

• A parent will have different concerns and values to a student
• A local MP would need convincing using facts and evidence to be persuaded by your arguments
• Readers of a local newspaper would be more persuaded by emotive language
• A letter to a headteacher or someone in authority requires formal, respectful language which is not aggressive or inappropriate
• Teenagers would need something to relate to, so personal anecdotes would work well

Addressing your audience or reader specifically is a convincing technique to persuade people to agree with your point of view. To do this, try using inclusive language, such as “we” and “us”, or “fellow students” or “parents”. You should always write using Standard English, but the level of formality you should employ will be dictated by the task itself.

It is also important to carefully consider the purpose of the task. “Giving your views” about a subject can mean to explain what you think, to argue your point or to persuade your audience to agree with you. Most importantly, your language and tone needs to match your intended audience and purpose.

Above all, remember: your arguments and point of view must be based on the reading passages you are given. If you just write without establishing a clear summary of the main points in the text(s), you will not score high marks.

For more detailed information about writing in the form of a letter, speech or article, please see our Paper 2 revision guides:

• Question 1 Directed Writing: How to Write a Letter
• Question 1 Directed Writing: How to Write a Speech
• Question 1 Directed Writing: How to Write an Article

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Deb is a graduate of Lancaster University and The University of Wolverhampton. After some time travelling and a successful career in the travel industry, she re-trained in education, specialising in literacy. She has over 16 years’ experience of working in education, teaching English Literature, English Language, Functional Skills English, ESOL and on Access to HE courses. She has also held curriculum and quality manager roles, and worked with organisations on embedding literacy and numeracy into vocational curriculums. She now manages a post-16 English curriculum as well as writing educational content and resources.

How to Write a Discursive Essay: Awesome Guide and Template

The term "discursive" comes from the Latin word "discursus," meaning to move around or traverse. A discursive essay reflects this by exploring multiple viewpoints and offering a thorough discussion on a specific topic.

In this article, our term paper writing service will define what a discursive essay is, distinguish it from an argumentative essay, provide practical tips on how to write one effectively, and examine essay examples to illustrate its structure and approach.

What Is a Discursive Essay

A discursive essay is a type of essay where you discuss a topic from various viewpoints. The goal is to provide a balanced analysis by exploring different perspectives. Your essay should present arguments on the topic, showing both sides to give a comprehensive view.

Features of discursive essays typically include:

• Thesis Statement: Clearly states your position or argument on the topic.
• Discussion of Perspectives: Examines different viewpoints or aspects of the issue.
• Evidence and Examples: Supports arguments with relevant evidence and examples.
• Counterarguments: Addresses opposing viewpoints to strengthen your position.
• Logical Organization: Structured to present arguments coherently and persuasively.

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How to Write a Discursive Essay

Writing a discursive essay involves examining a topic from different angles and presenting balanced viewpoints. Whether you're tackling a controversial issue or analyzing a complex subject, following these steps will help you craft a well-structured discursive essay.

1. Understand the Topic

Before you start writing, make sure you grasp the topic thoroughly. Identify key terms and concepts to clarify what you need to discuss. Consider the different aspects and perspectives related to the topic that you will explore in your essay.

2. Research and Gather Evidence

Research is crucial for a discursive essay. Gather information from reliable sources such as books, academic journals, and reputable websites. Collect evidence that supports various viewpoints on the topic. Note down quotes, statistics, and examples that you can use to strengthen your arguments.

3. Plan Your Structure

Organize your essay effectively to ensure clarity and coherence. Start with an introduction that states your thesis or main argument. Outline the main points or perspectives you will discuss in the body paragraphs. Each paragraph should focus on a different aspect or viewpoint, supported by evidence. Consider including a paragraph that addresses counterarguments to strengthen your position.

4. Write the Introduction

Begin your essay with a compelling introduction that grabs the reader's attention. Start with a hook or an intriguing fact related to the topic. Clearly state your thesis statement, which outlines your position on the issue and previews the main points you will discuss. The introduction sets the tone for your essay and provides a roadmap for what follows.

5. Develop the Body Paragraphs

The body of your essay should present a balanced discussion of the topic. Each paragraph should focus on a different perspective or argument. Start each paragraph with a clear topic sentence that introduces the main idea. Support your points with evidence, examples, and quotes from your research. Ensure smooth transitions between paragraphs to maintain the flow of your argument.

6. Conclude Effectively

Wrap up your essay with a strong conclusion that summarizes the main points and reinforces your thesis statement. Avoid introducing new information in the conclusion. Instead, reflect on the significance of your arguments and how they contribute to the broader understanding of the topic. End with a thought-provoking statement or a call to action, encouraging readers to consider the complexities of the issue.

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Discursive Guide Checklist

Discursive Essay Examples

Here, let’s take a look at our samples and see how different topics are discussed from different viewpoints in real discursive essays.

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Discursive Essay Topics

Here are a range of topics that encourage exploration of different perspectives and critical analysis. Choose a topic that interests you and allows for a balanced analysis of arguments and evidence.

• Should governments impose higher taxes on sugary drinks to combat obesity?
• Is homeschooling beneficial for children's education?
• Should the use of drones for military purposes be restricted?
• Should the legal drinking age be lowered or raised?
• Is online education as effective as traditional classroom learning?
• Should parents be held legally responsible for their children's actions?
• Is artificial intelligence a threat to human employment?
• Are video games a positive or negative influence on young people?
• Should the voting age be lowered to 16?
• Should schools teach mindfulness and meditation techniques?
• Is cultural diversity in the workplace beneficial for companies?
• Should prisoners have the right to vote?
• Is social media addiction a real problem?
• Should plastic packaging be replaced with eco-friendly alternatives?
• Is it ethical to clone animals for agricultural purposes?
• Should the government provide subsidies for electric vehicles?
• Is privacy more important than national security?
• Should school uniforms be mandatory?
• Is renewable energy the future of our planet?
• Should parents have access to their children's social media accounts?

By the way, we also have a great collection of narrative essay topics to inspire your creativity.

What is the Difference Between a Discursive and Argumentative Essay

Discursive essays and argumentative essays share similarities but have distinct differences in their approach and purpose. While both essay types involve critical thinking and analysis, the main difference lies in the writer's approach to the topic and the overall goal of the essay—whether it aims to explore and discuss multiple perspectives (discursive) or to argue for a specific viewpoint (argumentative). Here’s a more detailed look at how they differ:

Types of Discursive Essay

Before writing a discursive essay, keep in mind that they can be categorized into different types based on their specific purposes and structures. Here are some common types of discursive essays:

Opinion Essays:

• Purpose: Expressing and supporting personal opinions on a given topic.
• Structure: The essay presents the writer's viewpoint and provides supporting evidence, examples, and arguments. It may also address counterarguments to strengthen the overall discussion.

Problem-Solution Essays:

• Purpose: Identifying a specific problem and proposing effective solutions.
• Structure: The essay introduces the problem, discusses its causes and effects, and presents possible solutions. It often concludes with a recommendation or call to action.

Compare and Contrast Essays:

• Purpose: Analyzing similarities and differences between two or more perspectives, ideas, or approaches.
• Structure: The essay outlines the key points of each perspective, highlighting similarities and differences. A balanced analysis is provided to give the reader a comprehensive understanding.

Cause and Effect Essays:

• Purpose: Exploring the causes and effects of a particular phenomenon or issue.
• Structure: The essay identifies the primary causes and examines their effects or vice versa. It may delve into the chain of events and their implications.

Argumentative Essays:

• Purpose: Presenting a strong argument in favor of a specific viewpoint.
• Structure: The essay establishes a clear thesis statement, provides evidence and reasoning to support the argument, and addresses opposing views. It aims to persuade the reader to adopt the writer's perspective.

Pro-Con Essays:

• Purpose: Evaluating the pros and cons of a given issue.
• Structure: The essay presents the positive aspects (pros) and negative aspects (cons) of the topic. It aims to provide a balanced assessment and may conclude with a recommendation or a summary of the most compelling points.

Exploratory Essays:

• Purpose: Investigating and discussing a topic without necessarily advocating for a specific position.
• Structure: The essay explores various aspects of the topic, presenting different perspectives and allowing the reader to form their own conclusions. It often reflects a process of inquiry and discovery.

These types of discursive essays offer different approaches to presenting information, and the choice of type depends on the specific goals of the essay and the preferences of the writer.

Discursive Essay Format

Writing a discursive essay needs careful planning to make sure it’s clear and flows well while presenting different viewpoints on a topic. Here’s how to structure your discursive essay:

Introduction

• Start with an interesting opening sentence to catch the reader's attention. Give some background information on the topic to show why it’s important.
• Clearly state your main argument or position on the topic, and mention that you’ll be discussing different viewpoints.

"Should genetically modified foods be more strictly regulated for consumer safety? This question sparks debates among scientists, policymakers, and consumers alike. This essay explores the different perspectives on genetically modified organisms (GMOs) to give a complete view of the issues."

Body Paragraphs

• Begin each paragraph with a sentence that introduces a key point or perspective about GMOs.
• Present arguments, evidence, and examples to support each perspective. Consider the benefits, risks, and ethical issues around GMOs.
• Address possible objections or opposing viewpoints to show a balanced analysis.

"Supporters of GMOs argue that genetically engineered crops can help solve global food shortages by increasing crop yields and resistance to pests. For example, studies have shown that GMOs like insect-resistant corn have reduced the need for chemical pesticides, which benefits both farmers and the environment."

Counterarguments

• Recognize the counterarguments or concerns raised by opponents of GMOs.
• Provide reasoned responses or rebuttals to these counterarguments, acknowledging the complexity of the issue.

"However, critics of GMOs worry about potential long-term health effects and environmental impacts. They argue that there isn’t enough research to ensure the safety of eating genetically modified foods over long periods."

• Summarize the main points discussed in the essay about GMOs.
• Reinforce your thesis statement while considering the different arguments presented.
• Finish with a thought-provoking statement or suggest what should be considered for future research or policy decisions related to GMOs.

"In conclusion, the debate over genetically modified foods highlights the need to balance scientific innovation with public health and environmental concerns. While GMOs offer potential benefits for global food security, ongoing research and transparent regulation are essential to address uncertainties and ensure consumer safety."

Formatting Tips

• Use clear and straightforward language throughout the essay.
• Ensure smooth transitions between paragraphs to maintain the flow of ideas.
• Use headings and subheadings if they help organize different perspectives.
• Properly cite sources when referencing research findings, quotes, or statistics.

Remember, besides writing compositions, you’ll also need to do math homework , something we can assist you with right away.

Yays and Nays of Writing Discourse Essays

In learning how to write a discursive essay, certain do's and don'ts serve as guiding principles throughout the writing process. By adhering to these guidelines, writers can navigate the complexities of presenting arguments, counterarguments, and nuanced analyses, ensuring the essay resonates with clarity and persuasiveness.

Wrapping Up

Throughout this guide, you have acquired valuable insights into the art of crafting compelling arguments and presenting diverse perspectives. By delving into the nuances of topic selection, structuring, and incorporating evidence, you could hone your critical thinking skills and sharpen your ability to engage in informed discourse. 

This guide serves as a roadmap, offering not just a set of rules but a toolkit to empower students in their academic journey. As you embark on future writing endeavors, armed with the knowledge gained here, you can confidently navigate the challenges of constructing well-reasoned, balanced discursive essays that contribute meaningfully to academic discourse and foster a deeper understanding of complex issues. If you want to continue your academic learning journey right now, we suggest that you read about the IEEE format next.

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What is a Discursive Example?

What is the difference between a discursive and argumentative essay, what are the 2 types of discursive writing.

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is a seasoned educational writer focusing on scholarship guidance, research papers, and various forms of academic essays including reflective and narrative essays. His expertise also extends to detailed case studies. A scholar with a background in English Literature and Education, Daniel’s work on EssayPro blog aims to support students in achieving academic excellence and securing scholarships. His hobbies include reading classic literature and participating in academic forums.

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• Updated old sections including definition, outline, writing guide.
• Added new topics, examples, checklist, FAQs.
• Discursive writing - Discursive Writing - Higher English Revision. (n.d.). BBC Bitesize. https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zpdwwmn/revision/1  
• Prepare for Exam Success: C1 Advanced self-access learning Writing Part 1 -the discursive essay Lesson summary. (n.d.). Retrieved June 28, 2024, from https://www.cambridgeenglish.org/Images/583526-c1-advanced-self-access-learning-writing-part-1-discursive-essay.pdf  
• Tomeu. (n.d.). Advanced C1.1: How to write a DISCURSIVE ESSAY. Advanced C1.1. Retrieved June 28, 2024, from https://englishadvanced2.blogspot.com/2013/10/speakout-advanced-p-25-examples-of.html