The word rational is key. Different types of essays may be more or less informal in their tone and sources and have all sorts of superficial differences, but the basic argumentative framework tends to remain. Adding complexity to this is that different audiences and even individual readers will have different standards about what constitute interesting claims, pertinent evidence, and reasonable consideration of opposing views. In general the kinds of scholarly audiences students write for are open-minded about claims, but have high expectations about the quality of the evidence and the reasonableness of the assumptions linking evidence and claims. But more often college students must decide what sort of claim to make, and how to develop it.
Arguments typically require clear definitions upon which to build.
If for instance you're writing a political science paper attacking public opinion polls as harmful to American politics, you'll need to establish early on what an opinion poll is. By synonym Alienation is disaffection with or isolation from society. By example The Indo-European group includes such languages as English, French, Russian, and Hindi. By context Indo-European, the world's largest family of languages, includes languages spoken by about half the world's population. By function A cyclotron uses magnetic fields to accelerate nuclear particles along circular paths.