Argumentative Essay Reflection: Promised But Neglected
My
experience writing the argumentative essay on the topic I chose (Unequal
Education Opportunities in the U.S.) became difficult towards working on the
second body paragraph. Although I created an outline prior to writing the
essay, something was not right. My main claims were repetitive and overlapping
each other. I thought if I used good
transitional phrases, I could connect the dots and make the essay meaningful.
But to do that, I needed a strong thesis statement and putting one together was
difficult due to the many arguments I wanted to incorporate. However as I
collected thorough research and read personal accounts of students, as well as
watch various documentaries that will help support my main points, the essay
automatically developed. For instance, after watching the video of the
education gap in America, a main problem that Ronald Ferguson, director of The
Achievement Gap Initiative at Harvard University addressed was
unqualified or low-skilled teachers in high-poverty schools. This was where I was
able to include my research skills to find the correct resources to “develop
rhetorical sensibility.” Another issue I had with writing the essay was finding
the right sources to counter claim my arguments.
My topic
was so broad that every source I found was defending my argument. Furthermore,
some of the websites I found did not pertain to my actual topic so avoiding
them was the best option because incorrectly analyzing them would have been a
problem. Using the Opposing ViewPoints sources from CCNY Library helped a lot
supporting my claims, but not so much with the counterclaim. Critiquing and
self-assessing in this case was met when I remembered an article I had read a
year ago about a colored high-school’s acceptance to all IVY League Schools.
Although I believed it to be a weak point, it was powerful enough to backfire
and help me refute. In addition, reading other sample essays as well as editing
my peer’s essay aided me in organizing my sentences and thoughts better. When I
was able to find the mistakes of other students, I was also exposed to my own.
In comparison to the informative essay to this paper, I saw myself improve in
evaluating, quoting, citing sources, paraphrasing and elaborating on my
thoughts. Grammar was an issue for me in the last assignment, but this time
trying to use simple, compound, complex and compound-complex helped a lot. At
last, having a stance (opinion) in this writing was easier to do because I was
writing on a topic that interests me the most.
Overall,
argumentative essays are fun to write, if the topic is of the student’s
interest. Using logos, pathos and ethos were great tools to allow the readers
to think deeply and leave a lasting impression as well as proving the
importance of the issue discussed.
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