Argumentation, Evidence, and the Gap Between High School and College Writing

The Problem

College writing instructors consistently report the same deficit in first-year students: they can produce a five-paragraph essay, but they cannot construct an argument. The gap is not one of effort or intelligence. It is structural—a function of what high school writing instruction has asked students to practice.

High school writing has improved in organization and mechanics. It has not kept pace with the specific cognitive work college writing requires: analyzing competing positions, evaluating evidence quality, and building claims that require defense rather than illustration.

Three Skills That Break Down

Source integration. High school students learn to cite and quote. College writing requires evaluating sources: distinguishing strong evidence from weak, and using sources to build an argument rather than illustrate a predetermined conclusion.

Counterargument. Most high school assignments do not require engaging seriously with opposing positions. College writing almost always does. Students who have never practiced this cannot produce it under time pressure.

Claim specificity. High school thesis statements are typically general. College claims are specific and arguable—a position a reader would push back on. Students taught to write general theses have not been taught to write arguable ones.

What the Research Says

Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein (They Say / I Say, 2006) identified that the most common writing deficit is not weak evidence but the failure to position a claim in relation to other claims—entering a conversation rather than simply making a statement.

Applebee and Langer’s National Study of Writing Instruction found that extended argumentative writing occupies a small share of instructional time in most secondary classrooms. The implication: the gap reflects low frequency, not low effort.