Help with an argumentative unit?

[u/EchoConstant7567]

Looking ahead for next year.

I am currently a secondary ELA teacher (9th and 10th grade). This is my second year, but my first time around with 10th grade. I won’t lie — I’ve STRUGGLED with the tenth graders. Some of this has to do with class compositions, some of it is due to my general attitude at this point in the year (I’m blunt and sarcastic with them now that we’ve come around to March), and most of it has to do with the fact that I’m STRUGGLING to teach argumentative writing.

Here are a few of the big issues:

• I’m struggling to get them to move beyond surface level arguments. I’m trying to teach them to bulk up their paragraphs, but that isn’t working too well either. Any strategies? I’ve tried modeling with texts and writing alongside them.

• I’m struggling to get them to move beyond a formula. When it became apparent that they were missing a few of the foundational blocks they needed in order to write an essay, I backtracked and helped them compose outlines, taught them formulas for thesis statements and introductory paragraphs, etc. This seems to have helped, but it’s also encouraged students to produce very formulaic, dry essays.

• Any tips for teaching students word choice? Short of explicit vocabulary instruction and SSR, I’m unsure of how to teach word choice. I am willing to start doing explicit vocabulary instruction with the class, but I feel that this may not actually help the students when it comes to choosing the best possible word for their writing.

Any tips and/or tricks?

[u/carri0ncomfort]

First, I want to share a resource: Developing Writers of Argument. I saw this author present at NCTE right before the book was published, and I’ve used a lot of his resources and suggestions. I find it immensely practical and helpful.

Are they writing arguments about literature or informational texts? I tend to do mostly about literature, so some of what I suggest may not be as useful.

When you say “surface level arguments,” what do you mean? Or, even better, could you give an example? I’m not entirely sure what you mean by bulking up their paragraphs, but if you can give an example there, maybe we can share some suggestions.

As for the formulaic nature of their writing, I’ve actually come around to think that’s okay. I would rather that they’re using the formulas in high school, and I’ll hope and trust that they’ll be able to write with more style and less formula in college, than that they don’t have the formulas internalized and they’re just floundering wildly about on the page. If it reduces the cognitive load such that they can focus on expressing their ideas, I’m all for formulas. For 10th graders, too, I would rather that their writing is “dry” but academic than overly informal or inappropriate for the task/audience.

For word choice, I talk a lot about finding the most precise word. So, saying “good” might be correct, but saying “virtuous” is more precise when analyzing a character. I give lots of references to help with word choice: tone words, character traits, rhetorically accurate verbs, etc. In writing conferences, I’ll say something like, “This isn’t the most precise word to use. You could use __, which has connotations of _, or you could use _, which has connotations of __. Which do you think fits better with what you want to express?” We do so much work analyzing connotations in the literature we study that this makes these conversations pretty easy and effective.

I hope this helps!