8/10/2019 Building Up an Argument_EN

1/4

Building Up An Argument

A. Table of Contents

I.

Introduction

II. Stating Position

Giving opinions

III. Developing Arguments

Balancing advantages and disadvantages

Making suggestions

Introducing a new point

Adding Giving an example

Generalising

Presenting different solutions

Contrasting alternatives

Stating preferences

Justifying choices and alternatives

Giving a series of reasons

Showing a series of consequences

Warning about consequences

IV. Conclusion

B. List of Expressions

I. Introduction

-

As you know, - Theres been a lot of talk about

- I would like to begin by

-

I would like to make a few remarks concerning

- I would like to comment on the problem of

-

I would like to mention briefly that

- There are three points I would like to make.

- The most important points seem to me to be

8/10/2019 Building Up an Argument_EN

2/4

II. Stating Position

Giving opinions

Strong Neutral Tentative- I am sure that

- I am convinced that

- I feel quite sure that

- It is perfectly clear to me

that

- I think / I believe that

- As I see it,

- The way I see it is that

- As far as I am concerned

- It seems to me that

- It strikes me that

- My impression is that

- I tend to favour the view

that

III. Developing Arguments

Balancing advantages and disadvantages- On the one hand , but on the other hand,

-

Although , we must not forget

- Whereas , we have to remember

-

In spite of , I still think

- Despite the fact that , I

Making suggestions

Strong suggestions

-

The only solution is to

-

I see no other alternative but to

- There is no other alternative but to

-

We must

Neutral suggestions

- I recommend that we should

-

I think we should

- My recommendation is that we should

-

I would suggest that we

- We should / ought to

Tentative suggestions

-

We could always

- It might be a good idea to

- Have you thought of ------ing ?

- One solution would be to

- What about -----ing ?

8/10/2019 Building Up an Argument_EN

3/4

Introducing a new point

- I would [now]like to turn briefly to the problem of

- The next issue I would like to focus on is

- Turning to

Adding

- In addition,

-

I might add that

- As well as , there is also

- Not only , but also

- Furthermore,

- Moreover,

Giving an example-

Let me give an example,

- To illustrate this point, let us consider

Generalising

- On the whole,

- In general,

- Generally speaking,

- By and large,

-

All in all, -

All things considered,

Presenting different solutions

- Either , or

- There seem to be at least two ways of dealing with the problem.

- One solution is obviously to

- One possibility is to

- Alternatively, we could

-

Another possibility would be to

Contrasting alternatives

- Whereas, on the other hand, but

- X means better profits. In contrast, Y could cause a lot of problems.

- X does have some advantages. However, theres no doubt that Y is a much

better choice.

8/10/2019 Building Up an Argument_EN

4/4