Nursing Essay Writing – Academic Arguments

Nursing Essay Writing – Academic Arguments

Definition of Academic Arguments

What is an academic argument?

An academic argument is your viewpoint, claim, or perspective on a subject. It’s like your contribution to an ongoing conversation about that topic. It gives your readers your thoughts, stance, or way of looking at the subject.

An academic argument is also based on research, which means you need to back up your argument with information from sources you’ve read.

What an Academic Argument Is Not

An academic argument is not a fight, battle, or negative disagreement. It’s also not driven by emotions or just one person’s opinion.

Overview of Academic Arguments

While thinking and summarizing are important in academic writing, your papers should be based on analysis and criticism. Learning to recognize a strong argument when you read can make you better at creating your arguments when you write. Let’s explore how to understand and build a strong argument in a paper, moving beyond basic summarization.

Understanding Arguments

Analysis

Analysis means breaking down a piece of work into its parts, looking at what each part means individually, and figuring out how they relate to each other. This helps us understand the whole work.

Written material is made of words forming sentences, which make paragraphs, and so on. The organization of these elements in a well-written text is logical. How you analyze a text depends on your goals and interests. For instance, a psychologist analyzing a work on mental health will focus differently than a psychiatrist or theologian. It’s because scholarly literature is typically written by experts who want to contribute to a specific subject’s knowledge. So, it should be analyzed as an argument in that social context.

Analyzing a text can focus on three things: content, language, and structure. When looking at content, you ask questions like:

– Who is the author talking to?
– What’s the author’s goal?
– What proof supports the author’s argument?
– What’s the context?

When checking the structure, you ask questions like:

– How is the argument built?
– Do the points follow a logical order?
– How did the author split the sections?
– Did the author present a problem and solution?
– Did the author use compare and contrast?

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In language analysis, you consider things like:

– What’s the tone?
– Does the word choice show any biases?
– Is the language clear and strong?

When you analyze a text, also connect what you read with what you already know. Do any points conflict with your beliefs or with respected scholars in the field? Is the text important, and why? Does it contribute to the field?

Inference

Inference involves making judgments and drawing conclusions based on the information given. It’s vital for understanding, engaging with the text, and developing critical thinking skills.

Inferences rely on context within the text and your prior knowledge. It’s essential to balance intuition and deliberate reasoning when making inferences, especially when you don’t know the author well or their views deeply.

Inferences are speculations based on evidence, not deductive reasoning. Therefore, two people can interpret the same material differently. To ensure accurate inferences, review the evidence and justify your conclusions.

Assumptions

An assumption is a statement or fact we take for granted. It’s like the glue holding an argument together, even if it’s not explicitly stated.

Finding hidden assumptions can be tough, especially in dense academic writing. But it’s important because most logical problems come from problematic assumptions.

To find assumptions:

– Check if the argument is valid. If not, what extra information is needed?
– Look for gaps in the argument. What’s missing to explain how the author got from point X to point Y?
– Find a significant counterexample to the author’s point. What did the author overlook?
– Assess the meanings of key terms. Are they reasonable, justified, or biased?