Transcription
With so many news we have nowadays, we sometimes feel there is a need for us to make an informed opinion about them. Have you thought of how to make a stand on a certain issue? How do you defend it?
Good day, learners! Welcome to another episode of English for Academic and Professional Purpose. Today, we will learn about defending a stand on an issue by presenting reasonable arguments. At the end of the lesson, you should be able to:
- Identify reasonable arguments
- Use appeals to support a claim or stand
- Write properly cited factual evidences
In our previous lesson, we talked about argument. Let us review what an argument is. An argument, in the context of your university career, is a formal way to make a point in academic writing. This remains distinct from the real-world definition, where an argument might mean a fight or a conflict.
Let us not forget that an argument consists of two important parts. Firstly, a claim or statement that summarizes the main idea. Secondly, reasons why that claim is true and/or evidence to support that claim.
This is a good example of what an argument is. Reflective writing can help students become better thinkers. It can help students see that ideas are meant to be discussed and debated. Bridges and Jost found that students who did weekly reflective journal writing about their course content for a semester could analyze course concepts at a deeper level than those who didn't.
Now that you know what an argument or stand is, how do you defend it? In making the defense, you have to ensure that you are addressing all sides of the issue and presenting them in a manner that is easy for your audience to understand. Your job is actually to take one side of the argument and persuade your audience that you have well-founded knowledge of the topic being presented.
There are steps in presenting arguments to defend or support a stand on an issue. Keep in mind that you have to persuade others to make them believe in your claim. When shaping it, consider and ask yourself the following questions to ensure that you will be able to present strong arguments on the issues:
- Is it a real issue with genuine controversy and uncertainty?
- Can I identify at least two distinctive positions?
- Am I personally interested in advocating one of these positions?
- Is the scope of the issue narrow enough to be manageable?
Before deciding on a stand to defend, you should do some research on the subject matter. While you may already have an opinion on your topic and an idea about which side of the argument you want to take, you need to ensure that your position is well supported. Listing the pro and con sides of the topic will help you examine your ability to support your counter claims. Along with a list of supporting evidences for both sides, you will find many different kinds of evidence-sharing sources. Here's a list of the most common:
- Surveys
- Descriptive studies
- Case studies
- Academic journals
- Popular magazines
- Biographical information
- Codes or summaries of work from established authorities
- Statistics
- Interviews of an authority or ordinary citizen
- Laboratory research
- Textual analysis
Make an appeal to your audience. To convince a particular person that your own views are sound, you have to consider the audience's way of thinking. Appealing to the audience is another important part of defending a stand on an issue. This can help you strengthen your position or claim in an academic argument. Logical appeals are the most common; however, depending on your topic, ethical and emotional appeals can also be used.
Let's start discussing logical appeal. This is the use of facts in order to support and defend a position. This means reasoning with your audience, providing them with facts and statistics or making historical and literal analogies. It persuades the audience by targeting their thinking. An example of which is: "More than 100 peer-reviewed studies have been conducted over the past decade, and none of them suggests that coconut milk is an effective treatment for hair loss."
The next one is emotional appeal. This is the use of audience feelings for the subject of the paper, such as anger, pity, and aversion, in order to persuade. It may also refer to values that the reader may identify with, such as the importance of family ties, hospitality, and the bayanihan spirit.
Here's an example: "How can you say that the government shouldn't censor the internet? Think of the poor children who might be exposed to inappropriate content." Now, this type of argument attempts to elicit a strong emotional response since people will generally want to protect children, and since no one wants to adopt a stance that will corporately or appropriately harm them. So this is a good example of an emotional appeal.
The third one is the ethical appeal. This is the use of convincing an audience through the credibility of the persuader, be it a notable or experienced figure in the field, or even a popular celebrity. Here's an example: "As a doctor, I am qualified to tell you that this course of treatment will likely generate the best results." Here, people tend to believe the opinions of doctors in the matter of medical treatments. The audience considers the argument because of the credibility of the speaker.
Number four is to organize your viewpoints or arguments. In presenting arguments, you are typically asked to take a position on an issue or topic and explain and support your position with research from reliable and credible sources. The argument you are making should be clear within your thesis statement.
Now take a look at the sample outline. Here you have the introduction, and you have to introduce the topic, but make sure you provide background on the topic to explain why it is important. You should have several reasons or points of discussion that will help you support your argument. You will explain and support these reasons.
As with all academic writing, you'll need to cite any information that you used from a source. Your introduction has a dual purpose. This is to indicate both the topic and your approach to it, which is your thesis statement, and to arouse your reader's interest in what you have to say. One effective way of introducing a topic is to place it in context, to supply a kind of backdrop that will put it in perspective.
You should discuss the area into which your topic fits and then gradually lead into your specific field of discussion. After the first part, you can start with your arguments in the body with the following outline: You may have more than one overall point to your argument. Each argument should be supported with properly cited sources.
Take a look at this outline now. In the third part, you have the counter arguments. You can generate counter arguments by asking yourself what someone who disagrees with you might say about each of the points you've made about your position as a whole.
Once you have thought up some counter arguments, consider how you will respond to them. Will you concede that your opponent has a point but explain why your audience should nonetheless accept your argument? Will you reject the counter argument and explain why it is mistaken? Either way, you will want to leave your reader with a sense that your argument is stronger than opposing arguments. Be sure that your reply is consistent with your original argument. If considering a counter argument changes your position, you will need to go back and revise your original argument accordingly.
Let's take a look at a sample paper defending a stand about using technology among children. The issue is about technology being not good for children. The writer's stand on the issue is opposition. The writer's claim is that technology is good for children, for it allows our children to have an amount of knowledge at their fingertips.
Here, in the introduction, the writer begins with a hook, then the overall topic of technology, and then narrows it to the benefits of technology use by adolescents. Let's pause to read this. The thesis statement begins with the specific topic. Next, the writer states her argument or her position on this topic. The thesis ends with the reasons she feels this way. These two reasons will be the two major points of discussion within the paper.
On this particular part of the paper, we can see that this paragraph focuses on the first point of discussion from the thesis statement. Here, the writer indicates this with the use of topic sentences. Within her body paragraph development, the writer integrates his or her research by citing an author to explain and support the claim.
So again, let's read this paper and find out the parts of it. Here are more examples of arguments that the writer used in this paper. Here, the writer has included a paragraph that identifies a counter argument. Let's read them. Finally, in the conclusion part, the writer summarizes the main points made in the paper and explains the importance of the topic. Let's read this conclusion.
Now that you know how to defend a stand on an issue by presenting reasonable arguments, I am very confident that you can now prepare or write your own paper on an issue. With this, just follow the sample outline we used during the discussion.