Yael Leibovitch
09 August 2023
Writing is something we all do every day, be it in our personal, professional, or academic lives. So it might come as a suprise to some of us that writing has such negative associations amongst students, causing them to struggle when it comes time to put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard).
And while writing is a cognitively demanding task — there are many things to consider when translating our thoughts into prose — it need not be overwhelming. Developing a fundamental understanding of what good writing is made of, can go a long way to lighten a writer’s cognitive load, making the experience more manageable, and even enjoyable.
And amongst the many ways to improve our student's thinking and develop their confidence in writing, arguments are possibly the most fundamental.
The word "argument" can sometimes scare people with its association to conflict but that isn't the type of argument we're talking about today. What we mean by argument is just a connected series of statements laid out to support some other statment. Arguments are made up of propositions — statement that can be true or false. The propositions that do the supporting are called premises and those that are supported are called the conclusions.
We all use arguments every day. Deciding where to eat dinner, which outfit to wear, or perhaps even to convince others we should all move to the far south of New Zealand and live in an off-grid cabin to avoid the looming AI apocalypse. So while the theory of argumentation might seem foreign, arguments are something that we are all well-versed in, and more often than not, actually enjoy engaging with.
So what does all this talk of arguments have to do with writing?
One of the challenges in teaching students to write well is that they don’t understand on a basic level what good writing entails, and more specifically, the significance of a coherent structure for their thinking. In short, they don't understand the role that arguments play in writing.
Unless you are writing poetry, a fictional narrative, or an expose, you will almost certainly be writing (or at least should be writing) an argument. If we can help students understand that when they write they are ultimately taking a stance on a topic, providing relevant reasons to support that stance, and (if they have read the task) explaining the significance of evidence to support these claims, then this marks an empowering shift in how students approach the task.
So instead of going in blind, unsure of what fundamentally needs to be achieved in their writing, and perhaps mindlessly reciting maxims and acronyms, providing students with a basic understanding of argumentation places them on solid writing ground.
An argumentative lens does several cognitively potent things for student writers. It allows them to lay out their thinking in structure way (i.e., premises and a conclusion) and examine the cogency of their line of thinking collaboratively.
Students can then easily transfer their argument structure into a coherent written form with clarity of purpose in what they are arguing for. This, in turn, lays the groundwork for a successful piece of writing, leaving students with the mental space and time to focus on the particularities of the task at hand.
While arguments are often portrayed as something to be avoided in pop culture, when it comes to writing, this couldn’t be further from the truth. So, the next time you talk to your students about writing, consider bringing in some argumentation if you’re not already — the results might just astound you.