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If you aren’t sure where to start, you might try thinking about your firsthand knowl-
2
edge of the subject: which of your experiences are relevant to your subject; what you
have observed about your subject; and what you have learned about your subject. You
can then draw your evidence from those experiences, observations, and knowledge.
Your firsthand knowledge, sometimes in the form of examples, anecdotes, and analo-
Argument
gies, are especially good options to call on in a timed exam essay.
You should also consider audience at this time. If you’re writing an exam response,
you want your evidence to be quickly accessible to the readers. The quality of your evi-
dence can sometimes be a matter of the audience’s perception, so you should choose
evidence that they will find credible and accessible. For example, you might be tempted
to compare the pressures of balancing school, work, extracurricular activities, and family
to the difficulties of navigating your favorite video game, but if your teacher isn’t familiar
with the game, your comparison won’t convey your emotions or your points as clearly as
you’d like.
If you’re writing an extended, out-of-class essay, you will have more time to research
your topic and explain complicated evidence that you find as a result. If you’re writing a
timed, in-class essay, you might be able to recall the general outcome of studies you’ve
read about teenage brain development. You could also base your claims on personal
experience, such as how you and your friends feel about the current start time at your
school. You may even support those experiences with your observations of your coun-
ty’s bus schedule and its role in determining the start times or that many of your friends
go home to take care of their younger siblings.

Developing Commentary
Perhaps the most important — and certainly challenging — part of writing an argument
essay is developing a clear line of reasoning to support your argument. In other words,
you must provide commentary that explains why your evidence supports your claim in
each paragraph. To be effective, commentary must answer these two questions: Why is
the evidence significant in light of the claim? What relationship does this commentary
establish between the evidence and the claim? This link from claim to evidence to com-
mentary is a line of reasoning. The stronger the links in this chain, the stronger your
argument.
Going back to the school start prompt, say you’re arguing that school should start
later. One of your claims is that the research shows that teenagers need more sleep than
younger children. You’re using evidence you’ve read about (and on an exam you proba-
bly won’t have time to properly cite it; you’ll likely just summarize), but you have to show
how that evidence supports your overarching argument through commentary. You might
use your commentary to restate the idea that the health and well-being of students
should come first, or you might comment that this isn’t even the most important point.
Or you might use your commentary to connect to another key point, perhaps the con-
nection to brain science.

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