You explain why one opinion is sound and another is not; why one fact is relevant and another is not; why one writer is correct and another is mistaken. What's more, your purpose may vary with your topic. You may try to explain a situation, to recommend a course of action, to reveal the solution to a problem, or to present and defend a particular interpretation of a historical event or a work of art. But whether the topic is space travel or trends in contemporary American literature, an argumentative research paper deals actively - I say it again, actively - with the statements it cite. It makes these statements work together in an argument that you create, that is, an argument leading to a conclusion of your own. In the next part of the lecture, I'd like to talk about one of the basic steps in writing I mentioned earlier in the lecture, that is how to choose a topic. |