Examples that show the thinking.
534 examples and lessons to explore. Find an approach, follow the thinking, and try it in your own writing.
Food Donation and Food-Waste Prevention Serve Different Purposes
An explanatory essay distinguishing prevention of surplus from recovery of edible food, and showing how both fit into the environmental management hierarchy.
Should Schools Encourage Students to Choose Lucrative Careers?
An argument that schools should give students practical, evidence-informed career guidance without steering them toward high salaries as the overriding measure of a worthwhile education.
Should Friends Always Agree With Each Other?
A qualified argument that friends need not agree on every issue, but should treat disagreement with respect, offer honest support, and set boundaries when conversation becomes harmful.
Online Reviews: Useful Evidence or Easily Manipulated Signals?
Online reviews can inform consumer decisions, but a star average is only a starting point. Compare sources, timing, detail, reviewer histories, and possible incentives, while remembering that suspicious patterns do not prove deception.
Heart of Darkness: Kurtz’s Reinvention and Colonial Power
An analysis of how Kurtz fashions himself as an authority through possessive claims, and how Conrad uses that self-fashioning to expose colonial power while leaving parts of Kurtz’s history and motives uncertain.
Student Loans: Why Comparing Costs Must Come Before Borrowing
A developed explanation of why students should compare grants, work-study, and loan terms before borrowing, with attention to repayment, financial uncertainty, and the limits of general advice.
Standard Oil, Big Business, and Progressive-Era Reform
Industrialization and national markets enabled corporations to concentrate power. Ida Tarbell challenged Standard Oil’s business practices, and her criticism contributed to a wider reform climate that helped produce federal antitrust action, though it was one influence among several.
GRE Issue Essay on Knowledge, Complexity, and Mystery
A qualified argument that knowledge makes some questions more answerable while exposing additional layers of complexity, especially when evidence concerns human choices, power, and competing interpretations.
Why Winning Should Not Be the Only Goal of Youth Sports
An argument for taking competition seriously while judging youth sports by more than who wins: effort, improvement, participation, and the quality of relationships matter too.
Jimmy Santiago Baca’s Claim About Possessions and Personal Stories
An argumentative essay that finds Baca’s claim substantially valid while recognizing that possessions and media can preserve, communicate, and enrich human stories.
Imagination vs. Knowledge in Professions and Academic Fields
An argumentative essay examining when imagination and knowledge matter most in professional and academic work, using land-grant education and the Hubble Space Telescope to show how they can depend on and correct one another.
Accessible Transit Is More Than a Wheelchair Ramp
An explanatory essay showing why transit access depends on the connected design of vehicles, stations, information, and service, with attention to federal programs and the limits of federal guidance.