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Good morning. So in today's video, we're going to look at argumentative texts. Let's begin with the definition.

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I've defined an argumentative text as a written or an oral text, which has a main thesis.

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That means a main idea, a main claim. And the purpose of this text type is to persuade the reader or the listener to have the position that you want them to have,

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to take the side that you want them to take. In order to persuade the reader or the listener

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we have to provide facts and evidence. So if we look I've been able to see two types of

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argumentative texts and they are discursive and persuasive. So let's look at the difference

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between the two. A discursive text is basically a text where two points of view, I don't know why

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this is showing up, sorry, where two points of view are addressed and in a persuasive text

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you only have one point of view, okay? These are the two types of argumentative texts that I've

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defined. So how do we convince or persuade other people to share the point of view that we're

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presenting? Well, the strongest way to convince someone, to persuade someone to share your point

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of view is to provide facts rather than opinions. And let's look at a definition of both a fact and

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an opinion. A fact, we can see, can be checked out. It can be proved with evidence so that we

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can say something is true or false. Facts, when we prove them, we tend to be able to measure

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something and opinions can't be proved whether they're, if they're true or false. Okay, so

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let's do an activity now, a fairly easy activity, just so that we're very clear about a fact and an

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opinion. I'll provide a few sentences and you have to look for the clues, what can be,

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what can be measured as a fact or if it's an opinion. The largest country by land mass in

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the world is Russia. So if we look at this sentence, we can see that it is in fact a fact

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because we can actually measure the largest country by land mass. And so this happens to

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be a fact. Next one. Switzerland is one of the most beautiful countries in Europe. So, again,

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if we look at this sentence carefully, beautiful can't be measured. What is beautiful to one person

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might not be beautiful to another. It's objective, and so it can't be measured, and it's an opinion.

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next sentence smoking is a disgusting habit okay can we measure this can we measure

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um that smoking is a disgusting obviously not so it's an opinion uh let's move on smoking can cause

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lung cancer again this is a fact we can actually prove this it can be measured so it's a fact

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next sentence now this one's a little bit more difficult uh young people were irresponsible

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after the covid19 lockdown okay do you think this is a fact or an opinion this sentence was said a

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lot in the media and so it's interesting to see what you think it is in fact an opinion

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because we can't actually measure that all young people were irresponsible after lockdown.

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But what I actually explained in class is that it's interesting that even though this is an opinion,

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if a sentence is said repeatedly in the media, in the newspaper or the radio or television or in social media,

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then lots of people believe it to be a fact, even though it's not.

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and this happens a lot, so be careful when you listen to sentences like this. If they can't be

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measured, then they're opinions, they're not facts, and many sentences, people want you to see them

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as facts when actually they're not. Before COVID-19, France was the most visited country by

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tourists in Europe. So, can this be measured? Can we prove this? And, of course, we can

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prove this. It can be measured. So, it's a fact. So, in summary, argumentative texts

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are written or oral texts which have a main idea and the purpose of this text type is

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to persuade. And in order to persuade the reader or the listener, we have to try to produce facts

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with evidence. Now, you will hear me talk a lot about facts as providing a topic sentence. So

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from now on, when you hear me say, where's the topic sentence with the fact? That's what I'm

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referring to. So we've said that argumentative texts need, if they're to be strong and to

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persuade need to have facts and evidence. Another way of referring to evidence is supporting

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data. And this is what we're going to look at now. So there are three types of supporting

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data. Well, there are more, but this year we're going to focus on three types. We're

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going to focus on statistics. Now, by statistics, I can mean a percentage, a fraction, or a

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ratio. We're going to look at quoting reliable sources. And by reliable sources, I mean

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organizations that you trust to be trustworthy, such as a university, a reputable newspaper,

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an organization. That organization can be, for example, an NGO. And another type of supporting

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data is to quote an expert. So when we mean an expert, we obviously mean someone who is very

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experienced in their field. You can have an expert that has a title like a doctor, a professor,

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or that expert can be someone who holds a position, for example, the head teacher of a school

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or the director or the manager of an organization, of a company. So these are the three types of

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supporting data that we would like you to use this year in your writing. So now let's identify

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the type of supporting data in the following exercise. Okay, so here we go. What type of

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evidence is it? 62% of Spanish people with a driver's license drink alcohol regularly.

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Okay, so obviously we have a percentage here, so this is a statistic. Let's move on. General Isaac

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Thatcher, a representative of the military, states that compulsory military service is necessary for

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the security of our country. Okay, so here we've got quoting an expert, we've got a general.

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El País has reported that English is the second most spoken language in Spain. And here we're

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quoting a reliable source, we're quoting a Spanish newspaper that's reputable. In 1916, in 2016,

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Sorry, in 2016, 48.1% of American voters selected Hillary Clinton for president.

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So here we have a statistic again.

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We've got a percentage.

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This one's easy.

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The newspaper El Mundo ranks Universidad de Alicante as the number one university to study social work.

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Nice easy one here.

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we're quoting a reliable source another reputable newspaper spanish newspaper and we've got dr sarah

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walker a psychologist at oxford university has written bullion has many negative effects on the

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development of young adults yeah we've got uh quoting an expert here we've also got a reputable

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source also we could say that oxford university so in summary basically argumentative writing

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can be either written or an oral text which has a main claim a main thesis and the purpose of this

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type of text is to persuade the listener or the reader to have the same point of view that you're

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presenting. In order to do this we should provide facts and evidence and when we refer to facts

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we're going to write them within a topic sentence and the following sentence should be the supporting

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data or the evidence. And that's it. Thank you very much.