How to Write a Great Essay Using the Toulmin Method
Build your essays with power and truth
We live in an aggressive world. With social media and way too many news outlets, the world has evolved to globalization and instant access to all sorts of information and points of view. However, as it has become easier to develop an opinion, it has also become easier to make wrong assumptions in making that opinion, and that is not something that can be done in an essay.
An essay’s main goal is to prove an argument without falling into fallacious reasoning. To avoid this, Stephen Toulmin, a British philosopher, developed a rhetoric method to build a persuasive argument without making a mistake when building it. I have personally found that method to be quite useful when structuring an essay because it helps to expand the domain of whatever topic that is meant to be discussed in the essay. I could even affirm that the Toulmin method of argumentation is one of the greatest tools to make the argument of an essay relevant and unquestionable.
Who was Stephen Toulmin?
Stephen Toulmin was a British philosopher that lived throughout most of the 20th century. Toulmin wrote a book titled The Uses of Argument, where he explains an argumentation model that helps to improve the rhetoric and persuasion of a thesis statement.
The six elements of the Toulmin method
The Toulmin method uses six elements to build a proper argument. These elements consist of the claim, grounds, warrant, backing, qualifier, and rebuttal.
Claim
First, the claim is the central idea or affirmation that an argument wants to prove.
Grounds
That claim is supported by the grounds, which are the uncontroverted, verified facts that prove your thesis is correct, without any fallacy or mistake in the reasoning behind the argument.
Warrant
The grounds give place to the warrant, which is the assumption that connects the grounds to the main idea, or the claim.
An example of the Toulmin method structure:
Claim: The street is safely guarded in the night.
Grounds: There are police officers that go through the street every hour from 8 PM to 6 AM.
Warrant: The main function of a police officer’s job is to guard and keep a place safe through the enforcement of the law.
Backing
The warrant is often supported by the backing, which is a secondary fact that validates the warrant’s assumption. For example, if the warrant is that the main function of a policemen’s job is to keep a place safe, the backing can take form in an anecdote that proves that police officers are indeed doing their job and keeping that function present in their actions. An example is the following:
Backing: The policemen prevented a guy from stealing the mirrors of a car in the street last night.
Qualifier
A qualifier is a phrase that can recognize that the argument is still subjective and it does not intend to be held as absolute truth. For example:
Qualifier: Most likely (based on the officer’s schedule), the officers will be guarding the street tonight.
Rebuttal
The Toulmin method lies the true strength of an argument over the rebuttal, which is the acknowledgment that there might be another opinion that differs from the one that’s being argued. For example:
Rebuttal: A neighbor saw the police officers eating donuts inside their car in the street two nights ago. The neighbor assumed they were up to no efficiency guarding the street.
It is essential that the argument debunks any possible objection to it and makes it invalid and untrue. That way, the argument’s holder shows domain into the debate the essay’s topic can create and the argument prevails as the most valid posture against its opponents.
Structuring paragraphs using the Toulmin method
Introduction
With the Toulmin method explained, it is much easier to structure paragraphs that build an essay that strongly defends a thesis statement. First, the introduction paragraph in an essay can be perceived as the paragraph that will first affirm the claim, as well as the question that the claim is answering and why that question needs to be answered with the claim that the essay is building. The introduction needs to feel relevant for the reader so he feels compelled to read the rest of what you have to say. Remember who the audience of the essay is going to be and bear in mind to present the essay’s premise in the most interesting way possible for the reader to respect and fully dive into the rest of the essay. In other words, the introduction needs to highlight why the essay is worth reading.
Body
There is usually an essay structure than can be further used to develop a Toulmin argument. The body paragraphs are the format to expand the elements that support the claim. Usually, two paragraphs, if not more, can be used to establish the grounds and warrants, alongside backing examples, that support the essay’s claim in a way that proves the claim is not being affirmed randomly, meaning that the claim needs to look meticulously researched and backed up, whether it is through literature or data research. Also, there needs to be a paragraph that is dedicated to the rebuttal, or the counterarguments that may come up while aiming to prove the veracity of the claim. The strength of the thesis statement will be higher if it prevails over the opposing point of view. In a world of blind belief, a posture that is proven to stick more to the truth speaks very highly of the writer who formulates the argument.
Conclusion
Finally, there needs to be a conclusion paragraph in the essay. This essay might be the easiest one to make when writing an essay because it summarizes what has already been said throughout the essay in a way that the reader clearly understands why the essay was written. Therefore, the concluding paragraph must not add up new information that supports the essay’s claim. The essay needs to be wrapped up in a convincing, overwhelming way so that the relevance of its purpose resonates with the reader.
When to use the Toulmin method
I particularly like the Toulmin method of argumentation when writing an essay because it is a great tool to avoid fallacies in the reasoning behind the development of an argument.
Though the Toulmin method is often considered too informal for academic writing, it is highly effective to prove the veracity of an argument in modern times, where it seems like everybody with a WiFi connection is suddenly qualified to argue a position about a controversial topic. However, we must still value truth as the most essential quality of words.
When writing an essay, getting to the truth about any topic must be the prevailing priority of any argument holder. And I firmly believe the Toulmin method is the greatest tool towards assuring truth in an essay’s words.
Bibliography and other references
Buckinghamshire New University. “Outline for a Five-Paragraph Essay”. Retrieved on May 14th, 2020. https://www.bucks.edu/media/bcccmedialibrary/pdf/FiveParagraphEssayOutlineJuly08_000.pdf (link in the description of the video made by Taylor Reneau).
Purdue University. “The Toulmin Argument: What is the Toulmin Method?”. In Purdue Online Writing Lab: College of Liberal Arts, 1995–2020. https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/academic_writing/historical_perspectives_on_argumentation/toulmin_argument.html.
Reneau, Taylor. “How to Write the Perfect Essay”. December 3rd, 2016. Video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXsuRYdSy2o.
Rodríguez Bello, Laura Isabel. “El modelo argumentativo de Toulmin en la escritura de artículos de investigación educativa”. In Revista Digital Universitaria 1, vol. 5. January 21st, 2004. http://www.revista.unam.mx/vol.5/num1/art2/ene_art2.pdf.
