Helping Students with Body Paragraph Structure in Argumentative Essays

 

 The students I work with are usually at the beginning of their undergraduate experience, and the end of their required writing instruction. This is a unique context. The student is sitting on a foundation of lessons and experiences with writing, one more push, and out they come, academically finished, still babies as writers.

The last thing we ask them to do is write an argumentative research paper, which, for many, is the longest piece of writing they have ever completed. After eight weeks of research, students have two weeks to write an outline, two drafts, review each other’s work, and produce a final draft. It’s difficult writing. High stakes. There’s a lot of it. Students are taking other classes too, so they face a daunting challenge, some outside their native language. These aren’t excuses that mean we should make our classes easier. They are the characteristics creating a harsh environment that students need to be equipped to handle. 

I hear some students picture a good writer producing work as easily as this…

 

 

That’s how the pros do it, they tell themselves. But Kermit here seems more driven by inspiration than thought. We want writers to spend time thinking about the best way to organize their argument. Students in my class have spent eight weeks researching, so most have useful information from sources and have developed their own take on the research question. What they need is to arrange all of this in a way that conveys their full and unique argument clearly. And they need to do it quickly.  

 

Given the harsh environment students work under, teachers are faced with a tough question: How much direction do I provide when it comes to helping students organize their essay? I don’t want to limit creativity. I don’t want uniformity. I want students to craft an organization of the body paragraphs that fits their argument, and I want them to know what tools are at their disposal to do so.

This is where MEAT comes in (apologies to the vegetarians). MEAT is an acronym for main idea, evidence, analysis, and tie-in. These are the main building blocks that a writer can use to create an argumentative essay that is supported and capable of personalization. The main idea functions much like a topic sentence, but can be multiple sentences. It can explain a reason or subclaim, or it can be a transitional sentence that indicates to a reader a new paragraph is continuing the same reason or subclaim. The tie-in is optional and could be as short as a sentence or as long a whole paragraph. Its job is to explain how the evidence and analysis connect back to the thesis statement if that is not already made clear. These blocks can even be connected to counter arguments and responses.  

The key is to not stop with just MEAT. That alone puts you on a road to a 5-paragraph essay. Check out the chart below to see some variations of MEAT that can support arguments using multiple pieces of evidence, over multiple paragraphs.   

 

                                                                    Variations of MEAT

 

  

            Key
   

     M = main idea (reason or subclaim in many cases)
     E = evidence
     A = analysis (how does the evidence prove the reason or subclaim?)
     T = tie-in (optional, how do the evidence/analysis prove the thesis?)  

 

Two prominent patterns in the variations are EAEA (the weave) and EEA (the block). Students must choose which pattern best serves the argument they are making. Does each piece of evidence need its own analysis or can multiple pieces of evidence be analyzed together? This is an independent choice that a writer must make based on multiple drafts and feedback.   

Mathematically, the variations of MEAT aren’t endless, but to the writer, they can feel that way. Mentor texts are the best place to discover new variations. Other writers will have possibly already dealt with an organizational challenge the student is facing, so the mentor text can show a solution. Maybe a mentor text could reveal a variation that the student (and teacher) didn’t even know existed. 

So how do students with only two weeks to write the largest (and maybe last) paper of their life use MEAT? In my class, it starts with an outline. A student reviews their research, and hopefully builds an argument up ( up = evidence to reason or subclaim) based on the evidence they have found. They then can assign content to their MEAT blocks and construct whatever variation of MEAT each reason or subclaim needs in order to be supported. 

Because they understand the relationships, functions, and possibility for variation in MEAT, they have an easier time organizing the body paragraphs of their argument. The struggle is hopefully productive, a struggle of creation. All the way until the final draft, many students in the class keep an “E”, “M”, or whatever other block label beside their content in their draft. This reminds them of the content’s purpose, and the label makes it easier for the student to move the content around during revision.

 

   

In the end, many students create well-supported arguments that come out looking unique from one another’s. As exemplified by the GIF above, students can work with the same basic pieces (a neck, a head, a face, hair or MEAT) and make their own decisions as to how to personalize and best convey their argument. I think that is what all writers are striving for. MEAT and its variations give students trustworthy building blocks to build the body paragraphs as they choose.