practicalargument3e

Constructing Toulmin Arguments

Real arguments—those you encounter in print or online every day—are not as simple as the three-part model above implies. To be convincing, arguments often contain additional parts. To account for the demands of everyday debates, Toulmin expanded his model to include the following six interconnected elements.

CLAIM	The claim is the main point of your essay. It is a debatable statement that the rest of the essay will support.
	Online education should be a part of all students’ education.
GROUNDS	The grounds are the concrete evidence that a writer uses to support the claim. These are the facts and observations that support the thesis. They can also be the opinions of experts that you locate when you do research.
	Studies show that students who take advantage of online education often get better grades than students who do not.
	201 Research indicates that students who take advantage of online education are under less stress than those who are not.
WARRANT	The warrant is the inference that links the claim with the grounds. The warrant is often an unstated assumption. Ideally, the warrant should be an idea with which your readers will agree. (If they do not agree with it, you will need to supply backing.)
	Online education is a valuable educational option.
BACKING	The backing consists of statements that support the warrant.
	My own experience with online education was positive. Not only did it enable me to schedule classes around my job, but it also enabled me to work at my own pace in my courses.
QUALIFIERS	The qualifiers are statements that limit the claim. For example, they can be the real-world conditions under which the claim is true. These qualifiers can include words such as most, few, some, sometimes, occasionally, often, and usually.
	Online education should be a required part of most students’ education.
REBUTTALS	The rebuttals are exceptions to the claim. They are counterarguments that identify the situations where the claim does not hold true.
	Some people argue that online education deprives students of an interactive classroom experience, but a course chat room can give students a similar opportunity to interact with their classmates.

EXERCISE 6.3

Look through this book’s table of contents, and select an At Issue topic that interests you (ideally, one that you know something about). Write a sentence that states your position on this issue. (In terms of Toulmin argument, this statement is the claim.)

Then, supply as many of the expanded Toulmin model elements as you can, consulting the description of these elements above.

Claim: __________________________________________

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202

Grounds: ________________________________________

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Warrant: ________________________________________

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Backing: _________________________________________

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Qualifiers: ________________________________________

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Rebuttals: _________________________________________

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