This 2-hour workshop focuses on the four simple steps that lay at the heart of every academic argument to help you write more structured and focused texts.
All academic texts, from seminar papers to monographs, depend on both narrative and argumentative structures. The narrative structure provides the explicit movement of the text from sentence to sentence. It is the storyline the author is spinning and along which their readers follow. In contrast, the argumentative structure often lurks in the background. It consists of component parts–a problem; established views on that problem; flaws with those established views; and an original answer to the problem–that are often left implicit or unconnected to the narrative structure.
Often authors reproduce common academic narrative structures without thinking about the argumentative structure. This results in texts where the main argument and takeaway get lost in the narration.
In this workshop, we will explore how thinking about how the argumentative structure of your text can make your argument more clear and direct.
You will gain:
-A simple and proven technique for grasping the argumentative structure of any academic text (including your own drafts and outlines)
-Experience identifying the four main steps in argumentative structure and how they work
-Short writing prompts to help you structure your own texts
-Instructor and peer feedback
