An Argumentative essay takes a position on a debatable issue, such as abortion rights, same-sex marriage, gun control, tax increases, and so forth.
In writing your argumentative essay, you think out the issues and take a position, which is called your thesis. You use the body of your essay to defend and explore your position. The goal is to persuade the reader to agree with your side of the issue.
THE STEPS
Create a Strategy by exploring both sides of the argument and considering who will be your audience. To do this you will LIST the arguments on both sides of the issue and take notes on whom your readers will be.
Consider the Merits and Weaknesses of Both Sides by looking over the lists of arguments and weighing them against how you previously felt about the issue. You also reconsider the audience as you do this.
Take a Position by writing out your thesis. This is your firm stance on the issue.
Create an Outline by using the items in your list that support your side of the issue.
Draft an Introduction that clearly states your thesis, your position, and invites the reader into your argument.
Use the Body of the Essay to Support Each Point in Your Argument with specific evidence. You may want to use statistics, evidence, examples from real life, expert opinions, and other reasonable sources of evidence.
Present and Refute Opposing Arguments by drawing from you original lists. Show the weaknesses and problems in the other side’s position. This will bolster your case.
Build a Link to Your Readers by finding some common ground between the two sides. This is often done by sharing the common values underlying a position on an issue, such as a sense of justice or fairness.
Be Sure to Avoid Common Mistakes in Reasoning by carefully using inductive and deductive reasoning. Inductive reasoning means: you arrive at a conclusion based on several facts. Deductive reasoning means you reach a conclusion based on premises, which may or may not be proven true. Also be sure to avoid logical fallacies, such as making hasty generalizations, using circular language, or employing biased language.
Always provide a thorough bibliography for your well-researched argument essay.
(taken from Rules for Writers, by D. Hacker [pp. 348-361])
The topic of the society’s vulnerability to hazards and natural disasters is one that captivated further interest and attention after brief analysis on the issue. Vulnerability in this case refers to the potential of a group of people to be able to cope with a natural hazard (Wisner, Blaikie, Cannon, & Davis, 2003). When a hazard causes a disaster, numerous people get injured and killed. The situations tend to be gruesome to the people affected but it does not affect everybody equally. There are people who are more susceptible to certain natural hazards than another group of people. Vulnerability to natural hazards differs from region to region. For example, people who live in an area that is a plateau and is near a large water body they are most likely to suffer from floods. Regions that are close to tectonic plates are more likely to experience earthquakes than other places. My research would like to involve what factors lie behind the vulnerability, what affects other areas more than others and how can the issue be improved or how can the people protect themselves. My interest in this segment was sparked by various factors that I came across. Most researches and work done on natural hazards do not look at the vulnerability angle of the society but rather concentrate on the triggers (Wisner, Blaikie, Cannon, & Davis). Events that took my keen notice into the research were to specific ones: Haiti’s natural hazard and disasters experience and the Dhaka area in Bangladesh that is populated with squatters within the area. Both these regions have something in common: They have been key witnesses of natural hazards which have led to insurmountable amounts of damage that have set them back. I was curious to the factors that made these areas more vulnerable to the hazards as compared to other places which have fairly similar experiences but are able to maintain their progress. The research topic is well connected with content we are learning in class that is related to natural hazards and its geography. Through the content I have learnt in class I have been able to apply it and to understand how to approach a topic of research. Vulnerability of these regions gives a deeper scope of knowledge that I have learnt about natural hazards and disaster in our class.
For me to be able to learn more about vulnerability and how its related to natural hazards I had to first go through the historical experience of Haiti and disaster. Throughout time, the region has experience a continuous torrent of earthquakes and floods. Based on archived information and newspaper articles, I was able to really dig deep into articles providing the statistics of Haiti’s experience of with hazards (Jones, 2016). In 2008, Haiti was badly devastated by four storms which left almost 75% of its farm land destroyed and cost the life of 800 people (Jones). In 2010, they experienced one of the worst disasters in history. An earthquake left around 90,000 people killed and over 1.5 million people lost their homes. The information was able to really put into perspective the tragedy that the hazard had upon the people and the disaster they experienced. The research was able to provide to me information on the vulnerability that made Haiti vulnerable by the natural hazard. It was more than just their geographical location but factors such as instability in their political circle and high amounts of corruption (Jones). For information on Dhaka and the factors that also made it vulnerable to the disasters I was able to find reliable sources of information from research done on the area (Wisner, Blaikie, Cannon, & Davis).
While undergoing this research I was able to find certain important factors that have been given considerable thought. In relation to vulnerability to hazardous natural factors, one key component that determines how much impact the disaster will have upon the region are certain human factors (“Vulnerability to Natural Hazards”). Some of the factors involved are the wealth of the people in the region. Rich people are able to access medical help and have more stable housing as compared to impoverished people which will make them experience the disaster differently. Education is a major component as people who have knowledge on dealing with hazardous situations can be able to protect themselves more adeptly than those who do not. Governance was also shown to be of key importance as they are the ones who develop policies that can reduce the vulnerability of the people to potential natural hazards. Other important factors include age of the people affected and the technological advancement of the area.
To limit my coverage of the topic I have decided to only look at vulnerability and factors that propagate it to make the society less protected to natural hazards. As significant as the hazards and disasters are by themselves, I will not delve into that but concentrate on how the people make themselves vulnerable to the situations. I will dig deeper and uncover more analysis on various areas that have lower vulnerability to hazard compared to those that have a higher amount like Haiti, and compare what the safer areas are doing to protect themselves.
References
“Vulnerability to Natural Hazards”. (n.d.). Retrieved May 6, 2017, from https://www.e-education.psu.edu/geog030/node/379
Jones, S. (2016, October 4). Why is Haiti vulnerable to natural hazards and disasters? Retrieved May 6, 2017, from https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/04/why-is-haiti-vulnerable-to-natural-hazards-and-disasters
Wisner, B., Blaikie, P., Cannon, T., & Davis, I. (2003). t Risk: natural hazards, people’s vulnerability and disasters 2nd Edition.
Topic: The topic of the research final paper is open to the interests of the students. Students should find a question they would like to answer using the statistical techniques learnt in class.
To find the topic of your final report you need to start from a broad perspective looking at some general idea that you would like to explore. For example, let’s say that you would like to look at the relationship between interest rates and the economy. This is a very broad topic and you need to start doing research looking to specify your main research question. In figure 1 we can see all the different sub-topics, or more specific areas, in which we can divide our broad topic.
Interest Rate and the Economy
Figure 1
We could list more sub-topics than the ones we represented in Figure 1. However, we need to pick one so we can have a more focused research topic. Let’s assume that we choose to research the question regarding the impact of interest rates on the growth of construction in the United States. Once that we decided what our topic is going to be, we need to solve three main issues regarding our research project:
Review of literature: we need to research what other people have done previously. Especially, we need to find peer-reviewed publications of researchers that have worked in this specific area and look at their results. To find other research you should go to the website of the UNF Library and search for research papers in this specific area. The following is a guide on how to search the library at UNF:
Enter the Library website and in that website you click on Databases by Subject
Once you click that link a new page will open, which will show you all the different databases of research articles according to the disciplines of study. In our case, we will be interested in the Business (Finance, Investment, International, Management) and the Economics and Geography databases. The specific database will depend on the research topic you choose.
In our specific example, we should click on the Economics and Geography link. There a list of databases will appear. You should select one of them. Let’s say that we pick EconLit.
Once we picked EconLit, a new page will open, where we can start searching for research reports. Then, if we find one that we believe is germane to the selected topic, we can download it and read it and use it in our review of literature and reference sections.
It is important to remember that when we read other people’s work we are looking for the following:
How they addressed the research question
What data they used?
What kind of statistical technique they utilized?
What conclusions they reached?
This will allow us to move further in our research project and to be able to understand how to perform our task.
Data Availability: once we do a review of literature we should be able to tell what kind of data we need to do our research project. At this time, it is very important to be able to find out if the data is available and where we can find them. Many times a research project cannot continue because of the lack of datasets or because the information does not exist yet. It is very important that you can find the data. Useful sites to check out:
Statistical Methodology: finally, after the review of literature is done and the dataset is located we need to determine what the methodology that we are going to use is. That means we need to decide which technique that we learnt in class is appropriated to answer the research question. Accordingly, you can use your review of literature to inform this decision, the textbook, class notes, etc.
Once you performed these three tasks you are ready to use excel to calculate your model and show your results. Accordingly, we are ready to write our research report.
Format Research Report
The following are the main sections of your research report and a short explanation of what the contents of each section should be:
Cover Page: contains the title, authors and class section.
Introduction: this is a short section of your paper, no more than one page. However, this is a very important part of your report, as this is the section that most people are going to read first. As a result, you need to make sure that people are convinced of the worthiness of your research. You should emphasize the following:
Why is this research topic important? Why the reader should keep reading? Why should the reader care about this paper?
What are the main findings of your research?
Why these findings are important?
Review of literature: Explains the previous work on this topic, if any, and how the topic of this paper fits that body of work. You need to explain, very shortly what other people have found with regards to this research question and how their findings compare to your findings. By mentioning other people’s work you discuss the problem at hand and how other people have addressed this problem. If your research topic is about your company you need to discuss the nature of the problem and the different solutions that were offered and why you think that your empirical analysis could improve those proposed solutions. This section should have 2-3 pages.
Data: in this section you need to describe the data you found, show a table with the main statistics, like the mean and the standard deviation for each variable. Explain what the sources of your data are. This sections should be 2 pages at the most.
Methodology and results: In this section you need to proceed as follows: first, explain the statistical techniques that you are going to use to answer your research question. For example, if you are using a regression model you need to show the theoretical equation with the independent variables and why are you using the variables that you are using. Second, you need to show your results and do the tests to show that your model, if it is a regression model, satisfies the assumptions. If you introduced some modifications to satisfy the assumptions, then you need to explain those changes. Finally, you need to explain your results main results and conclusions. This section should be 4-5 pages long.
Conclusions: Explains what the results are and why they are important. This sections should be 1 page long.
References should be listed at the back of the paper.
Appendixes after the references (if needed)
Length and Format: The length of the paper is 12-15 pages (12 pages minimum), including title page, references and figures, but excluding appendixes.
The format of the page should be 1.5 spacing, font size 12 Times New Roman. The margins should be Right:1.25”, Left:1.25”, Top:1” and Bottom:1”
Format Standard: you can use any style: APA, MLA, Chicago, etc. The library has a great guide for citation styles at http://libguides.unf.edu/citationguide
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