I. Intro paragraph (100 words) – Explain your topic and your position on it. Include a broad preview of your paper and a clear statement of your thesis. This is the most important paragraph of your paper because it gives your reader a baseline understanding of what you’re trying to do!
II. Argument (150 words) – Give your main argument in logical format. (If you do not present your argument in logical format, with a clear complete sentence on each line, you will not get a good grade!) Then explain whether your argument deductive or inductive and then weak/strong or valid/invalid and sound/unsound.
III. Give evidence for premise #1, then give evidence for premise #2 (350 words). It’s best to do these in two separate paragraphs, and make sure you specifically state that you’re defending premise #1, or premise #2, as you go along. If you just discuss the issue in a general way instead of focusing directly on defending premises, you won’t get points for this part!
IV. State and explain a good objection to your argument (250 Words) Keep in mind that a weak objection doesn’t help your paper at all! For a successful paper you need to give the most powerful objection possible, and then defend it successfully.
V. Defend your argument against the objection. (200+ words) This is why you need a powerful objection – because then when you do manage to respond to it in a way that clears your argument of the strongest possible charges, then you very successfully show that your conclusion is fully defended.
VI. Concluding paragraph– Provide an appropriate conclusion. [Approximately 75 words]
