When it comes to academic writing, there are different types of home assignments that can evaluate students’ knowledge of a subject. However, it is not a secret that composing a deductive essay is an extremely challenging task, especially if one barely understands what deduction is. For sure, students encounter different forms of essay writing, but not all of them require deductive reasoning. Without it, your essay is deemed to fail because the primary task of composing deductive essays is to appeal to logic and valid assumptions.
Working on deductive essay topics can be compared with solving a puzzle. Therefore, you must ensure that you provide enough supporting details for the reader to properly understand what you want to state.
How to Organize Deductive Ideas
If you question yourself, “What is a deductive essay,” you should focus on collecting all possible ideas on the given topic, find some similarities and differences in reasoning, weigh ideas against one another, and then make your logical conclusion.
In deductive writing, students should know about three components that constitute this type of essay. The primary one is a premise – the key idea, which forms the basis of your deduction. Depending on your topic and the professor’s instructions, you can have one or multiple premises. The second component is your supporting claim (evidence). You should present some observations, analysis of research claims, etc. The third component is the conclusion. You should get back to the subject matter and summarize your premise about the chosen topic.
Here is a vivid example of three major components of deductive reasoning. It can be compared with deductive reasoning in mathematics: If A=B, B=C, then A=C.
- Premise. All people have cells in their bodies.
- Evidence. All cells have DNA.
- Conclusion. All people have DNA.
Work on an Outline
No matter what deductive essay topics you explore, you should start by creating an outline. Here is the most common essay structure:
- Introduction (premise) + a thesis statement in the end
- Main body (all kinds of evidence)
- Evidence #1
- Evidence #2
- Evidence #3 (optional)
- Conclusion (a summary of your premise and key supporting details).
Common Life Situations
Even if you do not know what a deductive argument essay is, you still apply deductive reasoning permanently. There are different real-life situations when you think deductively. One can interpret a situation differently, and here is an example of how you can use your deductive thinking in everyday life. Your friend comes to you extremely wet and there can be different reasons for it. You can think that he was swimming in the lake, but it is pretty cold outside. You might think that he/she fell in the puddle, but definitely, not all clothing would be wet. In most cases, you will think that there is a downpour outside, which is the reason why your friend is soaking wet.
There can be multiple other explanations for why your friend is wet, but you will pertain to the most logical idea in your mind. Why? Our brain checks and evaluates each argument and chooses the most relevant and reasonable idea, based on the knowledge it “stores.” Deducting techniques are usually used by crime scene investigation officers, who are always involved in solving puzzles.
Rules for Writing Deductive Essays
Always work on your logical reasoning, if you want to succeed in academic writing and your future occupation will include deduction as a primary task. A good deductive essay should include clear and concise ideas, which will be easily interpreted by the reader. Your paragraphs should be approximately equal in length. Every idea should be supported with relevant research evidence and drawn to certain conclusions. Do not make any conclusions without an appropriate amount of backup ideas.
We hope that our article will help you decently cope with deductive writing. You should always appeal to logic in your writing and clearly express opinions, which will surely bring you excellent grades!