A discursive essay—sounds familiar? But do you know its structure and how to build a coherent and persuasive argument? Let’s get to know it better. A discursive essay requires students to investigate a topic, gather evidence, read and assess it, and take a stance on that evidence.
The structure of the discursive essay is based on a thesis statement that holds the entire argument. You must avoid undefined terms and absurd logic to build a coherent and persuasive argument. To structure the argument well, students must research the topic deeply to be able to argue from more than one perspective and critically analyze their own assumptions.
If you can’t focus on minute details and don’t know how to structure a coherent argument, you’re suggested to hire the best essay writer; professionals can make difficult things look easy. If you want to challenge yourself and try it on your own, this article will help you decide on discursive essay structure and construct a logical and persuasive argument.
How to Structure a Discursive Essay?
Structuring is a crucial step towards writing your discursive essay. Building a hierarchy will give you clarity of ideas and thoughts. It helps readers understand the paper better and also helps build up your argument. It becomes easier for the audience to follow the logic of your ideas.
This is how you can structure a discursive essay for better understanding and constructing a logical argument.
- Introduction
- Add a powerful opening statement
- Provide background details of the topic
- Write your position on the argument
- Main Body
- Argumentation one + evidence
- Argumentation two + evidence
- Argumentation three + evidence
- (Add the statement, presentation, and analysis of the perspective of each argument.)
- Opposing argument + Counter/refute.
- Conclusion
- Reinstate your statement
Discursive Essay Structure Example
Here, you can see the visual example of a discursive essay structure:
How Do You Organise a Discursive Essay?
Organising your essay or understanding what an argument is and how to construct a coherent/logical one is the passcode to success in your higher education and beyond studies. The arguments are actually built to answer all the potential questions your readers might have after reading this academic paper.
Philosopher Stephen E. Toulmin gave Toulmin’s method to make your argument structured and logical. This method breaks the arguments into six elements:
- Declaration/claim
- Grounds of the claim
- Warrant/justification
- Backing/support
- Qualifiers
- Rebuttal.
Let’s further explain these parts to help you build a discursive essay argument.
1. Claim
A claim is an attestation that the writers need to prove to their audience in the essay. In other words, we can call it the main argument. Let’s say you are writing an essay on the topic “More research is required on how social media influences offline and online relationships.” To prove this claim, the author has to provide evidence of how the original source lacks technical, demographical, and stylistic information.
While writing your discursive essay, remember to state a claim that you can easily prove by the evidence, and information is easily available on the topic. The claim or thesis statement must be strong and persuasive enough to interest your audience to continue reading the paper.
2. Grounds
The grounds for an argument are the proof or evidence that backs/supports the declaration or claim. Based on the same example of an essay on the topic “More research is required on how social media influences offline and online relationships”, to prove this claim, you need to discuss on what grounds your argument is valid.
For instance, in the given topic, you can discuss how LinkedIn communications are a minor means of sustaining personal relationships. Therefore, this study needs more research as it does not fulfil the requirements of technical and demographical information.
To build a logical argument in your discursive essay, try to find solid ground on which you approve or disapprove of the argument. Make sure the grounds are persuasive enough to convince your audience of your perspective.
3. Warrant
The warrant either clears or suggests how grounds are related to the claim, or we can say that it justifies the link of ground to the claim. Taking the same scenario, the warrant would be when a document has insufficient information or lacks a specific perspective, more research is required to prove the claim.
In the context of your discursive essay, you need to state or justify how your claim/statement/argument is valid. To build a coherent essay structure, you need to give logical reasoning for everything you state or assert in your essay.
4. Backing
After you justify the grounds of your claim (warrant), it’s time to give an account for your warrant as well. In most cases, the warrant is just assumed or intimated, so you need backing supporting your justification by providing an example proving the warrant is logical.
Remember that you have to back up your claim with solid proof. In the context of the ongoing example, you can say that a thorough review of the literature has shown you that no additional research has been done in order to clarify the effects LinkedIn can have on personal relationships.
Remember to back your statement with a valid reasoning or source while writing your discursive essay, i.e., a literature review. Prove that your thorough literature review backs the warrant you gave for your grounds.
Backing your claims with reliable sources is an important part of the assignment; if you get it wrong, all your efforts will be wasted, so you have to be careful about that. If you are not used to writing academic papers, we suggest you get essay writing helpfrom an expert for a coherent and structured discursive essay.
5. Qualifiers
It is not possible for a claim to be justified or correct in all circumstances; the qualifiers exhibit that your claim may not be to the point in some conditions. Using words like “I assume, many, and some” can assist your audience to understand, that you’re aware of the fact of facing some instances where your statement may not be accurate.
So, while writing your discursive essay, keep in mind that the use of qualifiers can protect the credibility of your work. So, if you use qualifiers in your essay, it will exhibit your knowledge of the subject and research principles.
6. Rebuttal
After you have accepted that there are some conditions where your argument might not be correct, you must also show some respect towards other interpretations. This is where comes the last element of Toulmin’s method: rebuttal. The rebuttal is a recognition of another point of view of the situation. When you add qualifiers and rebuttals to your argument, it increases the trustworthiness of your work and research process.
In the ongoing scenario, you can add phrases like, “unless there is new research work done on the topic that might not have been published yet”. It will demonstrate your awareness of the possibilities for the existence of new information in the future.
When you admit in your discursive essay that your information is not always correct, or you provide a considerable number of perspectives or arguments, it will help you build an image of an impartial and careful thinker rather than someone who rashly pushes for one standpoint of the situation.
Discursive Essay Topics
There are many topics on which you can write your discursive essay according to your subject. We have gathered some topics that you can consider to get good grades.
- Is mobile addiction an actual addiction?
- Is the military’s use of drones a privacy breach?
- Is the environment being destroyed because of plastic water bottles
- Do small businesses need a social media presence to succeed?
- Do all grown-ups need eight hours of sleep every night?
- Should the use of offshore drilling be increased?
These topics have vast information available and are easy to prove.
Conclusion
To conclude the article, we will say that writing a discursive essay can be demanding. It takes a lot of effort and research to write a good one. You need to focus on the structure of the essay as well as the argument’s coherence, hierarchy, and persuasiveness.
In this article, we have tried to cover all the aspects you need to tackle while crafting your argument and structuring your essay, including Toulmin’s method, which demonstrates six elements crucial to building a coherent argument and provides you with a step-by-step approach.
If you can’t keep the focus on minor details while writing. In that case, you should go for essay writing services UK, available online, to avoid any tensions later on because mistakes in an argument can cost you heavily. Of course, you have to build the argument properly focusing on each detail, and that’s difficult.
