Argumentative Essay Outline: Importance And Writing Tips

An argumentative essay is a type of academic assignment where the student is tasked with formulating an opinion on a particular topic. Before you can find where you stand on a subject, you need to do a lot of work: study the sources, turn the obtained information into evidence, and analyze it. It’s clear that writing a strong argumentative essay is no easy feat, which is why many students are far from being thrilled when they have to write an argumentative essay. However, if this task is unavoidable, you’d better learn to cope with it and devise your own strategies for succeeding in this challenge. One of the most effective strategies for making sure you succeed in writing an argumentative essay is to create a powerful argumentative essay outline or buy essay online. Here is a detailed guide on how to do it!

Argumentative Essay Outline Structure

You probably already have substantial experience in the field of writing essays, and you may think you know everything about the proper structure for any essay. While that may be true for most essays you’ve written before, the structure of an argumentative has some big differences from the traditional outline. Luckily, this structure is not complicated at all and you can easily master it starting from your first argumentative essay. Your essay must contain the following parts:

• Introduction;
• Development of the arguments;
• Debunking the arguments of the opponents;

Now let’s take a look at each section of an essay in detail.

Argumentative Essay Outline: Introduction

The introduction is the first part of an essay, and it is often the part that makes or breaks the whole work. A weak introduction does not give the audience any reason to continue reading. In your argumentative essay introduction, you need to create a strong foundation for the rest of the writing and base the remaining parts of the essay upon the introduction. The argumentative essay introduction has its own structure and consists of a hook, background information, and thesis.

Hook

The hook is a brief part of the introduction that is only one or two sentences long, but it sets the tone for the rest of your essay. The purpose of the hook is to captivate the readers and give them the reason to continue reading the work. A boring, unimpressive hook is unlikely to stimulate the reader’s attention, and that is true not only for argumentative essays, but also for any form of writing. Here are a few things you can use for writing a good hook:

• An anecdote;
• A quote from a famous personality;
• A piece of statistics relevant to the topic;
• A question;
• An interesting fact;
• A popular misconception.

Remember that while the hook needs to be able to grab the reader’s attention, it should be absolutely related to the subject of the essay.

Background information

This part of your introduction should serve as a way to get the readers acquainted with the subject. It should be perfectly understandable even for those who have no idea what the essay is about. Try to answer the following questions in your background information of the conclusion:

• What is the main issue that you plan to discuss?
• Who is the potential audience of the issue?
• Where is the subject most often discussed or used?
• What is the importance of the subject for the population?

Thesis

The thesis is another brief but powerful part of an argumentative essay’s introduction. It serves as an introduction of the issue you’re planning to discuss, but instead of simply mentioning the issue, you need to clearly state your opinion on the matter. This is the finishing part of the introduction and a way to prepare the readers for what they are about to see in the rest of your work. In order to meet your goals for a strong closing statement of an introduction, the thesis should be clear, concise, and aligned with the rest of the writing.

There are common mistakes that many students make while writing a thesis for their essay, such as simply retelling the title, writing an absolute fact as a thesis or making the thesis too long. Remember these mistakes and do your best to avoid them in your work.

Argumentative Essay Outline: Developing The Arguments

In this important part of the argumentative essay you need to develop enough arguments to support your claim and to use strong evidence to back them up.

Claim

A claim is a central element of an argumentative essay that influences the overall quality and effect of the essay. The claim needs to reflect the goals and direction of the paper, as well as to support the argument you’re trying to make. However, unsubstantiated claims really have no place in a good argumentative essay.

Evidence

Evidence is used to back up your claims. It needs to be reliable and come from trustworthy sources, such as scientific studies. The evidence can come in different shapes, but you certainly can’t use personal opinions or anecdotes as evidence – your evidence must come as a result of a thorough research.

Argumentative Essay Outline: Debunking The Opposing Arguments

Once you’ve finished listing the claims to support your position, completing them with evidence, the next thing to do is to demonstrate an opposing point of view. Imagine what claims your opponents may make to debunk your position and use evidence to debunk their claims in turn. Here you need to show that you’re ready to argue with the opponents in the most possible formal and scholarly way.

Argumentative Essay Outline: Conclusion

Even though most of your work in writing an argumentative essay is done, it’s important not to underestimate the power of a strong conclusion. To create a powerful conclusion, first restate the main argument of the essay. Then summarize most of the work in a couple of sentences. Finally, state why you believe the arguments and evidence are valuable for the society. Keep the length of the conclusion roughly equal to the length of the introduction – both should be brief but impressive.