Coherence in Reaction Essays.

In reaction essays, you create coherence with key terms, pronouns, and synonyms.

1. Repeating Key Terms or Phrases. This helps readers stay focused on the subject you are discussing.

Example: The use of symbolism in Lisa’s story was fascinating.

The symbolism was found throughout the story.

2. Using a pronoun to refer to a previous noun or noun phrase.

This method adds coherence by helping readers clearly follow the flow of information.

Example: Rhonda shocked everyone in her family. She decided to become a balloonist.

3. Using synonyms. Synonyms help maintain coherence by avoiding unnecessary repetition of information.

Example: The Olympic Games are played every four years in different countries. This international competition involves thousands of athletes from around the world.

If all the sentences in an essay are the same type, the writing can sound dull, the essay can sound repetitive and formulaic. Reading aloud is a good way to check if you have sentence variety. There are four main ways to create sentence variety: coordination, subordination, use of relative pronouns in subordination, and use of prepositional phrases.
Argumentative Essay

Writers choose argumentative essays when they want to persuade readers to change their minds about something. It means presenting a carefully reasoned, well-supported argument that takes into account other points of view. In this kind of essay, writers sometimes try to convince readers of their point of view. Arguments should be developed according to rules of evidence and logical reasoning. Often argumentative essays include some of the other types of writing. For example, you may want to compare and contrast the opposing views in your essay to show the reader why your view is the best one. Or, to illustrate your point that a diet low in cholesterol can prevent heart disease, you might explain the process of how cholesterol develops into plaque in coronary arteries.

You begin composing an argument by planning, by investigating a variety of sources so that you can discover a subject. Next you organize your argument into a draft so that it most effectively and fully expresses your subject.

The basic argumentative strategies are:

- (1) making claims

- (2) offering supporting reasons and evidence

-(3) handling counterarguments.

(1) The claim is whatever view or thesis or conclusion the writer puts forward about the subject. Argumentative essays present the claim in a thesis statement. Successful claims must be arguable, clear, and appropriately qualified.

To be arguable, a claim must have some probability of being true; it must be arguable on grounds shared by write and readers.

Facts are unarguable as claims because they are objectively verifiable. Facts are easy to verify – by checking a reference book, asking an authority, or observing it with your own eyes. For example, these statements assert facts:

Jim will be twenty-one years old on May, 6, 2010.

I am less than five feet tall.

Eucalyptus trees were originally imported into California from Australia.

Each of these statements can be easily verified. There is no point in arguing over such statements. If a writer were to claim something as a fact and attempt to support the claim with authorities or statistics, the essay would not be considered an argument but a report of information. Facts are used in arguments as evidence to support a claim and not as claims themselves.

The wording of a claim, especially its key terms, must be clear and exact.

Consider the following claim: “Democracy is a way of life.” The meaning of the claim is vague and uncertain, it is due to the abstractness of the word democracy and the inexactness of the phrase way of life. Does it refer to daily life, to a general philosophy or to something else?

In any argumentative writing you should pay special attention to the way you phrase your claim and take care to avoid vague and ambiguous language.

In addition to being arguable and clear, the forcefulness with which a writer asserts a claim should be appropriate to the writing situation. If you are confident that your case is so strong that readers will accept your argument without question, you will want to state your claim emphatically and unconditionally. If you expect readers to challenge your statement or conclusion, then you will want to qualify your claim. Expressions like probably, very likely, apparently, it seems all serve to qualify a claim. They are used to make the claim less extreme or forceful.

(2) Claims are supported with reasons and evidence. Whether you are taking a stand, proposing a solution, making an evaluation, speculating about causes or interpreting a literary work, you need reasons and evidence to construct a convincing argument.

Reasons are the main points supporting a claim. Often they are answers to the question “Why do you make that claim?” For example, you might value a movie highly because of its challenging ideas, unusual camera work, and memorable acting. These because phrases are the reasons you make your claim. You may have one or many reasons for a claim, depending on your subject and writing situation. These reasons need evidence in order for them to be convincing and in order for your whole argument to succeed with your readers.

The main kinds of evidence writers use to construct arguments include facts, statistics, authorities, anecdotes, scenarios, cases, and textual evidence.

Facts may be used as supporting evidence in all types of arguments. A fact is generally defined as a statement accepted as true. facts refer to a reality that can be measured or verified by objective means. Facts come from such sources as almanacs, encyclopedias, and research studies as well as from our own observations and experience.

Any facts you include in your argument should be current because what is accepted as “the facts” changes as new observations and studies are completed. You should use only those facts relevant to your argument, even if it means leaving out interesting peripheral information.

In many kinds of arguments about economic, educational, or social issues, statistics may be essential. You must be sure that they come from reliable sources.

To support their claims and reasons writers cite authorities. Quoting a respected authority on a topic generally adds weight to an argument. Instead of quoting the expert directly, you may paraphrase the information from an authority.

Anecdotes are brief stories that can very effectively provide evidence in an argument. They may be quite convincing if they seem to readers to be true to life. Anecdotes make a special contribution to argument through their concreteness.

While an anecdote tells about something that actually happened, a scenario is a narrative that describes something that might happen. Writers create scenarios to make their arguments more vivid and convincing. Scenarios raise and answer the question “What if?”

A case is an example that comes from a writer’s firsthand knowledge. Cases summarize observations of people. They are meant to be typical or generalized. Case histories are an important part of the work of psychologists, doctors, and social workers. These cases may be quite long, sometimes following the life of one individual over many months or years. In writing cases are presented briefly as evidence for a claim or reason.

When you argue claims of value and interpretation, textual evidence may be very important. If you are criticizing a controversial book that your readers have not yet read, you may want to quote from it often so that readers can understand why you think the author’s argument is not credible. If you are interpreting sme literary work, you may need to include numerous excerpts to show just how you ariived at your conclusion. In both situations, you are integrating bits of the text you are evaluating or interpreting into your own text and building your argument on these bits.

(3) Claims, reasons, and evidence are essential to a successful argument. Thoughtful writers go further by anticipating their readers’ counterarguments. Counterarguments include any objections, alternatives, challenges, or questions

To anticipate counterarguments try to imagine a reader’s point of view on the subject, knowledge about the subject, and familiarity with the issue. Try also to imagine a readers’ response to the argument as it unfolds step by step. What will readers be thinking and feeling? How will they react?

Anticipating readers’ counterarguments, writers rely on three basic strategies: acknowledging, accommodating, and refuting counterarguments. They let readers know they are aware of their objections and questions (acknowledge), accept all or part of the objections into their argument (accommodate), or explicitly oppose (refute) the objections. Writers may use one or more of these strategies in the same essay.

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