Teaching the Comment and the Argumentative Essay
Teaching the Comment and the Argumentative Essay
The comment and the argumentative essay both ask a student to take a position and defend it. Most classes instead produce balanced pieces that commit to nothing. This page covers a grades 9 to 12 sequence for building arguments that hold, with the source material supplied in advance.
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The teaching problem
Balanced writing that says nothing
The pro-and-con scaffold causes most of the damage. It gets taught early because it is teachable, and it produces essays with three arguments on one side, three on the other, and a conclusion that declines to choose. Students believe they are being fair. They are being evasive, and a mark scheme knows the difference. A second issue sits underneath: arguments need evidence, and a class asked to argue about globalization or surveillance from memory will argue from assertion, then dress it up with connectives. Two consequences for planning. Supply the sources, so the lesson is about reasoning rather than about searching. Teach the counterargument as something to answer, not as a second list of equal length placed politely beside the first.
A sequence that works
Five lessons toward a defensible position
The unit builds one argument properly before it builds a whole text. Students work from a small source pack throughout, so nobody spends a lesson hunting for evidence instead of using it.
- Turning a statement into a claimThe prompt arrives as a statement to react to. Students write three possible positions on it, including one they disagree with, and rank them by how well the sources support each.
- One argument, built completelyClaim, reason, evidence, and the sentence that says why the evidence counts. Students write a single paragraph, then cut anything not doing one of those four jobs.
- The objection worth answeringStudents find the strongest case against their position in the source pack, then write a concession followed by a rebuttal, keeping both inside one paragraph.
- Stance, hedging and linkingVerbs that carry a position, hedges that keep a claim honest, and connectives used because the logic needs them rather than to open every new paragraph.
- Timed comment, then peer markingForty-five minutes on a new statement, followed by a lesson where partners mark for position, evidence and the answered objection using the same short grid.
Where it goes wrong
Where argument essays fall apart
Check the thesis first. If it restates the prompt with "I think" in front, the essay has no direction and every paragraph will drift. Then check topic sentences: most announce a subject rather than making a claim, so "Another aspect is social media" needs to become a sentence someone could disagree with. Quotations dropped in without comment are the next issue, and the repair is the fourth sentence of the paragraph, the one saying what the evidence proves. Two habits to name early: "in my opinion I think", and the conclusion that repeats the introduction in different words. A conclusion should say what follows from the argument, including what it does not settle.
What's in the download
Inside the files
Editable Word and PowerPoint plus print-ready PDFs, with answer keys throughout.
- Source packs for four prompts
- Paragraph builder worksheets, four levels
- Annotated model comment
- Stance and hedging phrase bank
- Peer marking grid
- Essay planning sheets
Good to know
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between a comment and an argumentative essay here?
A comment responds to a given statement, usually in a shorter form, with a clear personal position stated early and then defended. An argumentative essay runs longer, treats the question more formally, and gives the counterargument more room. The reasoning is the same and so are the paragraph mechanics; what changes is length, register and how directly the writer appears. The unit teaches the shared core first and splits the formats in the last two lessons.
Do students need to know the topics already?
No. Each prompt comes with a short source pack, so a class can argue about digital media or globalization without a research lesson first. That is a deliberate limit as much as a convenience: with the evidence in front of them, a writing lesson stays a writing lesson. If your students have already studied one of the topics in depth, use that prompt and let them bring their own material in as well.
Will peer marking work with a class that has never done it?
It works when the grid is narrow. Ask students to judge three things only: is there a position, is there evidence for it, and is the strongest objection answered? Open-ended peer feedback on a whole essay tends to produce remarks about handwriting and length. The grid in the pack is deliberately short for that reason, and the first round is worth doing on a model answer rather than on each other's work.
A position, then the evidence for it
Balance is not neutrality. Teach students to concede clearly and then say why they still hold the position they started with.
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