From Stories to Facts

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The first time I learnt about argumentative essays, I wasn't so happy with what I would be doing for my two high school years. I always enjoyed writing narrative essays in my junior years because they were like telling stories and I enjoyed telling stories or just hooking up a story. It was always easy. But having to write argumentative essays demanded a lot of knowledge and strength.I felt like I was forced to put down every sentence and my ideas came down making no sense. And I was breaking one of the core rules to write an argumentative essay: DONOT MAKE UP EVIDENCES! But I was helpless. Sometimes I used to feel stupid arguing from both sides.

My English Teacher, Sir Norbu Tshering, used to let us write so many argumentative essays and he called them "Practices". He started by first telling us all the steps and then letting us write in groups. In all these practices, which included a completely amazing process, I was enriched with ideas. The first thing we had to do was think about the topic and if we were ever given a chance to choose a topic by ourselves, we were taught that the topic neither should be narrow nor so wide. The next step was to get into groups and list down the counter arguments and the refutation.It was better to discus in groups because different heads came up with different ideas and the most important thing happened: Debate. Before really getting into writing the essay, we had to share our ideas to sir Norbu and we would refine the ideas with his help. It was like a nice icing on the cake. My favourite part of his helps besides many, was the kind of words he'd use. Listening to sir Norbu was like reading an amazing book. There were so many words we could learn and a whole set of ideas!

The common topics on which we wrote argumentative essays were social issues. So it was not  just about what I felt, but before penning it down, I needed to google, read and ask people.It was not to narrate what happened on my birthday or just lie about my favourite day.It was to go through the long way of adulthood. All these processes made me feel so grown up and realise a lot of things. It was all the processes that Sir Norbu taught us. One time I was wondering how I would have learnt to write an argumentative essays if he hadn't taught me. It would have been a big loss!

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