In his book, Teaching Argument Writing, George Hillocks establishes that “the interpretation of literature is all about the reader making judgements. The writer of any literature provides images, details, narration, portraits of characters, but we, the readers, must construct the meanings for ourselves, making inferences and judgements in order to comprehend the work and determine its import” (Hillocks, 2011, p. 101). Each part of argument writing either defines, demonstrates or draws conclusions from judgements made about one or more texts. When teachers know this, they can more deeply lead their students through the process of forming arguments, starting with the evidence as a base.
Often, the issue becomes that students attempt to form a thesis or general topic first, when in reality they should begin with the evidence, which can be treated in more of a “scientific” way than they might think. In a good writing assignment, students should “formulate hypotheses to explain the event or solve the problem, collect data to test the hypotheses, draw conclusions, and reflect on the original problem and the thinking processes needed to solve it.” (Johannessen, 2001, p. 38).
The parts of an argument can be compared to the scientific method. While not a perfect metaphor that should cause writing to be formulaic, this comparison can help students who have more STEM-oriented brains. The theses, larger ideas and claims are hypotheses, which is not a final good metaphor but works for the process. Students can analyze what they already know about their evidence and make a claim, which can be altered throughout the writing process. Students can get stuck in the idea that their thesis cannot change at all from conception to final draft, so using the metaphor of a hypothesis, which does change with further collection and analysis of data, is helpful. The data are evidence and warrants, which are a more straightforward metaphor. The conclusion is reasoning or counterclaims, since both are the reflections on the analysis of data.