Practice Argument Prompts with Commentary

Practice Argument Prompts with Commentary


Step 1: Read the passage and figure out what Kundera’s main claim is. (Notice they do not say “pick one of his claims,” which is how some argument prompts are worded. In that case you can pick any claim to support, challenge, or qualify. In this case, however, you must find the main claim.)

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  Main claim: stated in lines 32-37
  

Step 2: Come up with detailed, relevant evidence. Make sure it is accurate!

Examples that might work (many can support agree/disagree/or qualify responses):

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  Lives of politicians/famous people: Hilary Clinton’s e-mail scandal, Mitt Romney’s 47% comments to a closed-door group of supporters, Clippers’ owner racist remarks recorded and released, forcing the sale of the team, Sony executives’ e-mail messages, etc. (Do public figures give up privacy or a certain degree of it when they become public figures?)
  
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  NSA data collection and Snowden’s leaking of this information (under Kundera’s definition, is the NSA the criminal?)
  
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  Internet privacy (how private is Facebook or Twitter? Does technology like this begin to blur the line between private and public)
  
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  Reality TV shows where the private becomes public/entertainment
  

Good Sample Thesis: Kundera claims that in order to be free, one must keep one’s private and public worlds separate, and that anyone tampering with the division between another’s public and private life should be considered a criminal. While this idea may have been true when Kundera was writing, the rise of the internet and social media have begun to blur the lines between the private and public world, complicating what he considered “criminal.”

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  Warnings: If you aren’t reading carefully, this might look like a rhetorical analysis essay because it has a reading passage with it. Don’t be fooled! Look at the question and make sure you are writing the correct type of essay!
  
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  Don’t try to use information from the passage (about the Prague Spring or Prochazka) as evidence to support your claim. You’ll end up making a circular argument.
  

2004 Question 2
Contemporary life is marked by controversy. Choose a controversial local, national, or global issue with which you are familiar. Then, using appropriate evidence, write an essay that carefully considers the opposing positions on this controversy and proposes a solution or compromise.
Step 1: Read the question and pick an issue that will work well. [Note: this is a difficult prompt because it is so open.]
Examples that might work well: (some people’s media bias topics could work well!)

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  The US drone use
  
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  Use of body cameras for police officers
  
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  What to do with the Astrodome
  
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  Organ donation opt-in vs. opt-out programs
  
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  Keystone XL pipeline
  
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  If you are in a serious bind and cannot think of anything after 15 min., you can probably pass with a good, specific essay over extreme local topics like IDs or dress code in Kingwood High School. Such essays may never pass as high as essays written about some of the other topics above, but they are an option you can use as a last resort.
  

Examples that will not work well:

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  Abortion (Too polarizing. Very little ground for a compromise solution)
  
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  Capital punishment (Too polarizing. Very little ground for a compromise solution)
  
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  Controversies or crises that have already passed or been resolved (you need to come up with your own solution to an existing problem!)
  
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  Gun control or climate change (too broad. Narrow it down to an issue within that large topic that you might have some hope of solving—for example, concealed carry, teachers having handguns in school, etc.)
  

Step 2: Come up with detailed, accurate evidence to support your argument, and formulate a logical solution or compromise. If you don’t know much about the topic, that is going to be very bad. You need specifics!
Good Sample Thesis: The militarization of American police forces is deeply problematic. Soldiers and police officers have inherently different jobs, and while it might once have sounded like a good idea to fashion police officers into a kind of army to fight the “war on drugs,” this shortsighted policy has produced police departments that tend to be quick to use excessive force and intimidation when interacting with civilians. Rectifying the problem will take time, but ending military police grants and requiring additional training in conflict resolution should help.

This is an odd prompt because it asks you to write a letter to your school board. If you get something like this, feel free to start it “Dear school board,” and add creative touches to make it feel more like a letter, but remember, in the end, this is an argument essay. All the rules of normal argument essays still apply.

Step 1: Define creativity.
Make this definition work for you. The most useful definitions will help you set up part 2. Some good examples include: original/independent thinking, complex and unorthodox problem solving, etc. You don’t necessarily need evidence to back this up. You can just state it and move on.
Step 2: Make an argument for/against having a creativity class.
This is difficult because there is no existing evidence to directly help you prove an argument for either side. You will likely have to rely on hypothetical and personal evidence to a large extent, although you may be able to make some comparisons to existing school systems/classes or the business world.
Some logistical thoughts: what would this class look like? How would it be graded? How will you fit it into the day? Will it replace another class? If so, which one? Will it be a class that is only given one year (say, in fourth grade only?), or repeated over multiple years? How can you TEACH creativity?

Some possible lines of argument:

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  Creating such a class would simply be a band-aid approach to a larger problem. The real issue is with the school system itself. We need to keep the current school structure, but require all classes to do more to foster independent thinking and complex problem solving.
  
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  The entire school system needs to be overhauled. The current, compartmentalized one pushes kids to think “inside the box” and look for “the right answer,” which kills the joy of learning and leads to the atrophy of creativity.
  
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  Studies have shown a correlation between the arts and creativity. Instead of having a separate creativity class, students should be required to take more arts courses.
  

Possible Evidence:

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  Personal evidence: have you ever been in a class that required a lot of independent thinking or complex problem solving skills? Reference those experiences in detail.
  
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  Business world evidence: what have various businesses done to foster creativity? Think about Google, or some of the new tech companies.
  
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  World evidence: compare/contrast different nations’ school systems that have better or worse records when it comes to turning out “creative” thinkers.
  
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  Hypothetical evidence: what is likely to happen if you implement X?
  

Good Sample Thesis: Rather than creating a separate class that focuses on creativity, which would only be a band-aid approach to fixing the problem, it would be wiser to tackle the root cause of the deficiency in a more comprehensive way by requiring all courses from elementary to high school to foster independent thinking and complex problem solving skills.