Features of Argument Writing

Lots of these can also be used in writing to persuade.

 Positive opening: to state your opinion clearly

 Comparative devices such as similes and metaphors to
emphasise your main points, making them stand out.
 Evidence and justification: to give structure and reasoning to
your opinion. Use the PEE technique. You are often able to use
information from the texts in section A to help you here, as long as
you put it in your own words.
 Suitable connectives or discourse markers. These:
 give your work structure (firstly… secondly… finally…)
 express cause and effect ( consequently… as a result…)
 to express comparisons to link your argument (however,
similarly, on the other hand)
 Rhetorical questions
 Exaggeration: to catch the reader’s attention and to encourage
them to agree with you.
 List of three: to stress the reasons for your argument in a way
that stands out.
 Personal tone: a personal perspective is important in arguing.
What do YOU think?
 Present tense: to make your argument seem more immediate
and more pressing.
 Personal pronouns: to create a more personal tone to your
writing so that the argument seems more believeable.
 Exclamations: to stress the importance of your argument or to
discredit the point of view of others.
 A clear conclusion: to summarise and re-state your opinion.

It is also very important that you keep your point of view in mind as
you write. We often find that students either change their point of
view halfway though (losing a LOT of marks) or that they give far too
much help to the opposing point of view, making it sound good and
their own point of view sound bad! Again, this will lose you a lot of
marks, so don’t do it!