Argumentative topic sentences activity:

For each example, highlight the subject of the topic sentence and the claim of the topic sentence.

  1. The drought in California is serious, and people need to stop wasting water as they go about their daily lives.
  2. Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations is a boring book that isn’t worth assigning in high schools.
  3. Native Foods Café is the best restaurant near campus.
  4. The most important part of being a good friend is to always support your friends, even when they make bad decisions.

Argumentative paragraph examples:

Smoking should be outlawed on OCC’s campus because it is harmful and annoying to nonsmokers. Secondhand smoke is deadly, and it is nearly impossible to avoid. Many smokers are just plain rude, and they don’t follow posted signs about where and when they can smoke. As a result, nonsmokers often have to walk through clouds of smoke in order to get to their classes. Just outside the Literature and Languages building, for example, there is a brick wall that smokers love to sit on as they enjoy their cigarettes. Unfortunately, that brick wall is also very close to the entrance to the building, so those who walk by have no choice to breathe in their smoke. Another example of this problem is near the student center cafeteria. People are always smoking just outside that door, and there is no way to avoid them. If we outlawed smoking on campus, some people might take that rule more seriously. Those who do not could be ticketed or fined. This would be an important step toward making the campus a safer place for those who want to take care of their bodies.

English 098 is an important class for people who want to be prepared to transfer to the university. In this class, students learn important college-level writing skills that can help them do better than their classmates who haven’t had the chance to take the class. For example, the class focuses on teaching rhetorical patterns, which most of the higher-level classes skip over. This could lead the students who haven’t taken English 098 to do poorly on their assignments because they don’t understand the importance of the different types of arguments. Another example of something important that the class teaches is the basic sentence structure. In English 100, many teachers discuss advanced sentence structure, but students who don’t know the basic sentence structure might have a hard time understanding those lectures. Because English 098 gives people an extra chance to prepare, they will have had more practice than students who have not taken the class. Everyone should take English 098 if they have the chance!