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Composition Workshop ■ Writing a Persuasive Argument 145

usefulness in serving as evidence for your claim and for its effectiveness for your
intended audience.
To do this, you must think carefully about how well the evidence supports COMPOSITION WORKSHOP
© Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. For review purposes only. Do not distribute.
the line of reasoning. Just because information is presented doesn’t mean that it
effectively supports the claim. In short, information about the topic that doesn’t
support a line of reasoning is not relevant — it’s just information.
Information becomes evidence when you use it effectively to support your
line of reasoning. You may draw on a variety of types of evidence; however, some
types of evidence may be more effective depending on the audience or situation.
For example, an audience of your peers will think differently about cell phone use
than the school administration. That means you must provide evidence to appeal
to your audience’s logic or emotion or to establish your credibility or authority all
in service of your message.

Reasons Evidence to Support Your Reasons
Students become addicted • Statistics relating how many times we look at
to their phones and are our phones or how long it takes to return to the
pulled away with every alert, activity
distracting themselves and • Study about how phones distract fellow
others. classmates and the instructor
Students compromise • Personal anecdote of seeing cheating incidents
academic honesty by during tests and of AirDrop pictures of exam
looking up answers or pages
texting during exams. • Easy access to resources has increased the
amount of plagiarism

The following is a visual that illustrates how most arguments are organized.

STRUCTURE OF AN ARGUMENT

CLAIM (IDEA + PERSPECTIVE) Thesis

Line of reasoning:
REASON 1 REASON 2 REASON 3 Each reason
justi es the claim
Evidence
EVIDENCE EVIDENCE EVIDENCE EVIDENCE EVIDENCE EVIDENCE EVIDENCE EVIDENCE EVIDENCE supports the
reasoning
Commentary
COMMENTARY COMMENTARY COMMENTARY connects evidence,
reasoning, and claim

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