Take complex, original positions that derive logically from available evidence and account for other plausible positions.
Emerging Practice: When you are just beginning to learn how to take positions in your writing, you may find yourself producing work that merely shares information or reports on positions that other writers have already taken. Novice writers make lots of points in their work without connecting them together to stake out a coherent, complex position to which all the points contribute. A piece of writing with lots of "points" but no "position" also tends to rely on assertion and generalization: instead of showing why something is the case, novice writers simply say that it is the case, relying on imprecise appeals to common sense or overly simplistic theories of explanation, instead of on specific available evidence and logical reasoning. They pay little if any attention to alternative interpretations or explanations of the same evidence, either because they have not considered opposing views or because they stick to making statements with which few reasonable people would ever disagree.
As you begin to develop competence with taking positions, you'll start to produce work that moves from premises to conclusions instead of moving through an unordered list of points, though your conclusions might still be the conclusions of others more than your own, and your writing may still have some loose ends---stray points that do not clearly contribute to advancing your overall position. Your conclusions are capable of provoking disagreement, though they may be oversimplified, and they follow logically from your premises, though you may make some unwarranted leaps in logic (e.g., confusing correlation with causation, making anachronistic or universalizing inferences instead of contextualized ones, assuming a necessary precondition for something is a sufficient cause, adopting a mechanistic or always-predictable model of human behavior, and so on). You'll make sure to substantiate your premises and conclusions with evidence, though you may struggle to base your claims on specific evidence from the material available to you, and you may still generalize beyond what the evidence allows. You realize you need evidence, but you may ignore the most relevant available evidence for a particular claim. Competent writers also acknowledge plausible positions, though they may mischaracterize the opposition, dismiss opponents as biased ("ad hominem"), or address only the weakest counterarguments (the "straw man" fallacy). As you work on all these things, you may show flashes of mastery (especially after receiving specific coaching or feedback), but you may still struggle to put together a position on your own or to recognize the hallmarks of a strong position in another person's writing.
Students who have mastered the art of position-taking produce work that demonstrates a personalized, thoughtful grasp of a subject and develops a powerful, sophisticated defense of a contestable view. While demonstrating a capacious understanding of the evidence and claims that are needed to defend their view, masterful writers are discerning; they have clearly grappled with all the available material, but in the end they marshal only the points most needed to advance their position. Those points are well integrated into a coherent, complex case that is sensitive to all or almost all of the subject's relevant texts and contexts. That case is carefully calibrated by specific evidence; masterful writers do not claim more---or less---than what the available material allows. At the same time, however, they are able to synthesize multiple pieces of evidence and texts into a fresh, illuminating take that does not simply reproduce what has already been said by others. Game recognizes game, so as you begin to master these skills, you'll also be able to notice them at work in other pieces of writing. Because of that, you will not only show awareness of alternative positions, but you will also be able to identify the best counterarguments against your view and address them fairly and seriously without abandoning your position.