argument

Always ask yourself: ‘what am I actually trying to say?’ Then attempt to say it as concisely as possible. This might sound self-evident but it is often forgotten. Students get so involved in the detail of their research findings that they fail to encapsulate the essence of their arguments. My best advice, in this context, is to find a reader who knows absolutely nothing about your subject and then ask that person to read your work and explain the main argument back to you in two sentences. If they can’t, you need to clarify your main points.

Esther Selsdon
19 October 2016

If you’re finding it hard to maintain the focus of an argument throughout your thesis or other long piece of writing, here are two exercises that might help. Firstly, answer some simple questions. What is this thesis about? Why is this research valuable to the world? What is the story I am trying to tell? What am I trying to prove/disprove/change/advance? Write down a sentence in response to each question. Your argument is right there, in those answers. The second step is to identify the points that contribute to your overall argument. Imagine you are building a path for your reader to follow from A, a position of open mindedness, to E, a position of being persuaded absolutely by your argument. This argument is made up of a series of points in a logical order that help your reader to arrive at a conclusion; play around with the order of the points until you are satisfied with the structure. These exercises will help you to reconnect with the core ideas of your thesis and stay focused.