How to Create a Powerful
Argumentative Essay Outline
Since you have to write an argumentative essay, you might as well learn how to write it well,
right?
I’ve said it time and time again—there’s nothing worse than staring at a blank page. Putting
together an argumentative essay outline is the perfect way to turn your blank document into a
ready-to-use template. All you have to do is fill in the blanks!
In this blog post, I’m going to share with you how to create an argumentative essay outline. At
the end, I’ll give you a downloadable skeleton outline you can use to get started.
Structure of the Argumentative Essay Outline
If you distill your argumentative essay outline down to its basics, you’ll find that it’s made of
four main sections:
1.
2.
3.
4.
Intro
Developing Your Argument
Refuting Opponents’ Arguments
Conclusion
That’s not so bad! There’s really nothing to be afraid of.
Here’s how your argumentative essay outline would look if you turned it into a pretty picture:
Each of these four sections requires some important elements. Let’s break those down now.
Argumentative Essay Outline Section 1: Your Intro
Your introduction is where you lay the foundation for your
impenetrable argument. It’s made up of a hook, background information, and a thesis
statement.
1. Hook. Your first sentence is comprised of a “hook.” Don’t know what a hook is? A hook is a
sentence that grabs your reader’s attention just like a good Jackie Chan movie grabs the
attention of a martial arts fan.
Let’s say I’m writing an argumentative essay about why American people should start eating
insects.
My hook could be, “For those interested in improving their diets and the environment, say
‘goodbye’ to eating chicken, fish, and beef and ‘hello’ to eating silk worms, crickets, and
caterpillars.”
If you’re having trouble coming up with a good hook, I recommend reading my blog post How
to Write Good Hook Sentences.
2. Background information. The next part of your intro is dedicated to offering some detailed
background information on your topic.
Try answering the following questions:
What is the issue at hand? Who cares? Where is this issue prevalent? Why is it important?
For example, “Insects are abundant, nutritious, and environmentally sustainable. Currently,
people in the United States shun the idea of eating insects as part of their diets, favoring
instead less nutritious and environmentally destructive food options, such as beef and pork.
The UN recently issued a statement calling for more world citizens to embrace the many
benefits of eating insects.”
3. Thesis. Your thesis typically makes up the last sentence of your intro paragraph. This is where
you clearly state your position on the topic and give a reason for your stance.
For example, “A diet of insects can help fix problems related to starvation, obesity, and climate
change, and therefore, United States citizens should learn to rely on a variety of insects over
chicken, beef, and fish as their main source of protein and nutrition.”
Notice the word “should” in my thesis statement? Using this word makes it clear I’m taking a
stance on the argument.
You’ll also notice that my thesis statement sets up the three claims I’m going to expand on
later: a diet of insects can help fix problems related to starvation, obesity, and climate change.
Here are even more example argumentative thesis statements.
Let’s talk about adding those claims to our argumentative essay outline now.
Argumentative Essay Outline Section 2:
Developing Your Argument
Now that you have filled in the general points of
your topic and outlined your stance in the introduction, it’s time to develop your argument.
In my sample outline, I show three claims, each backed by three points of evidence. Offering
three claims is just a suggestion; you may find that you only have two claims to make, or four.
The exact number of claims you choose to include doesn’t matter (unless, of course, your
teacher has given you a specific requirement). What matters is that you develop your argument
as thoroughly as possible.
1. What is a claim? A claim is a statement you make to support your argument.
For example, “Bugs are highly nutritious and eating them can fix the problem of hunger and
malnutrition in the United States.”
Great! So I’ve made my claim. But who’s going to believe me? This is where evidence comes
into play.
2. What is evidence? For each claim you make, you need to provide supporting evidence.
Evidence is factual information from reliable sources.
It is not personal knowledge or anecdotal.
For example, “Researchers at the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United States state
that ‘Termites are rich in protein, fatty acids, and other micronutrients. Fried or dried termites
contain 32–38 percent proteins.’“
My outline shows three pieces of evidence to support each claim, but you may find that each
claim doesn’t necessarily have three pieces of evidence to back it. Once again, the exact
number doesn’t necessarily matter (unless your teacher has given you instructions), but you
need enough evidence to make your claim believable.
Once you have gathered your evidence to support your claims, it’s time to add the next
important element of your argumentative essay outline: refuting your opponents’ arguments.
Let’s talk about that now.
Argumentative Essay Outline Section 3: Refuting
Opponents’ Arguments
In this section, you state your opponents’ views
and then offer a rebuttal.
For example, “Opponents of insect eating from the Beef Council of America say that it is too
difficult and time consuming to catch crickets, so it is not easy to gather enough food for a
meal, whereas a cow is large and contains a lot of meat for many meals.”
Oh diss! We know the Beef Council just wants us to keep eating McD’s hamburgers and skip the
cricket soup. (By the way—I just made that up. The Beef Council did not say that. In your essay,
make sure to use real facts.)
Now it’s time to set the opponents straight with a refutation that is full of hard evidence and
that will bring them to their knees.
For example, “According to researchers Cerritos and Cano-Santana, the best time to harvest
crickets is to catch them in the hour just before sunrise when they are least active. What’s
more, it is easy to develop the infrastructure to farm crickets in a way that is more sustainable
than cattle farming.”
Booyah! The Beef Council has been served (crickets).
Once you have refuted your opponents’ viewpoints, it’s time to sail to the finish line with your
conclusion.
Argumentative Essay Outline Section 4:
Conclusion
In your conclusion, you are going to accomplish two important tasks.
1. Restate the importance of your issue. Similar to what you did in your introduction, you want
to restate why this topic is critical.
For example, “Simply by incorporating insects into their diets, U.S. citizens can improve the
sustainability and nutrition of the American diet.”
2. Paint a picture of the world if your argument is (or is not) implemented. In the final part of
your conclusion, make your audience think about the ramifications of your argument. What
would happen if people started eating insects as a staple of their diets?
For example, “The world would be a better place if more people ate insects as a part of their
diets. Fewer people would go hungry, more people would get the vitamins, minerals, and
micronutrients they need to live healthy lifestyles, and our planet would be relieved of the
burden of an unsustainable food system.
Closing with a clear picture of the world as you would like it to be can leave your reader
convinced that your argument is valid.
Download the Argumentative Essay Outline
Template
Once you break it down, writing an argumentative essay outline isn’t that daunting.
Download this skeleton Argumentative Essay Outline to get started.
Before you go off into the sunset and use my outline template, make sure that you are
following the guidelines specific to your course. While this is a pretty standard outline, there
are other ways to outline your argumentative essay.
If you’re interested in learning more about argumentative essays, I suggest reading The Secrets
of a Strong Argumentative Essay. Want even more knowledge? Check out this argumentative
essay infographic!
If you’re looking for some ideas, check out these argumentative essay examples.
When you have your argumentative essay and outline ready to go, you can always have one of
our awesome editors give it a second look.
Good luck!
Psst... 98% of Kibin users report better grades! Get inspiration from over 500,000 example
essays.
About the Author
Naomi Tepper is the Kibin blog content manager, the Kibin operations manager, a former Kibin
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Argument Paper, MLA Style (Hammond)
Hammond 1
Jamal Hammond
Professor Paschal
English 102
17 March XXXX
Performance Enhancement through Biotechnology
Has No Place in Sports
Opening sentences
provide background
for Hammond’s
thesis.
The debate over athletes’ use of performance-enhancing
substances is getting more complicated as biotechnologies such
as gene therapy become a reality. The availability of these new
methods of boosting performance will force us to decide what we
value most in sports—displays of physical excellence developed
through hard work or victory at all costs. For centuries, spectators
and athletes have cherished the tradition of fairness in sports.
While sports competition is, of course, largely about winning, it is
Thesis states the
main point.
also about the means by which a player or team wins. Athletes who
use any type of biotechnology give themselves an unfair advantage
and disrupt the sense of fair play, and they should be banned from
competition.
Researchers are experimenting with techniques that could
manipulate an athlete’s genetic code to build stronger muscles or
Hammond establishes his credibility
by summarizing
medical research.
increase endurance. Searching for cures for diseases like Parkinson’s
and muscular dystrophy, scientists at the University of Pennsylvania
have created “Schwarzenegger mice,” rodents that grew largerthan-normal muscles after receiving injections with a gene that
stimulates growth protein. The researchers also found that a
combination of gene manipulation and exercise led to a 35%
Source is cited in
MLA style.
increase in the strength of rats’ leg muscles (Lamb 13).
Marginal annotations indicate MLA-style formatting and effective writing.
Source: Diana Hacker (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2007).
This paper has been updated to follow the style guidelines in the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers,
7th ed. (2009).
Hammond 2
Such therapies are breakthroughs for humans suffering from
muscular diseases; for healthy athletes, they could mean new world
records in sports involving speed and endurance—but at what
cost to the integrity of athletic competition? The International
Olympic Committee’s World Anti-Doping Agency has become so
alarmed about the possible effects of new gene technology on
Hammond uses
specific evidence
to support his
thesis.
athletic competition that it has banned the use of gene therapies
and urged researchers to devise a test for detecting genetic
modification (Lamb 13).
Some bioethicists argue that this next wave of performance
enhancement is an acceptable and unavoidable feature of
Opposing views
are presented
fairly.
competition. As Dr. Andy Miah, who supports the regulated use of
gene therapies in sports, claims, “The idea of the naturally perfect
athlete is romantic nonsense. . . . An athlete achieves what he or
she achieves through all sorts of means—technology, sponsorship,
support and so on” (qtd. in Rudebeck). Miah, in fact, sees athletes’
imminent turn to genetic modification as “merely a continuation
of the way sport works; it allows us to create more extraordinary
“Qtd. in” is used
for an indirect
source: words
quoted in another
source.
performances” (Rudebeck). Miah’s approval of “extraordinary
performances” as the goal of competition reflects our culture’s
tendency to demand and reward new heights of athletic
achievement. The problem is that achievement nowadays
increasingly results from biological and high-tech intervention
rather than strictly from hard work.
Better equipment, such as aerodynamic bicycles and fiberglass
poles for pole vaulting, have made it possible for athletes to
record achievements unthinkable a generation ago. But athletes
Source: Diana Hacker (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2007).
Hammond counters
opposing arguments.
Hammond 3
themselves must put forth the physical effort of training and
practice—they must still build their skills—even in the murky area
of legal and illegal drug use (Jenkins D11). There is a difference
between the use of state-of-the-art equipment and drugs and the
Hammond develops
the thesis.
modification of the body itself. Athletes who use medical technology
to alter their bodies can bypass the hard work of training by
taking on the powers of a machine. If they set new records this
way, we lose the opportunity to witness sports as a spectacle of
human effort and are left marveling at scientific advances, which
have little relation to the athletic tradition of fair play.
Transition moves
from the writer’s
main argument to
specific examples.
Such a tradition has long defined athletic competition.
Sports rely on equal conditions to ensure fair play, from regulations
that demand similar equipment to referees who evenhandedly
apply the rules to all participants. If the rules that guarantee an
even playing field are violated, competitors and spectators alike
are deprived of a sound basis of comparison on which to judge
athletic effort and accomplishment. When major league baseball
rules call for solid-wood bats, the player who uses a corked bat
enhances his hitting statistics at the expense of players who use
regulation equipment. When Ben Johnson tested positive for
steroids after setting a world record in the 100-meter dash in the
1988 Olympics, his “achievement” devalued the intense training that
his competitors had undergone to prepare for the event—and the
International Olympic Committee responded by stripping Johnson of
his medal and his world record. Likewise, athletes who use gene
therapy to alter their bodies and enhance their performance will
create an uneven playing field.
Source: Diana Hacker (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2007).
Hammond 4
If we let athletes alter their bodies through biotechnology, we
might as well dispense with the human element altogether. Instead
of watching the 100-meter dash to see who the fastest runner in
A vivid example
helps the writer
make his point.
the world is, we might just as well watch the sprinters mount
motorcycles and race across the finish line. The absurdity of such an
example, however, points to the damage that we will do to sports if
we allow these therapies. Thomas Murray, chair of the ethics advisory
panel for the World Anti-Doping Agency, says he hopes, not too
optimistically, for an “alternative future . . . where we still find
meaning in great performances as an alchemy of two factors, natural
talents . . . and virtues” (qtd. in Jenkins D11).
Unless we are willing to organize separate sporting events
and leagues—an Olympics, say, for athletes who have opted for a
boost from the test tube and another for athletes who have chosen
to keep their bodies natural—we should ask from our athletes that
they dazzle us less with extraordinary performance and more with
the fruits of their hard work.
Source: Diana Hacker (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2007).
Conclusion echoes
the thesis without
dully repeating it.
Hammond 5
Works Cited
Works cited page
uses MLA style.
Jenkins, Sally. “The First Item in a Pandora’s Box of Moral
Ambiguities.” Washington Post 4 Dec. 2004: D11. Print.
Lamb, Gregory M. “Will Gene-Altered Athletes Kill Sports?”
Christian Science Monitor 23 Aug. 2004: 12-13. Print.
Rudebeck, Clare. “The Eyes Have It.” Independent [London].
Independent News and Media, 27 Apr. 2005. Web.
28 Feb. 2006.
Source: Diana Hacker (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2007).
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