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Major Challenges and Great Tips on How to Overcome Them When Writing an Argumentative Essay

Argumentative essay writing from a critical point of view, the significant challenges faced by students as they write these types of essays and tips to turn things around for the better.

From a student’s point of view, argumentative essay writing can be a challenging task that may require years of practice as well as writing help and guidance from an expert. Have you ever thought of the critical aspect of writing argumentative essays? Have you had the opportunity to think about the whole process without necessarily following the stringent guidelines that are presented by different individuals? The primary point is to understand what you need to say and devise a way to say it so that your audience is convinced that your position is the best.

But how do you achieve this on paper without straying from your main goal? Argumentative essay writing is not for the faint-hearted, and you need to think outside the box and in a controversial manner to ensure that you gain the full attention of your readers. This may not be the easiest of tasks, and many young writers barely know where to start. In this article apart from the challenges faced by writers, we explore some different but score changing tips on how to write a great argumentative essay.

Significant Challenges faced by Argumentative Essay Writers and how to beat them

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Argumentative essays present you as the writer with the rare opportunity to offer your viewpoint on a given topic, but there is more to come up with your essay than just your opinion. You need to clearly give an explanation and present evidence and examples on your topic. It would be best if you also wrote in such a way that is ethical and shows sensitivity towards other people that have an opposing opinion and beliefs. It is not a chance to mock other writers or individuals, but a chance to defend your position and express the various reasons why you think other people should respect your point of view and necessarily support your arguments.

While this form of writing is made difficult by many research and craft related obstacles, understanding these obstacles can help you to significantly reduce the challenges that you face when you are coming up with a great argumentative essay. Below, are some of the most significant challenges that you are likely to face as an argumentative essay writer and overcoming them may just present you with the ability to come up with excellent papers in this category:

1. Topic selection

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Coming up with a great topic to write about in argumentative essays is not as straightforward as most people tend to think. Unlike other pieces where you need to conduct research on your topic and write a good paper, argumentative essays are a little bit more complicated. In this type of essay, you need to select a topic and then think of an argument that is more likely to attract your reader’s attention right from the very start. For example, you can think about free education. Unlike other essays where you need to explore the topic, you need to consider different points of view on this topic and argue it out. For example, ‘Education should be free for all people’.

You need to think about this topic and discuss it adequately. You need to present evidence that strongly shows the benefits that would arise from encouraging free education. You also need to consider other people’s points of view on the matter and discuss it adequately. You then need to think of an approach that convinces your readers that your stance is the best and should be considered. Prior to picking the topic, you need to ensure that it is a matter that you are passionate about. You also need to think if you will have enough evidence to back up your arguments.

2. Taking a clear stance

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This is another crucial challenge that you need to overcome in order to create great argumentative essays. In the thesis statement part of your paper, you are likely to find it difficult to state-specific views and why they are essential. A good thesis in these types of essays should always contain your position, a course of action that should be taken, and the reason why the course of action is relevant. For example, in your topic on education, you can state, ‘Creating an education system that offers free education to all people can increase the number of literate individuals in society by allowing even the poor to have access to an education.’

Ensure that you come up with a high draft of your thesis and get guidance from your instructors on how to make it more specific. You can also use free and incredible online tools like the Peachy Essay thesis statement generator to help you come up with an incredible thesis statement based on your main ideas and arguments. In this way, you can ensure that you have an excellent thesis statement prior to writing your argumentative essay.

3. Choosing your sources effectively

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The research part of the paper writing process is probably one of the most difficult. You may have access to millions of sources on a given topic from the online platform, but you need to be very careful about the type of research that you use. Many students end up with poorly written and biased papers due to the fact that they do not have the ability to pick out good sources from the many that they can access. Not all information that you come across on the internet is actually useable.

Determining if a source is good enough to use in your argumentative paper is one of the most significant challenges that you are going to face since you always need to ensure that your sources are not biased. Some of the causes may only support one position, which is just not good enough when writing these kinds of essays. Always make sure that you use articles from academic journals or reliable websites that offer well-researched papers that show where the research came from through useful bibliographies. Your inquiry is critical, and using good sources will definitely help you attain good results.

4. Exploring different opinions

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The major goal of writing an argumentative essay is defending your position or viewpoint in a given subject. For one reason or another, this causes a challenge because you are also supposed to honor other viewpoints in your paper. It is very tempting to focus on your main argument without considering what others think, and this is a major mistake made by most argumentative essay writers. They simply ignore the fact that they need to take opposing viewpoints into consideration when writing their papers and therefore exclude evidence that fails to align with their major points.

Whenever you write any form of argumentative essay, you need to consider the ethical part of paper writing that dictates that you need to consider other people’s opinions. Failure to do this makes your arguments less effective and credible. When you consider researching other viewpoints, you are able to think critically and gain more ideas on how to present your arguments. You are also able to gain the goodwill of your audience when you can accept some points that you cannot refute. You need to take this into consideration when writing your argumentative essay.

5. Writer’s Block

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This is a major problem that most writers are most likely to face at some point. You have the idea of what you want to say, but you do not know how to put it down on paper. You simply do not know what to write, lack the motivation, and you do not have an idea what to do to find that motivation. When you are not able to solve this challenge, you will find it extremely difficult to come up with a good argumentative essay. One of the best ways to solve this issue is to take some rest as you ponder over the issue that you are passionate about.

You can also take some time to read some materials related to your topic to since if you get some kind of inspiration to write your paper. When you have been writing for too long, and you feel like you are not making progress, you can also experience the block, and it would be reasonable for you to work out a plan where you note each of the goals that you attain as you write your argumentative essay. It is very important that you approach this kind of paper with a focused mind.

Argumentative essay writing can pose a set of challenges to you as a writer. This is because writing these types of essays requires some form of approach that you cannot easily get used to unless you have the potential to think critically and think of different ways to overcome the challenges that most writers will face as they write this category of essays. Right from the very start, you need to understand your position and make it clear to your audience that you will take your stand and defend it. Applying some of the tips mentioned above to solve the challenges that you face can significantly help you to write better argumentative essays.


Peter is a freelance writer with more than eight years of experience covering topics in politics. He was one of the guys that were here when the foreignpolicyi.org started.