Modes of Discourse:
Narration, Description, Exposition, and Argument
Modes of discourse are the writing styles students learn throughout academic courses to advance their writing based on their emotional and academic level at the time. Traditionally, there are 4 categories that students learn—and often in this order: Narration, Description, Exposition, and then, Persuasive Argument
NARRATION
Young children learn to write narratives, recounting what they did on their summer vacations, telling about the weather, or writing about a favorite family member. These narratives give children a chance to get their words on paper while using 1st person voice (“I,” “me,” and “my”).
DESCRIPTION
Descriptive paragraphs (and possibly essays) come next as youth learn how to describe their bedrooms from right to left, look themselves in the mirror and colorfully detail every aspect of their faces or describe a favorite food through use of the five senses. In this writing style, students are still allowed to use all types of voice: 1st, 2nd, and 3rd.
EXPOSITION
In the middle school years, students are often beginning their first essays, learning the standard Expository 5-paragraph-essay. This is the first step along the road to academic, professional essay writing. Students must limit the use of 1st person voice when an assignment requires. This stage of writing is where students write to expose aspects of the topic: such as ‘how’ to do something: a process essay, or they might write about a research topic using a scholarly source for the first time. These essays ‘expose’ content to the audience. They do not argue a point. They simply present information for a reader to learn about.
ARGUMENT
However, these skills—in expository writing—are necessary for a student to move to the next writing style: argument writing. At this level, students write ethical arguments (where they argue the ethics of a topic/issue), proposal arguments (where they argue a proposal will fix a social situation/issue), and a cause/effect argument (where students argue that a specific ‘thing’ has caused specific ‘effects’). To accomplish argument writing well, a specific structure must be adhered to for the student. Just as the student learned to focus on the five senses or presenting information on ‘how to make a sandwich’ in earlier stages of writing, the student will learn structured argument and counter-argument organization.
An argument is not the same as presenting information. An argument must argue something clearly and then prove that ‘something’ without a question of a doubt in the audience’s mind. It is the proving part that requires the extra steps and structure associated with this style of writing.
If students skip these structured steps in their writing, they will end up with an essay that says it is an argument, but it never really proves anything: it simply presents information and says ‘believe me’. The world does not operate that way, though. The audience will want to know why they should believe the writer. This is where the structured argument is essential to the learning process for this level of academic writing.
Each of these modes deals with a different rhetorical style (ways of presenting communication), and once students learn that style, they should easily be able to advance to the next mode of discourse.
DEFINING DIFFERENT WRITING STYLES
When you think of any given writing style (for example: narration), you should be able to identify the themes (telling a personal recount of an event), the voice requirements (1st, 2nd, or 3rd person voice), the outside source requirements (none required), and the formatting style (MLA). Each of the rhetorical modes (ways of presenting communication) bring with them different forms of discourse (types of writings: personal, professional, etc.), and it is important to be able to easily identify these structural, content, and documentation guidelines simply by reading the style of writing.
DEFINING PERSUASIVE ARGUMENT WRITING
For our class, Freshmen Composition, we will be writing persuasive Argument essays, and so you will need to get used to the basic requirements relating to an argument essay written at the academic level:
Theme: Argue Persuasively and Professionally using
Write essay containing at least 80% self, and no more than 20% scholarly sources—while maintaining 3rd person voice.
Voice: 3rd-person voice
Outside Sources: Scholarly sources only—scholarly source usage required to defend the argument—not ‘make’ the argument
Formatting/Documentation based on the student’s declared degree and specifics from the institution
Additional Criteria:
Elimination of all non-standard English traits:
Once a student reaches the argument style of writing, he/she should be able to include small aspects of each of the previous writing styles (narration, description, and exposition) into the argument if it will benefit the overall purpose of the argument. Therefore, a persuasive argument, written about what the Christian’s responsibility is to take care of the Earth could include a few or all of these previously learned writing styles, if they work appropriately with the current structure and issue in the persuasive argument essay.
© August 2018, Jeanette L. H. Dick
For Educational Use Only
Modes of Discourse
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