Analyzing the prompt ensures that students will complete all assignment objectives.
When students get an assignment for an argumentative essay, they may be tempted to jump right in and describe their perspective on the topic. However, beginning an essay without analyzing the prompt can cause them to not follow directions, which can result in a poor grade, no matter how well written the essay might be. You can help students analyze argumentative essay prompts by showing them take a prompt apart, understand the assigned genre and analyze their audience.
Breaking Down the Prompt
Understanding what the prompt is asking for is the first step to analyzing an essay question. Many prompts contain multiple parts, all of which are key to completing the essay objectives. To teach students this concept, have them highlight different parts of the argumentative essay prompt and make a checklist of what they need to accomplish. For example, if a prompt says to choose a controversial issue, describe the problem and then present a solution, students would list these three objectives and cross them off as they complete those sections of the essay.
Subgenres and Strategies
Vocabulary is also key to understanding prompts. Although the words "argue" and "persuade" might indicate it will be an argumentative essay, there are different kinds of argumentative writing that use unique language. For example, the prompt may ask students to consider both sides of the issue equally, indicating a pros and cons essay. They may have to use a personal experience as evidence, resulting in a narrative argument. Teachers can give examples of prompts for different essays and show how their language changes the type of argumentative strategy they'll use for each assignment.
Audience Analysis
Many students write argumentative essays with a narrow view of their audience, thinking only of their instructor and classmates. However, looking at a prompt should encourage them to think about the kinds of people who might realistically read the paper and be sensitive to those positions as they write. To explain this concept, teachers can choose a sample topic, such as whether sex education should be allowed in schools, and ask students to brainstorm the audiences who might read the essay and what their perspectives might be. These potential readers could include students, teachers, administrators and parents.
Author Roles
As students read the prompt, they'll need to consider their role as author. If they're writing a narrative argument, their experience will be crucial to developing themselves as credible authorities. By contrast, a pros and cons essay will put their personal views in the background in favor of objective research. You can teach appropriate roles by linking this concept to point of view, the speaker's distance from the topic. As students read sample prompts, ask them to write down whether the essay requires the immediacy of first person, the use of "I," or the objectivity of third person.
Research
A final question to consider is what research the essay will require. For example, an essay about giving an R rating to movies with tobacco use might require scholarly articles about smoking in the media and its effect on younger viewers, research on related topics like tobacco advertising, and examples of movies that feature tobacco use. You can teach this concept by putting students in groups and giving each group a sample argumentative essay prompt. Each group will then brainstorm as many kinds of sources as they can think of that would be useful for the paper.
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