Argumentative Essay Examples

Writing an argumentative essay can sometimes be confusing because you don’t necessarily know how to write a convincing argument. If you’re new to writing argumentative essays, there are a few key factors that you can learn that can help you write a better argumentative essay. Argumentative essays are where you try and convince your reader to take a specific stance on a topic. This can range from politics, debates, news, and many other topics.

A persuasive, argumentative essay will use credible sources to find facts, information, and statistics that help support that specific stance. If you load your essay full of credible sources, you’re only further going to convince your audience that taking your stance is the best stance. To write an excellent argumentative essay, there are four major parts of the essay you’re going to need to be aware of. Keep reading, and we’ll teach you how to come up with a great argumentative essay by argumentative essay examples.

What is an Argumentative Essay?

In an argumentative essay, you’re going to want to convince your audience to agree with your idea or opinion by using credible information. Writing an argument essay can help you better understand how to present an argument and how to persuade your readers to be on your side. Learning how to write an argumentative essay can help you in many other aspects of life, so make sure you pay close attention to what you’ll need for a convincing argument. You first need to select a solid topic with an argument, credible information to support your viewpoint, a solid stance on your side, and an excellent counter-argument to help you sound less biased.

Argument

Argumentative essays should use a topic in which you can persuade an audience to agree with your side. If you’re a student, consider using a topic that is interesting to other students or your professor. Many argumentative topics come from politics, the news, or ethics. Don’t choose a topic that you can’t write a two-sided story on. Every argumentative argument should include either two or more sides. The easier arguments use at least two arguments and no more than three or four arguments at once. The more stances an argument has, the harder it will be to convince your readers that your stance is the best stance. Our examples of argumentative essay can help you understand what topics are appropriate.

Your Stance

Every argumentative essay includes persuading an audience into believing one side of an argument. You need to make sure that you stay on that one side during your entire essay. It may be tempting to agree with the opposing side, but that will only cause your audience to be less convinced about your stance. The whole point of an argumentative essay is to persuade the reader into agreeing with the side you support. Therefore, you need to use research to back up your viewpoint consistently. The only thing you need to keep an eye out for is sticking with one side of an argument that doesn’t have enough credible information to help back up your claims. Check out our argumentative essay example to properly understand how to stay on one side of an argument.

Evidence

Your essay should include recent statistics and information from reliable sources. Many students make the mistake of including personal viewpoints and opinions in their essays. This only weakens your argument and drives your readers away from your stance. To avoid this situation, only use information that you know is from a reliable source. Your teacher should provide you with a list of acceptable sources or if your sources need to be from empirical studies. Always double check your facts and make sure that they are the most recent. Using too old of facts may cause your argument to weaken.

Counter Argument

Another final component is being able to draw out the pros and cons of the opposition and disprove their argument. In this area of your paper, you can agree with your opponent temporarily to exploit any reasoning that does not work in their favor. This also shows you’ve taken into consideration the opponents views and examined the possible outcomes. By embodying both sides of the argument, you further solidify your position and make it seem like there is another ultimate conclusion.

Conclusion

A conclusion can be included in the counter-argument, but it is better to allocate two separate paragraphs for them. A sound finale will have your essay summarize quickly and powerfully. Appealing to emotion, using statistics and facts will help refresh your reader’s memory and convince them to take up your position. The last few sentences should be extremely clear and have a lasting image on your audience. Always make sure that you end your paper reinstating your side of the argument and why people should join.

Two Examples of Argumentative Essays

Writing a persuasive, argumentative essay can be complicated, and sometimes it can get a little confusing. To write an excellent argumentative essay, you’re going to have to practice rewriting your essay to help eliminate useless facts. Remember to not confuse an argumentative essay with a persuasive essay. Argumentative essays need to use facts to help back up your side of the argument, instead of just making different claims. To help you learn how to write an argumentative essay, we’ve listed some argumentative essay examples to help you. They are listed below.

Argumentative Essay Example #1

Students Should Use Smart Phones in School

Technology has become so advanced that your smartphone is essential a working computer. Students are starting to be encouraged to use technology such as laptops, computers, and ipads during class. Many parents don’t want their kids to use technology during class because they feel like their child wouldn’t use the smartphones for learning purposes, but instead use them to send text messages, play games, and stay plugged into social media outlets. The question we’re trying to cover in this essay is whether students should be allowed to use smart phones in their schools.

Students are already encouraged to use other sources of technology in class such as laptops and ipads to help increase their learning. Many teachers are already using projectors which are linked to laptops and demonstrate how to complete an assignment. If you’re in higher education such as college, you’re allowed to use your smartphone in class to complete any work or take notes. But, when you’re in high school, you’re not allowed to use your smartphones during class. If you can use smartphones in college, you should be able to use smartphones in high school and middle school. There need to be set rules on what you can do while using your smartphone.

We believe that smartphones could help bring more learning to every classroom. Using smartphones in school can help students have instant access to information related to their classes. During classes teachers no longer have to use their projector or have to make print outs on information. They could share a google document with the students, and the students can access it from their phone. All of the daily’s information will be saved on there, giving students instant and continuous access to everything they learned that day.

In classes, many students use their phones to take pictures of lectures, powerpoints and record the lecture. The issue is that taking pictures and videos require special permission from your professor. College students take pictures of lectures and then also record the class. This can help them later when they need to study information. Now, one thing we do have to consider is that college classes have students who need to pass the class, while in high school it’s more of choice. So the motivation for using smartphones in high school and college is both different.

Many parents and staff members disagree that the use of smartphones would help their classrooms. And while we get where they are coming from, that still doesn’t mean that students shouldn’t be allowed to use their smartphones in class. For example, smartphones can be used as calculators and can help anyone who is taking a math class. Regular calculators cost a lot of money for a student to use, therefore using their phone is easier and more effective. Not only that but students will be able to access their online courses and be able to follow the lecture through powerpoints. Lastly, students can also take pictures of powerpoint slides and take notes by using their phones. This would make it much easier than having them learn how to take notes.

With the advancements in technology, we believe that smartphones should be used in classrooms. They offer students and teacher instant access to any and all information. Of course, they can’t be used during testing, quizzes, or other activities that could be considered cheating. Therefore, they should only be used during the lecture. It would make taking notes in class a brass, and for those students who want to ace the class, they would be able to access the lecture if they recorded it at a later time and review materials.

Argumentative Essay Example #2

Can Smoking be Prevented by Making Tobacco Illegal

Tobacco is the main ingredient that you find in cigars, cigarettes, and as a chew. It’s no secret that tobacco has finally been linked to being a bad drug which wreaks havoc on the body. Not only does it contribute to lung failure, but it also has a negative effect on the liver and brain. Many people still choose to smoke even though they have been told that it’s bad for them. Would choose to ban tobacco and make it illegal prevent people from smoking? Would making tobacco-related products illegal even help the smoking population? Would it stop younger people from deciding to smoke?

The issue is that there are so many people who are still smoking. The goal is to end up getting fewer people to smoke. By banning tobacco and tobacco-related products, the hope is that fewer people will be able to smoke and gain access to them. Cigarettes are stocked in every single store you go to. From convenience stores, gas stations, and even supermarkets. You can find cigarettes online, and also buy them through designated cigarette shops. You can find them everywhere and anywhere. Many cigarette packets don’t come cheap, and an estimate millions of dollars are spent on people buying cigarettes or tobacco related products every single day.

Our stance on this issue is that by making tobacco, illegal people will still find a way to get it and smoke it. Just because there is a continuous ban on a product doesn’t mean that it can help the people who already know what using cigarettes is like. You have to think about all the people who would need to get into rehabilitation clinics because of withdrawal effects from tobacco. If a massive user does not get enough, they could end up going into withdrawal and even death if their body decides to give up. The ban on illegal substances would only end up hurting the population who needs the drug to slowly come off of it.

Tobacco is used in many other drugs and can be either consumed by chewing or be in the form of cigars or cigarettes. It has been shown that tobacco has adverse effects on the skin, lungs, liver, and kidney. It also damages your brain cells and can cause you to have lung problems. If you want to avoid respiratory failure, you may want to consider stopping smoking tobacco. Any drug that has this many adverse effects should not be consumed on a regular basis. Some populations smoke more than one cigarette a day, and sometimes the extreme cases smoke up to a pack or two a day.

Think about a very similar incident that happened almost a century ago. The ban on alcohol did not end up stopping people from drinking alcohol. Instead, it may have even boosted illegal activity because so many speakers started to show up. People ended up finding other sources to get their hands on alcohol. If we were to place a ban on tobacco, then people would still find out a way to produce them illegally. We already have enough drug wars going on; we don’t need another just because the US decides to ban tobacco.

As you can see, banning tobacco will not stop individuals from deciding to smoke. People will end up doing whatever they want even if the drug gets banned. Reducing smoking can be done through education, as smoking is not something you want to advocate for. To prevent smoking educate people on the adverse effects of tobacco and make it clear that just starting to smoke can end up giving you lifetime problems. You can’t control anyone’s opinion, and everyone is entitled to make their own choices, even when it comes to smoking. So, tobacco should not be banned or made illegal.

Conclusion

An excellent argument will use credible sources that help back up its claim. Always fact checks your argument and avoids using or making false or fake claims just to make your argument seem like the better side. Good argumentative essays not only provide facts to support the body of the argument and support your viewpoint but also use facts to help refute the opposing side of the argument. This can help convince your reader to stick with your side over the other. Choose from popular topics that people are passionate about. Never choose a topic that lacks research or evidence, as this leads to a weak argument overall. Hopefully, our argumentative essay example helped demonstrate how to write an argumentative essay.