To identify the premises of an argument you must accomplish several things...

One: Approach arguments differently than the common perception. Traditionally most people believe that arguments consist of a stern or often violent outburst, this is not an argument, this is a quarrel or disagreement. An argument should be separated from emotional content. A genuine argument is a group of one or more meaningful, declarative sentences or "Propositions" with the intent to present a reason or determination which is known as a "Conclusion", and the statements to support that conclusion.

Two: A genuine argument is solely based in logic. To understand the the types of logic will help you understand the types of genuine arguments, and make the premises easier to identify.

Deductive Logic, means determining the conclusion through a logical series of preconditions. Think of these as logical steps. When this happens that happens, that has happened, therefore this has happened. For example; To make wine someone has to, pick grapes, crush the grapes, and ferment the grape juice. I have wine, therefore someone picked the grapes, crushed the grapes and fermented the grape juice. In this example the wine itself is the result or the Conclusion, so the Precondition for this conclusion are the steps to make the wine.
Inductive Logic, means determining the Rulenecessary for the conclusion based on the precondition. For example; wine has an alcohol content, the preconditions for wine are picking grapes, crushing grapes, and fermenting grape juice. Whenever fermentation occurs alcohol develops. The presence of alcohol in wine is a result of the precondition of the fermentation process who's rule is the development of alcohol.
Abduction Logic, Means determining the precondition based on the conclusion. This is not a factual logic only what most likely occurred based on the conclusion. There is wine in the bottle, therefore someone may have picked grapes, crushed grapes, and fermented grapes. You see this form of logic often in police work, where the actual preconditions are unknown but the conclusion is definite.

Three: Understand the Arguments, Genuine arguments consist of two categories One is the Informal Argument, and the other is a Formal argument. Informal arguments are general discourse and presented in plain language, while formal arguments have a nearly mathematical logic to them consistent with implication and inference. What is implied and what can be inferred. Remember an arguments has only one conclusion strictly speaking, but a discussion or paragraph may be much more complex, conclusions can often become the basis for premises for other arguments. Focus on one argument at a time. Look at the logic and determine the precondition. The precondition in logic equals the premises of an argument.

An example argument:

In the old days wine makers would hire workers to crush grapes with their feet, Today they use big machines to crush grapes. There is allot more wine being made today than in the old days.

The conclusion is, today there is more wine being made than in the old days. We can apply deductive logic to this and say, "By crushing grapes with feet, we get less wine than by crushing grapes with a big machine, we have more wine now than we did when we crushed grapes with feet, therefore we must have used a big machine." we determined the conclusion based on the supporting statements or premises. The premises is that using big machines to crush grapes makes more wine.

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