What is a controversial essay?
Recently a work of thought in the genre of the essay has become very popular in educational practice. Really, the most popular assignment for college students is writing an essay. For ambitious students creating an essay is a chance to demonstrate their academic abilities and originality of thinking. Because writing makes their thinking visible. Some students like the process of writing, because there is an opportunity to realize their skills and bring worthy arguments. But for some of them writing the essay becomes a real issue.
According to the purposes, there are various types of the essay, that are widespread in the world of academic writing. For example, narrative, descriptive, expository, persuasive, critical controversial essay etc. If we are talking about art to persuade, so the important place here occupies a controversial essay.
A controversial essay is a kind of writing work on the contradictory topic. Therefore, the author very often faces with the difficulties. There are different ways to organize this kind of essay. But the most prosperous one is presenting both sides of a contentious issue. In other words, the topic and thesis must be debatable.
The purpose of the controversial essay is to convince the readers or the audience to agree with the author`s opinion, using research-based evidence. Thus this essay should be argumentative, persuasive and logical. The core point here is argumentation, as the act or process of forming reasons, drawing conclusions, and applying them to a case in discussion. In this kind of essay, we not only give information but also present an argument with the supporting ideas and opposing ideas of the disputable question. Argumentation helps to clarify, explain and illustrate the author`s opinion.
So, the controversial essay is aimed at presenting counterarguments to the thesis of the statement and disproving them respectfully and critically.
How to write a successful, controversial essay?
In order to write a good controversial essay some stages should be followed:
Choosing a topic and creating the thesis statement
First of all, we need to choose and decide on a controversial topic. It means that the topic should be interesting and debatable, it should be something that can be considered from both sides. Then we need to brainstorm these both sides of the issue and write an argumentative thesis statement. The thesis statement should determine the scale of the argument and make the opinion that is open to discussing. The thesis statement must reflect clearly the purpose of the essay assignment.
Creating an outline
Before we start writing an actual essay, it is necessary to create an outline that will make the process easier and clearer. An outline is an integral part of any essay writing process. This will help to follow correct argumentative essay structure and can be useful for ensuring that your work is on target and makes sense.
Generating ideas
After formulating the argumentative thesis statement, we need to think about a variety of supporting ideas, counter-arguments and ways to disprove these opposing views. One important concern in writing the controversial essay is to maintain your argument. To do this, you need to base your argument on strong evidence. In supporting the argument, in the role of evidence can be facts, examples, statistics, etc. Writing this type of essay, we should distinctively set a position and assert it using evidence obtained through extensive research. The task, therefore, is to convince the reader that our position is valid through the analysis of evidence from a number of sources.
The outline of the controversial essay.
A controversial essay like any other kind of essay generally follows the structure. It includes introduction, body, conclusion.
Introduction
This part of the essay gives us some background information according to the topic and denotes that this topic is disputable. The introduction should end with a thesis statement that provides the reasons for your position on an issue. The thesis statement is usually one sentence that shows the opinion of the author on the question. For instance, pop culture and advertising develop hand-in-hand nowadays: does pop culture impacts the advertising or vice versa?
Body
The main part of the essay provides the relevant evidence and the analysis of the thesis. When the reason from the thesis is being discussed, it is important, to begin with, a topic sentence that reminds the reader of the author`s idea and presents the reason that will be argued in that paragraph. All evidence you give in this part should support your opinion. Depending on how long your argument is, you will need to dedicate one to two paragraphs to each evidence.
Conclusion
The conclusion plays an essential role in persuading the reader. It should lead the essay to a logical end. This part of the essay clarifies the significance of the topic in a broader context. It should not contain any new information. Some arguments can suggest solutions or make a prediction on the further development of the topic.
