essay for 10th grade

Elementary School

Middle school, high school, ets criterion sm library, grade 10 prompts, ws the room (descriptive).

Write a descriptive essay about a room or an area you know well, such as your bedroom or your English classroom. Describe the layout using spatial organization (top to bottom, front to back, left to right). Also include sensory details (sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste) so your reader can “see” the space clearly and understand how the parts relate to each other.

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WS Point of View (Expository)

The German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe said, “There is nothing insignificant in the world. It all depends on the point of view.” Explain why it is important to see a situation from another person’s point of view. Use examples and anecdotes from your own experience to support your viewpoint.

WS Happiness (Expository)

Aristotle once said, “Happiness depends upon ourselves.” Everyone knows the word “happiness,” but most of us have a different idea of what it means to be happy. Write an essay that defines the word “happiness” and include two or three examples either from your own experience or from literature.

WS A Good Job (Expository)

Many high school students have part-time jobs. Students often choose jobs that are based on economical factors and personal preferences. Identify a part-time job that you would like to have, analyze the duties involved, and explain why you believe the job would suit you.

WS Good Parents/Guardians (Expository)

Good parents or guardians demonstrate many valuable qualities that help nurture and raise children effectively. Choose three qualities of a good parent or guardian and write an essay that includes examples to support your choices.

WS Classes (Expository)

In a letter to a friend, compare and contrast two classes that you are currently taking. Write down the positive and the negative aspects of each class, using particular details or experiences from each.

WS Proud Accomplishment (Narrative)

Every person has moments of personal victory or achievement. In an article for your school newspaper, narrate an incident or an accomplishment that made you really proud. Make the experience come alive with vivid details and dialogue.

WS Personal Understanding (Narrative)

Sometimes adults say they attended the “School of Hard Knocks.” They mean that they learned by doing, by working, and by living. In a personal narrative, share a time in your life when you really understood something because you did it yourself. Show some of the “hard knocks” you endured, and clearly indicate what you learned.

WS Teen Licenses (Persuasive)

Your state plans to double license fees for drivers under the age of 18. The money will be used to fund driver-education programs. Write an editorial for your student newspaper supporting or opposing this decision. Use specific reasons and details to argue for your position.

WS Local Produce (Persuasive)

Your school food service wants to buy more produce from local farmers. This food is a bit more expensive, but it is free of pesticides. Write a letter to the food-service director giving your specific reasons for supporting or objecting to the plan.

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101 Interesting Persuasive Essay Topics for Kids and Teens

Use your words to sway the reader.

Persuasive writing is one of those skills that can help students succeed in real life.  Persuasive essays are similar to argumentative , but they rely less on facts and more on emotion to sway the reader. It’s important to know your audience so you can anticipate any counterarguments they might make and try to overcome them. Try reading some mentor texts to show kids great examples of opinion writing. Then use these persuasive essay topics for practice.

School and Education Persuasive Essay Topics

Life and ethics persuasive essay topics, science and technology persuasive essay topics, sports and entertainment persuasive essay topics, just for fun persuasive essay topics.

• Do you think homework should be required, optional, or not given at all?

• Students should/should not be able to use their phones during the school day.
• Should schools have dress codes?
• If I could change one school rule, it would be …
• Is year-round school a good idea?
• Should we stop giving final exams?
• Is it better to be good at academics or good at sports?

• Which is better, private schools or public schools?
• Should every student have to participate in athletics?
• Do you think schools should ban junk food from their cafeterias?
• Should students be required to volunteer in their communities?
• What is the most important school subject?
• Are letter grades helpful, or should we replace them with something else?

• Is it ever OK to cheat on homework or a test?
• Should students get to grade their teachers?
• Do you think college should be free for anyone who wants to attend?
• Should schools be allowed to ban some books from their libraries?
• Which is better, book smarts or street smarts?

• Should all students have to learn a foreign language?
• Are single-gender schools better or worse for students?
• Is it OK to eat animals?
• What animal makes the best pet?
• Visit an animal shelter, choose an animal that needs a home, and write an essay persuading someone to adopt that animal.
• If you find money on the ground, should you try to find the person who lost it, or is it yours to keep?

• Who faces more peer pressure, girls or boys?
• Should all Americans be required to vote?
• Is it better to be kind or truthful?
• Which is better, giving or receiving?
• Is it OK to keep animals in zoos?
• Should we change the minimum driving age in the United States?

• Which is more important, happiness or success?
• Is democracy the best form of government?
• Is social media helpful or harmful?
• Should parents be punished for their children’s mistakes or crimes?
• Should kids have set bedtimes or just go to bed when they’re sleepy?
• Do you think the government should find a way to provide free health care for everyone?

• Is it better to save your allowance or spend it?
• Should we ban plastic bags and bottles?
• Which is better, living in the city or in the country?
• If I could make a new law, it would be …
• Is Pluto a planet?
• Should human cloning be legal?
• Should vaccines be mandatory?
• Is it right for countries to still maintain nuclear weapon arsenals?

• Should testing on animals be made illegal?
• Will expanded use of artificial intelligence be good for humanity?
• Should all people have free Internet access in their homes?
• Is there intelligent life on other planets?
• Does technology create more jobs than it eliminates?
• Should parents use their children’s cell phones to track where they are?
• Should scientists try to develop a way for people to live forever?

• What’s the best type of smartphone: Android or iPhone?
• Which is better, Macs or PCs?
• Do people rely too much on technology in the modern world?
• Should cryptocurrencies replace cash?
• Should there be a minimum age requirement to own a smartphone?
• Is it important to keep spending money on space exploration, or should we use the money for other things?

• Should kids under 13 be allowed to use social media sites?
• Should we ban cigarette smoking and vaping entirely?
• Is it better to be an animal that lives in the water or on land?
• Should kids be allowed to watch TV on school nights?
• Which is better, paper books or e-books?
• Is the current movie rating system (G, PG, PG-13, etc.) effective?
• Are video games better than board games?
• Should we allow little kids to play competitive sports?

• Which is better, reading books or watching TV?
• Does playing violent video games make people more violent in real life?
• Are graphic novels just as valuable as traditional fictional books?
• Should everyone play on the same sports teams, regardless of gender?
• Choose a book that’s been made into a movie. Which was better, the movie or the book?

• Who is the world’s best athlete, present or past?
• Are professional athletes/musicians/actors overpaid?
• Which is better, fiction or nonfiction?
• The best music genre is …
• What is one book that everyone should read?
• What new sport should be added to the Olympics?

• What’s the best video game system?
• Does playing video games make you smarter?
• Does reality TV actually depict real life?
• Should all neighborhoods have free parks and playgrounds?
• What’s the best holiday?
• The very best food of all time is …
• Which is better, artificial Christmas trees or real ones?

• What’s the best season of the year?
• Should you put ketchup on a hot dog?
• Is a taco a sandwich?
• Does fruit count as dessert?
• Should people have to go to school or work on their birthday?
• Are clowns scary or funny?
• Which is more dangerous, werewolves or vampires?

• The best pizza topping is …
• What would be the best superpower to have?
• Should everyone make their bed every day?
• Which came first, the chicken or the egg?
• Should you put pineapple on a pizza?
• Should you eat macaroni and cheese with a spoon or a fork?

• Describe the world’s best ice cream sundae.
• Is Monday the worst day of the week?
• Would you rather travel back in time or forward in time?
• Is it better to be too hot or too cold?
• Are there aliens living among us here on Earth?

What are your favorite persuasive essay topics for students? Come exchange ideas in the We Are Teachers HELPLINE group on Facebook .

Plus, check out the big list of essay topics for high school (120+ ideas) ..

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The Big List of Essay Topics for High School (120+ Ideas!)

Ideas to inspire every young writer! Continue Reading

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How to write a perfect essay

Need to write an essay? Does the assignment feel as big as climbing Mount Everest? Fear not. You’re up to the challenge! The following step-by step tips from the Nat Geo Kids Almanac will help you with this monumental task. 

Sometimes the subject matter of your essay is assigned to you, sometimes it’s not. Either way, you have to decide what you want to say. Start by brainstorming some ideas, writing down any thoughts you have about the subject. Then read over everything you’ve come up with and consider which idea you think is the strongest. Ask yourself what you want to write about the most. Keep in mind the goal of your essay. Can you achieve the goal of the assignment with this topic? If so, you’re good to go.

WRITE A TOPIC SENTENCE

This is the main idea of your essay, a statement of your thoughts on the subject. Again, consider the goal of your essay. Think of the topic sentence as an introduction that tells your reader what the rest of your essay will be about.

OUTLINE YOUR IDEAS

Once you have a good topic sentence, you then need to support that main idea with more detailed information, facts, thoughts, and examples. These supporting points answer one question about your topic sentence—“Why?” This is where research and perhaps more brainstorming come in. Then organize these points in the way you think makes the most sense, probably in order of importance. Now you have an outline for your essay.

ON YOUR MARK, GET SET, WRITE!

Follow your outline, using each of your supporting points as the topic sentence of its own paragraph. Use descriptive words to get your ideas across to the reader. Go into detail, using specific information to tell your story or make your point. Stay on track, making sure that everything you include is somehow related to the main idea of your essay. Use transitions to make your writing flow.

Finish your essay with a conclusion that summarizes your entire essay and 5 restates your main idea.

PROOFREAD AND REVISE

Check for errors in spelling, capitalization, punctuation, and grammar. Look for ways to make your writing clear, understandable, and interesting. Use descriptive verbs, adjectives, or adverbs when possible. It also helps to have someone else read your work to point out things you might have missed. Then make the necessary corrections and changes in a second draft. Repeat this revision process once more to make your final draft as good as you can.

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10th Grade Writing Research Papers

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9th - 10th Grade Writing

For ninth and tenth graders, this Common Core area helps students gain mastery of writing skills by working collaboratively and producing written texts, understanding syntax and vocabulary, and organizing their ideas. Among the complete standards for this grade, ninth and tenth graders will be asked to: support the claims of their arguments with evidence, valid reasoning, and credible sources and support it with an understand of relationships between claims and an understanding of the audience, use a formal style when writing within the norms and claims of the discipline, be able to develop the topic of a work with details, facts, definitions, and quotations, employ formatting, graphics, and multimedia to present information in the written medium, develop a writing topic with relevant facts, definitions, and concrete details, go through the process of writing, editing and revision for their written work with attention to purpose and audience, use appropriate technology to publish writing and to collaborate on written projects with use of linking technology to demonstrate correlations between sources or related material, demonstrate keyboarding skill, go through the process of writing, editing and revision for their written work, conduct short research projects to answer a question, begin to understand the relationship of material to their source work such as the way that Shakespeare might draw on themes from Ovid, quote or paraphrase the data and conclusions of supporting texts while avoiding plagiarism and using proper citation, use evidence from literary or informational texts to support analysis, reflection, and research.

How to Write a Thesis Statement

This activity helps students develop a strong thesis statement for their essays by providing practice writing sample statements.

How to Write an Introduction: Bridge Building Activity

This activity is designed to help students learn about writing introductions through a fun bridge building activity to join the lead noun card and thesis statement card.

How to Write an Introduction: Different Leads

This is a fun, creative activity where students explore ways to include factoids, stories, metaphors and more to create “hooks”. A great activity to help students develop strong introductions.

How to Write an Introduction: Lead Types

Creating an attention-grabbing lead isn’t always easy but it’s very rewarding to students when they are able to create engaging introductions. This activity provides great practice to build better introductions!

How to Write an Introduction: Lead, Bridge, and Thesis

Let’s combine it all! This activity helps students use thesis statements, bridges and leads to write strong essay introductions.

How to Write an Introduction: Write a Complete Introduction

This activity helps students bring together what they’ve learned to write a complete introduction, including the lead, bridge, and thesis statement.

Main Idea Graphic Organizer

Staying organized can be difficult, especially when you are trying to keep your writing and ideas well organized. With this printable Main Idea Graphic Organizer, students can keep their thoughts and ideas organized and separated based on their order of importance.

Organize the Main Idea

Help your students learn how to better organize their ideas with this Main Idea Organizer. Students will be asked to come up with a title, write a main idea, and support the main idea with three written details. In order to excel at writing, it is important to learn how to construct paragraphs in a way that is easy for the reader to understand the argument.

Paragraph: Proofing and Editing

Use this “Printable Writing Worksheet” to help get in the routine of proofing and editing.

Write a Conclusion: Voting

A strongly written conclusion can sway a reader one way or another. When writing persuasive articles it is important that you restate your thesis and give strong supporting ideas. The conclusion is the last chance you will have to sway your readers. This free printable worksheet is perfect for students to practice writing conclusions.

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• Grade 10 ELA Module 4, Unit 1, Lesson 1

Bilingual Language Progressions

These resources, developed by the New York State Education Department, provide standard-level scaffolding suggestions for English Language Learners (ELLs) to help them meet grade-level demands. Each resource contains scaffolds at multiple levels of language acquisition and describes the linguistic demands of the standards to help ELA teachers as well as ESL/bilingual teachers scaffold content for their English learning students.

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10th Grade English: Argumentative Writing: MLA Citations and Formatting

• MLA Citations and Formatting
• In-text Citations - Examples

Get Help Here

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• How to Cite Electronic Resources (including a tweet and YouTube video!)
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Formatting a Research Paper

• Formatting a Research Paper Updated resource to match 8th edition of MLA style guide.

Avoid Plagiarism!

• Plagiarism & Academic Dishonesty Why does it matter?

MLA 8 update: Sources on your works cited page should be listed in the following order:

• Title of source.
• Title of container,
• Other contributors,
• Publication date,

After each item should be the punctuation as shown above. 

A container is the larger whole where you found the source. For example, when citing a website you would list the title of the page you are using for "title of source," but then list the name of the website itself for "title of container."

Here is an example of such a citation:

Daum, Meghan. "New Memoirs Show How the Other Half Lives." The New York Times.        10 Oct. 2016, www.nytimes.com/2016/10/16/books/review/       hillbilly-elegy-j-d-vance-catching-homelessness-family-of-earth.html?rref=collect       ion%2Fsectioncollection%2Fbooks&action=click&contentCollection=books®ion=rank&       module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=2&pgtype=sectionfront&_r=0.       Accessed 10 Oct. 2016. 

You can see how the title of the source is the title of the article, and The New York Times is the larger container/source where the article was found.

For a book, the title of the book would be the title of source and there would be no title of container.

However, if you were citing a poem from a book a poetry, then the title of the poem would be the title of source and the book title would be the title of container.

You can avoid all of this confusion by using the link to the right for Noodletools where you can cite all of your sources quickly and easily! 

MLA Examples

Example of citing a tweet:

@WSJ. “Generation X went from the most successful in terms of homeownership rates in 2004 to the least successful by 2015.”  Twitter , 8 Apr. 2016, 4:30 p.m., twitter.com/WSJ/status/718532887830753280

Sample MLA Formatted Paper

Click on the image below to see an example of a completed, MLA-formatted paper.

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• Create a personal ID, using your Bensalem login and password (that you use to login to school computers).
• If NoodleTools asks for the school authentication information, the ID is  bensalemhs  and the password is owls.
• To start a new project, click the  New Project  button on the top left.
• Choose  MLA Advanced (unless otherwise directed by your teacher).
• Give your project a name. 
• Click  Sources  and then  Create a New Citation to start citing sources.

In-text Citations

• In-text Citations - MLA Basics Examples of in-text citations for MLA papers.

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8.15: Sample Student Literary Analysis Essays

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• Heather Ringo & Athena Kashyap
• City College of San Francisco via ASCCC Open Educational Resources Initiative

The following examples are essays where student writers focused on close-reading a literary work.

While reading these examples, ask yourself the following questions:

• What is the essay's thesis statement, and how do you know it is the thesis statement?
• What is the main idea or topic sentence of each body paragraph, and how does it relate back to the thesis statement?
• Where and how does each essay use evidence (quotes or paraphrase from the literature)?
• What are some of the literary devices or structures the essays analyze or discuss?
• How does each author structure their conclusion, and how does their conclusion differ from their introduction?

Example 1: Poetry

Victoria Morillo

Instructor Heather Ringo

3 August 2022

How Nguyen’s Structure Solidifies the Impact of Sexual Violence in “The Study”

Stripped of innocence, your body taken from you. No matter how much you try to block out the instance in which these two things occurred, memories surface and come back to haunt you. How does a person, a young boy , cope with an event that forever changes his life? Hieu Minh Nguyen deconstructs this very way in which an act of sexual violence affects a survivor. In his poem, “The Study,” the poem's speaker recounts the year in which his molestation took place, describing how his memory filters in and out. Throughout the poem, Nguyen writes in free verse, permitting a structural liberation to become the foundation for his message to shine through. While he moves the readers with this poignant narrative, Nguyen effectively conveys the resulting internal struggles of feeling alone and unseen.

The speaker recalls his experience with such painful memory through the use of specific punctuation choices. Just by looking at the poem, we see that the first period doesn’t appear until line 14. It finally comes after the speaker reveals to his readers the possible, central purpose for writing this poem: the speaker's molestation. In the first half, the poem makes use of commas, em dashes, and colons, which lends itself to the idea of the speaker stringing along all of these details to make sense of this time in his life. If reading the poem following the conventions of punctuation, a sense of urgency is present here, as well. This is exemplified by the lack of periods to finalize a thought; and instead, Nguyen uses other punctuation marks to connect them. Serving as another connector of thoughts, the two em dashes give emphasis to the role memory plays when the speaker discusses how “no one [had] a face” during that time (Nguyen 9-11). He speaks in this urgent manner until the 14th line, and when he finally gets it off his chest, the pace of the poem changes, as does the more frequent use of the period. This stream-of-consciousness-like section when juxtaposed with the latter half of the poem, causes readers to slow down and pay attention to the details. It also splits the poem in two: a section that talks of the fogginess of memory then transitions into one that remembers it all.

In tandem with the fluctuating nature of memory, the utilization of line breaks and word choice help reflect the damage the molestation has had. Within the first couple of lines of the poem, the poem demands the readers’ attention when the line breaks from “floating” to “dead” as the speaker describes his memory of Little Billy (Nguyen 1-4). This line break averts the readers’ expectation of the direction of the narrative and immediately shifts the tone of the poem. The break also speaks to the effect his trauma has ingrained in him and how “[f]or the longest time,” his only memory of that year revolves around an image of a boy’s death. In a way, the speaker sees himself in Little Billy; or perhaps, he’s representative of the tragic death of his boyhood, how the speaker felt so “dead” after enduring such a traumatic experience, even referring to himself as a “ghost” that he tries to evict from his conscience (Nguyen 24). The feeling that a part of him has died is solidified at the very end of the poem when the speaker describes himself as a nine-year-old boy who’s been “fossilized,” forever changed by this act (Nguyen 29). By choosing words associated with permanence and death, the speaker tries to recreate the atmosphere (for which he felt trapped in) in order for readers to understand the loneliness that came as a result of his trauma. With the assistance of line breaks, more attention is drawn to the speaker's words, intensifying their importance, and demanding to be felt by the readers.

Most importantly, the speaker expresses eloquently, and so heartbreakingly, about the effect sexual violence has on a person. Perhaps what seems to be the most frustrating are the people who fail to believe survivors of these types of crimes. This is evident when he describes “how angry” the tenants were when they filled the pool with cement (Nguyen 4). They seem to represent how people in the speaker's life were dismissive of his assault and who viewed his tragedy as a nuisance of some sorts. This sentiment is bookended when he says, “They say, give us details , so I give them my body. / They say, give us proof , so I give them my body,” (Nguyen 25-26). The repetition of these two lines reinforces the feeling many feel in these scenarios, as they’re often left to deal with trying to make people believe them, or to even see them.

It’s important to recognize how the structure of this poem gives the speaker space to express the pain he’s had to carry for so long. As a characteristic of free verse, the poem doesn’t follow any structured rhyme scheme or meter; which in turn, allows him to not have any constraints in telling his story the way he wants to. The speaker has the freedom to display his experience in a way that evades predictability and engenders authenticity of a story very personal to him. As readers, we abandon anticipating the next rhyme, and instead focus our attention to the other ways, like his punctuation or word choice, in which he effectively tells his story. The speaker recognizes that some part of him no longer belongs to himself, but by writing “The Study,” he shows other survivors that they’re not alone and encourages hope that eventually, they will be freed from the shackles of sexual violence.

Works Cited

Nguyen, Hieu Minh. “The Study” Poets.Org. Academy of American Poets, Coffee House Press, 2018, https://poets.org/poem/study-0 .

Example 2: Fiction

Todd Goodwin

Professor Stan Matyshak

Advanced Expository Writing

Sept. 17, 20—

Poe’s “Usher”: A Mirror of the Fall of the House of Humanity

Right from the outset of the grim story, “The Fall of the House of Usher,” Edgar Allan Poe enmeshes us in a dark, gloomy, hopeless world, alienating his characters and the reader from any sort of physical or psychological norm where such values as hope and happiness could possibly exist. He fatalistically tells the story of how a man (the narrator) comes from the outside world of hope, religion, and everyday society and tries to bring some kind of redeeming happiness to his boyhood friend, Roderick Usher, who not only has physically and psychologically wasted away but is entrapped in a dilapidated house of ever-looming terror with an emaciated and deranged twin sister. Roderick Usher embodies the wasting away of what once was vibrant and alive, and his house of “insufferable gloom” (273), which contains his morbid sister, seems to mirror or reflect this fear of death and annihilation that he most horribly endures. A close reading of the story reveals that Poe uses mirror images, or reflections, to contribute to the fatalistic theme of “Usher”: each reflection serves to intensify an already prevalent tone of hopelessness, darkness, and fatalism.

It could be argued that the house of Roderick Usher is a “house of mirrors,” whose unpleasant and grim reflections create a dark and hopeless setting. For example, the narrator first approaches “the melancholy house of Usher on a dark and soundless day,” and finds a building which causes him a “sense of insufferable gloom,” which “pervades his spirit and causes an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart, an undiscerned dreariness of thought” (273). The narrator then optimistically states: “I reflected that a mere different arrangement of the scene, of the details of the picture, would be sufficient to modify, or perhaps annihilate its capacity for sorrowful impression” (274). But the narrator then sees the reflection of the house in the tarn and experiences a “shudder even more thrilling than before” (274). Thus the reader begins to realize that the narrator cannot change or stop the impending doom that will befall the house of Usher, and maybe humanity. The story cleverly plays with the word reflection : the narrator sees a physical reflection that leads him to a mental reflection about Usher’s surroundings.

The narrator’s disillusionment by such grim reflection continues in the story. For example, he describes Roderick Usher’s face as distinct with signs of old strength but lost vigor: the remains of what used to be. He describes the house as a once happy and vibrant place, which, like Roderick, lost its vitality. Also, the narrator describes Usher’s hair as growing wild on his rather obtrusive head, which directly mirrors the eerie moss and straw covering the outside of the house. The narrator continually longs to see these bleak reflections as a dream, for he states: “Shaking off from my spirit what must have been a dream, I scanned more narrowly the real aspect of the building” (276). He does not want to face the reality that Usher and his home are doomed to fall, regardless of what he does.

Although there are almost countless examples of these mirror images, two others stand out as important. First, Roderick and his sister, Madeline, are twins. The narrator aptly states just as he and Roderick are entombing Madeline that there is “a striking similitude between brother and sister” (288). Indeed, they are mirror images of each other. Madeline is fading away psychologically and physically, and Roderick is not too far behind! The reflection of “doom” that these two share helps intensify and symbolize the hopelessness of the entire situation; thus, they further develop the fatalistic theme. Second, in the climactic scene where Madeline has been mistakenly entombed alive, there is a pairing of images and sounds as the narrator tries to calm Roderick by reading him a romance story. Events in the story simultaneously unfold with events of the sister escaping her tomb. In the story, the hero breaks out of the coffin. Then, in the story, the dragon’s shriek as he is slain parallels Madeline’s shriek. Finally, the story tells of the clangor of a shield, matched by the sister’s clanging along a metal passageway. As the suspense reaches its climax, Roderick shrieks his last words to his “friend,” the narrator: “Madman! I tell you that she now stands without the door” (296).

Roderick, who slowly falls into insanity, ironically calls the narrator the “Madman.” We are left to reflect on what Poe means by this ironic twist. Poe’s bleak and dark imagery, and his use of mirror reflections, seem only to intensify the hopelessness of “Usher.” We can plausibly conclude that, indeed, the narrator is the “Madman,” for he comes from everyday society, which is a place where hope and faith exist. Poe would probably argue that such a place is opposite to the world of Usher because a world where death is inevitable could not possibly hold such positive values. Therefore, just as Roderick mirrors his sister, the reflection in the tarn mirrors the dilapidation of the house, and the story mirrors the final actions before the death of Usher. “The Fall of the House of Usher” reflects Poe’s view that humanity is hopelessly doomed.

Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Fall of the House of Usher.” 1839. Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Library . 1995. Web. 1 July 2012. < http://etext.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/PoeFall.html >.

Example 3: Poetry

Amy Chisnell

Professor Laura Neary

Writing and Literature

April 17, 20—

Don’t Listen to the Egg!: A Close Reading of Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky”

“You seem very clever at explaining words, Sir,” said Alice. “Would you kindly tell me the meaning of the poem called ‘Jabberwocky’?”

“Let’s hear it,” said Humpty Dumpty. “I can explain all the poems that ever were invented—and a good many that haven’t been invented just yet.” (Carroll 164)

In Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass , Humpty Dumpty confidently translates (to a not so confident Alice) the complicated language of the poem “Jabberwocky.” The words of the poem, though nonsense, aptly tell the story of the slaying of the Jabberwock. Upon finding “Jabberwocky” on a table in the looking-glass room, Alice is confused by the strange words. She is quite certain that “ somebody killed something ,” but she does not understand much more than that. When later she encounters Humpty Dumpty, she seizes the opportunity at having the knowledgeable egg interpret—or translate—the poem. Since Humpty Dumpty professes to be able to “make a word work” for him, he is quick to agree. Thus he acts like a New Critic who interprets the poem by performing a close reading of it. Through Humpty’s interpretation of the first stanza, however, we see the poem’s deeper comment concerning the practice of interpreting poetry and literature in general—that strict analytical translation destroys the beauty of a poem. In fact, Humpty Dumpty commits the “heresy of paraphrase,” for he fails to understand that meaning cannot be separated from the form or structure of the literary work.

Of the 71 words found in “Jabberwocky,” 43 have no known meaning. They are simply nonsense. Yet through this nonsensical language, the poem manages not only to tell a story but also gives the reader a sense of setting and characterization. One feels, rather than concretely knows, that the setting is dark, wooded, and frightening. The characters, such as the Jubjub bird, the Bandersnatch, and the doomed Jabberwock, also appear in the reader’s head, even though they will not be found in the local zoo. Even though most of the words are not real, the reader is able to understand what goes on because he or she is given free license to imagine what the words denote and connote. Simply, the poem’s nonsense words are the meaning.

Therefore, when Humpty interprets “Jabberwocky” for Alice, he is not doing her any favors, for he actually misreads the poem. Although the poem in its original is constructed from nonsense words, by the time Humpty is done interpreting it, it truly does not make any sense. The first stanza of the original poem is as follows:

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;

All mimsy were the borogroves,

An the mome raths outgrabe. (Carroll 164)

If we replace, however, the nonsense words of “Jabberwocky” with Humpty’s translated words, the effect would be something like this:

’Twas four o’clock in the afternoon, and the lithe and slimy badger-lizard-corkscrew creatures

Did go round and round and make holes in the grass-plot round the sun-dial:

All flimsy and miserable were the shabby-looking birds

with mop feathers,

And the lost green pigs bellowed-sneezed-whistled.

By translating the poem in such a way, Humpty removes the charm or essence—and the beauty, grace, and rhythm—from the poem. The poetry is sacrificed for meaning. Humpty Dumpty commits the heresy of paraphrase. As Cleanth Brooks argues, “The structure of a poem resembles that of a ballet or musical composition. It is a pattern of resolutions and balances and harmonizations” (203). When the poem is left as nonsense, the reader can easily imagine what a “slithy tove” might be, but when Humpty tells us what it is, he takes that imaginative license away from the reader. The beauty (if that is the proper word) of “Jabberwocky” is in not knowing what the words mean, and yet understanding. By translating the poem, Humpty takes that privilege from the reader. In addition, Humpty fails to recognize that meaning cannot be separated from the structure itself: the nonsense poem reflects this literally—it means “nothing” and achieves this meaning by using “nonsense” words.

Furthermore, the nonsense words Carroll chooses to use in “Jabberwocky” have a magical effect upon the reader; the shadowy sound of the words create the atmosphere, which may be described as a trance-like mood. When Alice first reads the poem, she says it seems to fill her head “with ideas.” The strange-sounding words in the original poem do give one ideas. Why is this? Even though the reader has never heard these words before, he or she is instantly aware of the murky, mysterious mood they set. In other words, diction operates not on the denotative level (the dictionary meaning) but on the connotative level (the emotion(s) they evoke). Thus “Jabberwocky” creates a shadowy mood, and the nonsense words are instrumental in creating this mood. Carroll could not have simply used any nonsense words.

For example, let us change the “dark,” “ominous” words of the first stanza to “lighter,” more “comic” words:

’Twas mearly, and the churly pells

Did bimble and ringle in the tink;

All timpy were the brimbledimps,

And the bip plips outlink.

Shifting the sounds of the words from dark to light merely takes a shift in thought. To create a specific mood using nonsense words, one must create new words from old words that convey the desired mood. In “Jabberwocky,” Carroll mixes “slimy,” a grim idea, “lithe,” a pliable image, to get a new adjective: “slithy” (a portmanteau word). In this translation, brighter words were used to get a lighter effect. “Mearly” is a combination of “morning” and “early,” and “ringle” is a blend of “ring” and "dingle.” The point is that “Jabberwocky’s” nonsense words are created specifically to convey this shadowy or mysterious mood and are integral to the “meaning.”

Consequently, Humpty’s rendering of the poem leaves the reader with a completely different feeling than does the original poem, which provided us with a sense of ethereal mystery, of a dark and foreign land with exotic creatures and fantastic settings. The mysteriousness is destroyed by Humpty’s literal paraphrase of the creatures and the setting; by doing so, he has taken the beauty away from the poem in his attempt to understand it. He has committed the heresy of paraphrase: “If we allow ourselves to be misled by it [this heresy], we distort the relation of the poem to its ‘truth’… we split the poem between its ‘form’ and its ‘content’” (Brooks 201). Humpty Dumpty’s ultimate demise might be seen to symbolize the heretical split between form and content: as a literary creation, Humpty Dumpty is an egg, a well-wrought urn of nonsense. His fall from the wall cracks him and separates the contents from the container, and not even all the King’s men can put the scrambled egg back together again!

Through the odd characters of a little girl and a foolish egg, “Jabberwocky” suggests a bit of sage advice about reading poetry, advice that the New Critics built their theories on. The importance lies not solely within strict analytical translation or interpretation, but in the overall effect of the imagery and word choice that evokes a meaning inseparable from those literary devices. As Archibald MacLeish so aptly writes: “A poem should not mean / But be.” Sometimes it takes a little nonsense to show us the sense in something.

Brooks, Cleanth. The Well-Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure of Poetry . 1942. San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1956. Print.

Carroll, Lewis. Through the Looking-Glass. Alice in Wonderland . 2nd ed. Ed. Donald J. Gray. New York: Norton, 1992. Print.

MacLeish, Archibald. “Ars Poetica.” The Oxford Book of American Poetry . Ed. David Lehman. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2006. 385–86. Print.

Attribution

• Sample Essay 1 received permission from Victoria Morillo to publish, licensed Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International ( CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 )
• Sample Essays 2 and 3 adapted from Cordell, Ryan and John Pennington. "2.5: Student Sample Papers" from Creating Literary Analysis. 2012. Licensed Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported ( CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 )

Argumentative Essay Writing

Argumentative Essay Examples

Best Argumentative Essay Examples for Your Help

Published on: Mar 10, 2023

Last updated on: Jan 30, 2024

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Argumentative essays are one of the most common types of essay writing. Students are assigned to write such essays very frequently.

Despite being assigned so frequently, students still find it hard to write a good argumentative essay .

There are certain things that one needs to follow to write a good argumentative essay. The first thing is to choose an effective and interesting topic. Use all possible sources to dig out the best topic.

Afterward, the student should choose the model that they would follow to write this type of essay. Follow the steps of the chosen model and start writing the essay.

The models for writing an argumentative essay are the classical model, the Rogerian model, and the Toulmin model.

To make sure that you write a good argumentative essay, read the different types of examples mentioned in this blog.

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Good Argumentative Essay Examples

Argumentative essays are an inevitable part of academic life. To write a good argumentative essay, you need to see a few good examples of this type of essay.

To analyze whether the example is good to take help from or not. You need to look for a few things in it.

Make sure it follows one specific model and has an introductory paragraph, organized body paragraphs, and a formal conclusion.

Get More Examples From Our AI Essay Writer

How to Start an Argumentative Essay Example

Learning how to start an argumentative essay example is a tricky thing for beginners. It is quite simple but can be challenging for newbies.   To start an argumentative essay example, you need to write a brief and attractive introduction. It is written to convince the reader and make them understand your point of view .

Add body paragraphs after the introduction to support your thesis statement. Also, use body paragraphs to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of your side of the argument.

Write a formal conclusion for your essay and summarize all the key elements of your essay. Look at the example mentioned below to understand the concept more clearly.

Check out this video for more information!

Argumentative Essay Example (PDF)

Argumentative Essay Example 

Argumentative essays are assigned to university students more often than the students of schools and colleges.

 It involves arguments over vast and sometimes bold topics as well.

For university students, usually, argumentative essay topics are not provided. They are required to search for the topic themselves and write accordingly.

The following examples will give an idea of how university students write argumentative essays.

Argumentative Essay Example for University (PDF)

Argumentative Essay Examples for College

For the college level, it is recommended to use simple language and avoid the use of complex words in essays.

Make sure that using simple language and valid evidence, you support your claim well and make it as convincing as possible

If you are a college student and want to write an argumentative essay, read the examples provided below. Focus on the formatting and the vocabulary used.

Argumentative Essay Example for College (PDF)

College Argumentative Essay Sample (PDF)

Argumentative Essay Examples for Middle School

Being a middle school student, you must be wondering how we write an argumentative essay. And how can you support your argument?

Go through the following examples and hopefully, you will be able to write an effective argumentative essay very easily.

Argumentative Essay Example for Middle School(PDF)

Middle School Argumentative Essay Sample (PDF)

Argumentative Essay Examples for High School

High school students are not very aware of all the skills that are needed to write research papers and essays. 

Especially, when it comes to argumentative essays, it becomes quite a challenge for high schools to defend their argument

In this scenario, the best option is to look into some good examples. Here we have summed up two best examples of argumentative essays for high school students specifically.

Argumentative Essay Example for High School (PDF)

High School Argumentative Essay Sample (PDF)

Argumentative Essay Examples for O Level

The course outline for O levels is quite tough. O levels students need to have a good command of the English language and amazing writing skills.

If you are an O-level student, the following examples will guide you on how to write an argumentative essay.

Argumentative Essay Example for O Level (PDF)

Argumentative Essay for O Level Students (PDF)

5-Paragraph Argumentative Essay Examples

A 5-paragraph essay is basically a formatting style for essay writing. It has the following five parts:

• Introduction

In the introduction, the writer introduces the topic and provides a glance at the collected data to support the main argument.

• Body paragraph 1

The first body paragraph discusses the first and most important point related to the argument. It starts with a topic sentence and has all the factual data to make the argument convincing.

• Body paragraph 2

The second body paragraph mentions the second most important element of the argument. A topic sentence is used to start these paragraphs. It gives the idea of the point that will discuss in the following paragraph.

• Body paragraph 3

The third paragraph discusses all the miscellaneous points. Also, it uses a transitional sentence at the end to show a relation to the conclusion.

The conclusion of a five-paragraph essay reiterates all the major elements of an argumentative essay. It also restates the thesis statement using a more convincing choice of words.

Look at the example below to see how a well-written five-paragraph essay looks like

5 Paragraph Argumentative Essay Example (PDF)

Argumentative Essay Examples for 6th Grade

Students in 6th grade are at a point where they are learning new things every day. 

Writing an argumentative essay is an interesting activity for them as they like to convince people of their point of view.

Argumentative essays written at such levels are very simple but well convincing. 

The following example will give you more detail on how a 6th-grade student should write an argumentative essay.

6th Grade Argumentative Essay Example (PDF)

Argumentative Essay Examples for 7th Grade

There is not much difference between a 6th-grade and a 7th-grade student. Both of them are enhancing their writing and academic skills.

Here is another example to help you with writing an effective argumentative essay.

7th Grade Argumentative Essay Example (PDF)

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Short Argumentative Essay Examples

For an argumentative essay, there is no specific limit for the word count. It only has to convince the readers and pass on the knowledge of the writer to the intended audience.

It can be short or detailed. It would be considered valid as far as it has an argument involved in it.

Following is an example of a short argumentative essay example

Short Argumentative Essay Example (PDF)

Immigration Argumentative Essay Examples

Immigration is a hot topic for a very long time now. People have different opinions regarding this issue.

Where there is more than one opinion, an argumentative essay can be written on that topic. The following are examples of argumentative essays on immigration.

Read them and try to understand how an effective argumentative essay is written on such a topic.

Argumentative Essay Example on Immigration (PDF)

Argumentative Essay Sample on Immigration (PDF)

Writing essays is usually a tiring and time-consuming assignment to do. Students already have a bunch of assignments for other subjects to complete. In this situation, asking for help from professional writers is the best choice.

If you are still in need of assistance, our essay writer AI can help you create a compelling essay that presents your argument clearly and effectively. 

With our argumentative essay writing service, you will enjoy perks like expert guidance, unlimited revisions, and helpful customer support. Let our essay writer help you make an impact with your essay on global warming today! 

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Frequently Asked Questions

What are the 7 types of arguments.

The seven types of arguments are as follows:

• Statistical

What is the structure of an argument?

The structure of an argument consists of a main point (thesis statement) that is supported by evidence. 

This evidence can include facts, statistics, examples, and other forms of data that help to prove or disprove the thesis statement. 

After providing the evidence, arguments also often include a conclusion that summarizes the main points made throughout the argument.

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50 Writing Prompts for All Grade Levels

Sometimes students need a little push to activate their imaginations.

The collection of prompts below asks young writers to think through real or imagined events, their emotions, and a few wacky scenarios. Try out the ones you think will resonate most with your students. 

As with all prompts, inform students that their answers should be rated G and that disclosing dangerous or illegal things they’re involved in will obligate you to file a report with the administration or school counselors. Finally, give students the option of writing “PERSONAL” above some entries that they don’t want anyone to read. We all need to let scraggly emotions run free in our prose sometimes.

If your class uses daybooks (an approach recommended in Thinking Out Loud: The Student Daybook as a Tool to Foster Learning ), wait for composition notebooks to go on sale at Target, the Dollar Store, or Walmart for $0.50 a piece. To organize the daybook, direct young writers to leave the first three pages blank and number and date each entry—adding these entries to a table of contents that they create as they work so they can return to specific entries later. 

High School Prompts

• Should cameras on drones watch all public spaces to prevent crime, or is that a violation of privacy? 
• Do Americans have it too easy? Why do you think that?
• What causes racism?
• The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation hires you as a consultant to determine how best to use $20 billion to save the world. What’s your plan?
• What’s the worst thing about the internet? 
• Would you rather be very beautiful or very smart? Explain.
• You can save one object before your house burns down. What is it? What makes that object important to you?
• How much control over your life do you have? What makes you say that? 
• Describe your ideal life 15 years from now. What is something you can do every day to reach that goal?
• What would your friends say is your most lovable quality? Describe that quality. 
• What is something scary that you would like to try? What makes it scary for you? How might you overcome that fear?
• What things do you conscientiously do to feed your brain?
• What are three of your most profound learning experiences? Where and when did they occur?
• By age 18, the average American has seen 200,000 acts of violence on TV, including 40,000 murders. What is it about television violence that is so compelling to people?
• Would you rather be loved or respected? Because?
• Does social media represent individuals authentically? Explain with examples. 
• Imagine that it’s the last day of high school and you’ve been asked by a teacher to say a few words that summarize the events that have occurred over the last four years that are most meaningful to you. What do you say? 

Middle School Prompts

• Which classmate would be the best to lead us through a zombie apocalypse? Why? 
• What real-life situations would work out better for you if you were a different gender? Why?
• How can you tell when someone your age is feeling insecure? Are most people more insecure or anxious than they let on?
• If the internet were to crash forever, what would the benefits be for you? The drawbacks?
• Write a scene that features a) a classmate, b) $100 million, and c) magical shoes. 
• What three features should your future house have? Why?
• If you starred in a television show about your life, what would the show be called? What genre would it be? (Examples: comedy, drama, thriller, romance, action-adventure, fantasy, superhero, soap opera, reality, game show, space adventure, Western, tragedy, etc.) Summarize the plot of an episode. 
• In the future, what extreme sports will people be talking about?
• Is your ethnicity an important part of your identity? How so? 
• You get to take one book, one food item, and one famous person (living or dead) to a deserted island. What and who do you take? Why?
• Write a powerfully supportive email to yourself 10 years from now. Send that email to yourself using FutureMe.org . 
• You have been selected to be king or queen of your school. What are five rules that every kid should follow at your school? What should the punishment be for rule breakers?
• What do the five friends you hang out with most have in common? How are you most like them? How are you different from them?
• What contributes to someone becoming a bully? What can help stop someone from bullying?
• Do you make friends slowly or quickly? Describe how one of your important friendships evolved.
• Should we fear failure? Explain.
• If a wizard could tell you anything about your future, what would you most like to know?
• Do you believe in luck? Are you superstitious? How so? If not, why do you think some people are?

Elementary School Prompts

• I wish my teachers knew that . . .
• What’s the most beautiful person, place, or thing you’ve ever seen? Share what makes that person, place, or thing so special. 
• Which is better, giant muscles or incredible speed? Why?
• What is your most difficult subject in school? Why is it difficult? What can you do to get better at that subject?
• Rewrite “Hansel and Gretel” from the witch’s perspective.
• Describe a scary situation that you’ve experienced.
• What is your first memory? Describe it.
• You wake up tomorrow with a silly superpower that makes you famous. What is that silly power? How does it lead to your becoming an international superstar? 
• Are you a good loser? Explain. 
• What are examples of things you want versus things you need? 
• Last Friday, you were given one wish by a magical panda. You tried so hard to make the wish positive, but after the whacked-out events that unfolded over the weekend, you regret ever meeting that tricky panda. What did you ask for, and what happened?
• I wish my friends . . . 
• Describe a routine that you often or always do (in the morning, when you get home, Friday nights, before a game, etc.).
• What things do all kids know that adults do not?
• What TV or movie characters do you wish were real? Why? 

After they’ve finished an entry, ask students to read their work aloud or exchange daybooks for a read-around. If you give the entries written feedback, show that their work is respected by using a sticky note or scratch paper. 

You might also incorporate background writing music one day a week—say on “Music Monday.” For some examples of music you might use in class, Pitchfork has an article called “ The 50 Best Ambient Albums of All Time .” My favorite album for composing is the Birdy soundtrack by Peter Gabriel—a good one for older kids. Other Edutopia staff and bloggers like writing to Coffitivity , Noisli , Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven by Godspeed You! Black Emperor, and Alcest’s Souvenirs d’un Autre Monde .

Don’t forget to write along with your students. Why should they have all the fun?

What are your students’ favorite writing prompts?