1: Select a title from the IB list. 4. Organize your ideas and plan argument. 2. Read the instructions and the marking criteria. 5. Write the essay. 3. Gather your ideas. 6. Hand it in.
	In order to decide on an overall strategy for argument it might be useful to consider the following two major patterns of essay development. 1. Thesis First In this pattern of development, you place your thesis in your introductory paragraph, usually as its final sentence, so that your central argument hits the reader right at the beginning. Each subsection of the body of the essay then supports and develops the thesis. The conclusion picks up the thesis again, restating it in somewhat different words as an argument which you have firmly established, and ends with a broader reflection or a stylistic flourish. Note that the thesis will often have the counter-argument built right into it (e.g. “Although X has some justification, Y is more convincing.”). You will usually treat counter arguments at the beginning, in order to lay them aside as you move on to give -- in order of climax with the most persuasive at the end -- the arguments which you think are better justified. 2. Thesis Last In this pattern of development, you raise a focused question in your introduction, placing it usually as the final sentence of the introductory paragraph. Each subsection of the body of the essay then treats aspects of the question or possible answers to it, usually in order of climax with the most persuasive at the end. The thesis then emerges firmly at the end of the essay as the conclusion of the argument. This pattern simulates the process of thinking and reaching a conclusion. Do not be fooled, though, into thinking that you really can just think and write as you go. This pattern demands just as much advance planning of as the other does. Different school systems or writers favour one pattern or the other, but either one can be effective. If you are in doubt about which to use or unsure of your writing skills, however, the thesis-first pattern is safer in immediately getting your argument on track and giving a reader confidence in your control of ideas. Examiners tend to be more familiar with it as well, and it may fulfill expectations more effectively. In the presentation I did for you in the LLT, I went over ways of handling counter-argument, and I'll get together more material for the web as we start in September. I'm running out of time just now. Eileen BACK TO STEP FOUR, ORGANIZING