Unified State Exam 2021 ready-made bank of arguments in the Russian language, grade 11

OGE, Unified State Exam, VPR, GVE, final essay - all these exams are united by one cruel necessity: you need to write an essay based on arguments. It often happens that we seem to understand a topic and are ready to talk about it, but we cannot find examples or we make a mistake in choosing them. For this, points are deducted, or even given a “failure”. Sometimes the assessment of the entire work depends on the argumentation, and even smart guys become victims of the inability to justify their position. The many-wise Litrekon will tell you how to correctly present arguments in an essay and write with the highest score.

Formulating your position

An argument is evidence presented in defense or refutation of an opinion. In the essay, you must indicate your position on a particular topic, accepting or not accepting the author’s opinion. As a rule, it is necessary to give two arguments in its defense, using examples from life, literature or cinema. This means that in order to choose the right examples, you need, first of all, to correctly and accurately formulate your opinion. Consistency with the thesis is the most important criterion for evaluating an argument.

Of course, it is not enough to simply voice your opinion: you agree or disagree with this or that thesis. Even if your view of the problem coincides with the view of the author, it should be clearly formulated in a separate, detailed answer. Until you yourself understand what you think about this, you will not formulate a normal thesis. Therefore, you should start selecting arguments with the formulation of the thesis - a sentence that denotes your position and to which the examples will correspond.

For example, the author shows the horrors of war, how it spares neither its own nor others. Here is our thesis:

I completely agree with the author and believe that war is inhumane in its essence, and there is no winner in it, because both sides suffer catastrophic losses. If we are talking about the OGE or the Unified State Exam, the first argument may be an example from life, and the second from books.

So what do we have to prove? This is a question you need to ask yourself after formulating your thesis statement. This is where we will begin the next point.

How many arguments should there be in the final essay?

In the criteria for evaluating the final essay, the number of arguments is not strictly regulated. The main thing when creating a work is to write an essay on the proposed topic and justify your point of view, relying on works of art. Moreover, you can rely on both classical and modern literature, turn to the works of both Russian and foreign authors. When choosing a genre of work for an argument, students can be guided by their reading preferences.

For argumentation, it is enough to give one literary example. Having chosen this way of writing an essay, the graduate must take into account the fact that the volume of the essay must be at least 250 words. If you are not sure that with one example the essay will meet this requirement, it is better to give two arguments.

Having decided to illustrate a thesis with two examples, graduates are often faced with another question: is it possible to give examples from one work, or is it better to stop at two? The answer is simple: everything is in your hands. For example, in an essay on the topic “Is it important to instill kindness from childhood?” you can contrast two heroes of one work (Petr Grinev and Alexey Shvabrin from “The Captain’s Daughter of A. S. Pushkin”) or two heroes from different works (Petr Grinev and Mitrofanushka from “The Minor” by D. I. Fonvizin). The choice of the number of works depends on the graduate’s reading experience.

Selecting Material for an Argument

We must prove that war is equally destructive for both sides of the conflict, that it is terrible and dangerous for all of us. Now it becomes clear to us what examples can confirm this point of view - only those that show without embellishment the disastrous consequences of war for all participants. Obviously, one should not glorify the exploits of ancestors and evaluate the role of a soldier in war. We need to condemn war and show its true (ugly and repulsive) nature. So what examples would work?

1. The first argument from life: you can tell about your great-grandfather, who fought and saw all the horrors of combat. It can be mentioned that the veteran did not like to talk about it, he tried to forget about what he saw in order to learn to live a peaceful life, in order to restore harmony to his soul. One can describe the bloodshed and nightmare of the battle that he experienced. You can talk about his wounds and injuries. In a word, his experience in the war should be negative, and the micro-conclusion in this case will be the conclusion: war is inhumane and cruel to all people, there is nothing heroic and beautiful in it.
2. As a literary argument, one can cite the fates of the girls - anti-aircraft gunners from the story by B. Vasiliev “And the dawns here are quiet.” They went to the front as volunteers, without hesitation, gave their lives for their Motherland, and, one might say, surpassed themselves. However, the author is far from idealizing war. In his story, she destroys what is most precious, encroaches on sacred places: she snatches young girls, most of whom have not yet become mothers, from their families and destroys them without pity or sympathy. War forces men to kill women, which is unnatural and immoral. Here is a micro-conclusion that confirms the destructive and inhumane nature of war.

The argument may not be so straightforward. If you can analyze a work more deeply, see parallels and conclusions that are not obvious, then it is better to take a little-known work and stand out with a non-standard approach, here is an example:

Another literary example can be found in V. Rasputin’s story “Live and Remember.” The struggle exhausts and spiritually degrades the personality, corrupting it by violating the laws of morality. So, Andrei Guskov was tired of the war and simply left the front line, abandoning his comrades and putting his family in danger. Why? He was not bad from the beginning, he fought stubbornly and honestly for his homeland for several years. But the war eventually broke his character. hunger, cold, humiliation, constant losses, a decrease in the value of life in the eyes of the majority - all these factors contributed to the moral decay of the hero. He became a deserter and doomed his wife and unborn child to death. Such are the destructive and fatal consequences of war for the individual.

In this case, our examples answer the question posed: war is terrible and dangerous for all participants in the conflict, because random people die in it and in large numbers, which is not justified by even a victorious result. In war, customary norms of morality and ethics are destroyed, so humanity should not repeat its mistakes and start armed clashes again. This will be our conclusion. Everything is logical, understandable and precise, as if we were talking with friends and arguing our position on an issue that interests us.

Types of arguments

To better select examples, let’s turn to theory and find out what they are?

There are two types of arguments: logical arguments ─ evidence that appeals to the human mind (scientific postulates, statistical data, literary and life examples), as well as psychological arguments that evoke certain feelings in the reader and create an emotional perception of a person, event, action, which we are talking about. The feelings and thoughts of the applicant himself, appeal to universal human values, and religious dogmas can be used as a psychological argument.

When choosing an argument, it is important to know the criteria for evaluating it in order to get the maximum. For example, a graduate should know that some arguments are worth one point, others two. To get two points, you need to provide a link to the author and work. Moreover, it is not enough to simply name the work and the author; it is necessary to indicate specific events or characters. For example, the tragedy of the civil fratricidal war was clearly shown by Sholokhov in his novel “Quiet Don” with the example of how best friends, Grigory Melekhov and Mikhail Koshevoy, became sworn enemies. You can also use proverbs, sayings, and aphorisms as an argument worth two points. But their use also needs to be accompanied by your own reasoning. For example: “All that glitters is not gold.” A person’s appearance and first impression of him can be deceiving. You can also use quotes from famous people. If you use a journalistic source, do not forget to indicate the title of the material, the author and in which publication it was published.

Arguments in which the examinee refers to his own life experience, or to examples from the lives of his family or friends, as a rule, receive one point. You need to be careful with such arguments: in these examples it is easy for your thoughts to wander down the tree and go in the wrong direction. To prevent this from happening, constantly ask yourself the original question and answer only that. Do not touch on other topics and try to be more precise about what is appropriate to talk about. But both in your life and in the life of those around you, you can find vivid examples of good or bad deeds. The main thing is to talk about them correctly.

Observations of the life of the country and society as a whole look more significant. But even here it is better to rely on sociological research, surveys, media reports, and not just on your subjective opinion. For example, we can say that during the pandemic the volunteer movement has expanded significantly, people have become more responsive to the misfortune of others. But one cannot, for example, indiscriminately accuse everyone who reads the tabloids and watches TV series of having a narrow outlook and lack of education.

Structure of an Ideal Essay

To make it easier for you to formulate clear and understandable arguments, it is important to maintain a logical structure in your essay. It's best to build it like this:

1. thesis (statement) that needs to be confirmed or refuted;
2. logical transition;
3. argument and the so-called micro-inference.

Let's look at an example:

• Thesis: Chekhov's statement: “Everything in a person should be beautiful: thoughts, soul, feelings, and clothes.”
• Logical transition: indeed, a person who is outwardly beautiful and pleasant to talk to is not always also beautiful internally, spiritually, and this dissonance always gives rise to disappointment. People cannot get by with just beautiful clothes and a pretty appearance, because more will always be expected of them, and if this is not the case, then they will only gain temporary recognition from society, and soon everyone will turn away from them.
• Argument: I remember the Russian proverbs “All that glitters is not gold” and “They meet you by their clothes, they see you off by their mind.” It was customary for the Russian people to focus on the discrepancy between the inner world and external appearance. This dissonance always gave rise to a negative impression that spoiled the opinion of people. This means that for complete social approval it is necessary to develop comprehensively.
• You can also remember the heroes of the novels of Pushkin and Lermontov, Onegin and Pechorin. They were attractive people, knew how to win over their interlocutor, and charm women, but their thoughts and souls were full of hostility and contempt for others, so they brought misfortune to everyone they met along the path of life. They never found happiness or recognition in society because they only disappointed those who believed in them. Micro-conclusion: both folk wisdom and literary classics teach us that a person must be beautiful in all his manifestations, otherwise his vulnerability alone will negate all the positive aspects, and he will not realize his full potential.

Why do you need a bank of arguments for the Unified State Examination in the Russian language?

The Russian language exam requires students not only to know the basic rules, but also the ability to understand the meaning of the text they read, identify its problems, put forward their opinion on the problem posed and confirm their point of view with convincing arguments from life and literature. Alas, the latter most often turns out to be difficult even for well-read children who pay attention to every work of the school literature curriculum. The list of problems is so wide that often, due to a lack of hours to study the Russian language, it cannot be discussed in class.

The bank of arguments for the Unified State Exam in the Russian language helps the student to better navigate the list of problems and at the same time repeat the main literary works of the school curriculum. A person who has conscientiously read a book from cover to cover may know the content perfectly well, but not see the connection with the problematic issues of the texts used in the exam. Thus, the function of the USE argument bank in the Russian language is also to develop the ability to see important aspects in the content of works.

As a rule, the use of a bank of arguments for Unified State Exam essays is not prohibited by teachers. The main thing is that it does not consist in mechanical copying, but in a complete analysis of the information presented. For the most successful preparation for the exam, it is recommended to read the works contained in this argument bank. Among them there are both large books with a huge list of problems (for example, the epic novel “War and Peace”), and small but very bright works (“Smile”, Ray Bradbury). What's better to read? The choice is yours.

Formatting an argument and correct presentation

A new paragraph is a new thought, one way or another connected with the previous one, so it is necessary to think through competent logical transitions from one thought to another. You can use the following words and phrases to express connections between paragraphs:

1. first, first of all, then, firstly, secondly, then, so, etc. (sequence of thought development);
2. however, meanwhile, while, nevertheless (relations of contradiction, opposition);
3. therefore, therefore, thanks to this, as a result of this, in addition, in addition (cause-and-effect relationships);
4. let's turn to..., remember also, let's stop at..., move on to..., we need to stop at..., we need to consider... (transition from one thought to another);
5. so, thus, it means, in conclusion, I want to note that everything that has been said allows us to draw a conclusion, to summarize, it should be said... (result, conclusion).

The persuasive logically follows from the persuasive

This argument is called the causation argument. Briefly, it can be represented as a logical connective “if - then”. Of course, in every argument there is a logical connective, but only in this case is it the main supporting structure, and all the emphasis is placed on it.

Example: “If we consider ourselves reasonable people, then we cannot ignore arguments based on logic.” Or this: “If we consider ourselves reasonable people, then we should not believe everything we read on the Internet.” And also: “If we consider ourselves reasonable people, then we should not tolerate such bullying with three identical examples, when everything was already clear.”

The most common mistakes

To assess the quality of your arguments, check your essay for these errors:

1. The use of arguments is inappropriate: the essay turns into a set of general, unrelated phrases. For example: I believe that eternal love is possible. So, Zheltkov loved Vera, but she did not love him. He wrote to her for several years in a row, but she did not answer him, because she was married. Georgy tried very hard not to despair of love, he waited and hoped, but everything was in vain, because Vera did not love him. As a result, Zheltkov committed suicide, and only then did Vera realize her mistake. In this example, the author does not prove his thesis, but retells the content of the story, placing the wrong semantic accents.
2. Using arguments that contradict each other or the applicant’s own position. For example: I believe that a person should not forgive an insult, otherwise he will continue to be humiliated. For example, Vladimir Dubrovsky forgave his offender, and what did he achieve? The fact that Troekurov did not realize his guilt before him, he never learned to act according to his conscience. He gave his daughter away against her will, without even taking into account Dubrovsky’s mercy. In this example, the author misunderstood the author's point of view and the meaning of the episode. Firstly, no one humiliated Vladimir again in response to his forgiveness, which means that this argument does not support or prove the thesis. Secondly, Vladimir’s action is approved by the author, because the hero could not do otherwise: revenge on Troekurov would have hurt Marya, who was not to blame for the death of the protagonist’s father.
3. Substitution of actual argumentation with reasoning about what the author wanted to say. For example: I believe that Chekhov meant that beauty should be manifested in every action of a person. Ugly actions repel people and humiliate the one who commits them. Anyone who behaves badly cannot hide behind external beauty from condemnation. In this example, the person does not present an argument at all, but only talks abstractly about the topic at hand. Nobody will count this.
4. Distortion of quotes, adding your own phrases to them, free handling of facts, texts of works. For example: Natasha Rostova did not love Andrei Bolkonsky, so she cheated on him without a shadow of remorse and wanted to hide her sin. In this case, the author made several factual errors: Natasha loved Andrei, but after falling in love with Anatole, she wrote to him and broke off the engagement. She later became seriously ill from grief and remorse.

The many-wise Litrekon is sure that now you know how to choose the right argument for an essay. No fluff or feather in the exam!

Author: Artem Avvakumov