Building Argument and Integrating Evidence

Session Objectives To raise participants’ awareness of argument building in academic writing To help participants identify the difference between persuasive and argumentative writing To focus on developing effective arguments with evidence and introduce the ways of presenting evidence, e.g., quoting, paraphrasing, and summarising

Lead in What is an argument? Why is argumentation important in academic writing? What is evidence and how is it presented in academic texts? How do you integrate evidence in your writing?

Identifying the argument Premise + Conclusion = Argument

Identifying the argument Premise - a reason offered as support for a claim Conclusion - the claim being supported by a premise or premises Argument - a conclusion together with the premises that support it

Identifying the argument All men are mortal. Socrates was a man. Therefore Socrates is mortal.

Conclusion indicators Handout A: Answer Key Premise indicators Conclusion indicators Since Because For As Follows from As shown by Inasmuch as As indicated by The reason is that May be inferred from May be derived from May be deduced from Given that Therefore Hence So Accordingly Consequently Proves that As a result Thus For this reason For these reasons It follows that I conclude that Which shows that Which means that Which entails that Which implies that

Argumentative papers call the thesis a CLAIM. A claim is always DEBATABLE. They also must present opposing viewpoint which is called a COUNTERCLAIM.

What is evidence? Evidence = facts, reasons, personal experience, expert research, statistics, etc.

Ways to present evidence Quoting Paraphrasing Summarising