Analyzing Arguments
In an earlier post, we talked about the role of research as one of the best essay helps you can get. However, after conducting your research in order to get well acquainted with your topic, you need to take it a step further. A lot of students fail to adequately analyze their research sources because they fail to realize the importance of analysis.
Why You Need To Analyze
Analysis of other people’s arguments is another essay writing help that will make your essay acceptable and of course, get you good marks. Analysis means that you have to identify the claims and reasons why the authors made those claims. It is these claims and reasons that form arguments and I think I should add here that for your essay to gain credibility, you must analyze other arguments that have been made about the issue by other sources. It is by understanding and analyzing other arguments that you can convince others why your argument should be considered ahead of another argument.
Steps to Analyzing an Argument
Still talking about analysis as a form of essay help, the following steps will help you when analyzing for
instance whether what I’m saying makes sense or not!
- Determine whether there’s an alternative reason for the claim: An alternative reason is a different explanation for a particular claim and determining whether this exists is the first step to discrediting another author’s argument.
- Determine whether there’s sufficient evidence to support the claim. This is self explanatory and I’ll just give an example. For instance, “Mark has a high risk of having a heart attack because his father and grandfather both died of heart attacks and according to the American Heart Institute heart attacks are sometimes genetically transferred.” (Matthews 89). The writer has given sufficient reason for his/her claim.
- Determine if the argument rests on assumptions: A lot of times, people make their arguments based on assumptions that are often incorrect and untrue in some cases. Attacking these assumptions is a good way of analyzing an argument.
- Determine if there’s an error in reasoning: some of these errors include either/or situations, hurried generalizations, misconception of authority, non sequitur and flawed cause and effect. These would be fully discussed in subsequent posts.
Once you can analyze other arguments like this, it becomes easy to come with superior arguments for your paper.
More articles on argumentative papers and arguments from Personal-Writer.com
How to make your arguments strong in a persuasive essay
Argumentative essay writing: constructing arguments
Template of an argumentative paper
How to write an argumentative paper
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