Not sure what academic arguments mean at university?

At university, a key part of the work you will be asked to do revolves around finding, and creating your own, academic argument.  You will be asked to critique the academic arguments that you read in your course articles and texts.  You will also be asked to develop your own academic arguments in writing for a variety of assignments by drawing on evidence from the literature you read.

No idea what we mean when we say an academic argument?  No worries.  Check out the video below.

Watch this short video clip called Finding the Main Argument*. This video explains clearly how to find, and think about, an academic argument in your university readings and course work for assignments. *Developed by the Seahorse Project, 2013, (19 Februrary) University of Newcastle.

You may also find it helpful to go back to the first section of the Preparation Tools pages in the Self as Learner area to revisit Preparation Tools page 3: "Accessing Professional Experience".  

Here you can review the Essential Resources in the orange section that talk about what an academic argument is in a university setting.

Also have a look at the blue and green accordion sections below for more information to help you understand more about how to develop academic arguments, critical reading and critical writing at university.

How to decide which information is "best"

When you are trying to develop a sound academic argument in class, for presentations and for written assignments, you will need to be really critical of the information, and the academic articles that you find and use as supporting evidence for your argument.  Some information and articles that you find will be really valid, reliable and relevant to the topic, research question or assignment you are working on.  However, others will not.

To make a start with learning how to discern which academic articles will provide useful evidence for your coursework and assignments, watch the following Youtube clip called Evaluating Sources* produced by the University of Western.  

The video is about two and a half minutes long.

The video is produced by the University of Western, Canada, 2012 (13 January). 

Check the currency, relevance, authority, accuracy and the purpose

The Philson Library (the library for students in the Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences at the University of Auckland) has created a helpful resource called: Evaluating and appraising information.  

In this resource you will find a useful checklist shown below that you can use when evaluating information sources, academic articles and evidence that you collect for your assignments.

Improve your critical thinking skills

Your written assignments will require you to form a compelling academic argument based on solid evidence and supported reasons.

To do this, you will need to be a critical reader of a wide range of articles and a critical thinker about the arguments being presented to you.  You need to do these before you can become a critical academic writer.

To learn about the critical thinking approach to study, watch the following short video.

Click to watch video now or click on the image below.

Video produced by QualiaSoup, 2009, (24 December). There is a free, open online course (a MOOC) offered at the University of Auckland twice a year called Logical and Critical Thinking. This course will take you through common obstacles to good reasoning and equips you with strategies to improve your logical and critical thinking skills.   To find out more about this popular MOOC, click on the image below or visit MOOCs and the University of Auckland webpage.

Have a look at the following downloadable page titled Understanding Assignment Expectations.  This page visually illustrates how to understand assignment expectations in terms of how you will be marked.

This page shows a chart that outlines from "fail" to "excellent" with indicators at each stage, what constitutes a really good assignment.

Teaching staff who mark assignments comment that sometimes students miss out on answering all of the aspects of an assignment question.  Or they only do so at a 'descriptive' level (i.e. "poor" or "average").  In order to get a "good" or "excellent" mark, students need to address issues and ideas in more depth, with greater links to academic literature and research and they need to formulate critical analysis and reflection on the deeper issues being asked by the assignment question or topic.

Look at the key verb words in the chart below to see if you can understand what are the differences at each stage (i.e. "identifies", "summarises", "discusses", "relates", "formulates", "creates", "incorporates", "critically reflects"...).

Download: Understanding Assignment Expectations.

Develop good academic arguments

To be able to develop good academic arguments, you can start with developing your critical reading and critical writing skills.  See the downloadable resources below to help you with this as you begin your first few weeks of study.

Improve your critical reading skills

You may find it helpful to download the following critical reading document to help you to think about ways to become a more effective critical reader.  

Download: Prompts for critical reading

You may also wish to visit the Student Learning Services Study Skills pages on Efficient Reading.

Improve your critical writing skills

Download and use the following resources to help you to develop critical writing skills.  Open any of the critical writing skills resource documents listed below by clicking on the text/name.

• Being Critical
• What is Critical Writing
• Do's and Don'ts in Critical Writing
• Useful phrases for argument construction

If you are not sure what is meant by an the term academic argument you may find it helpful to look at the top of this page in the orange "Essential resources" section first in the box titled "What is an academc argument".