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Sat / act prep online guides and tips, 3 strong argumentative essay examples, analyzed.

General Education

Need to defend your opinion on an issue? Argumentative essays are one of the most popular types of essays you’ll write in school. They combine persuasive arguments with fact-based research, and, when done well, can be powerful tools for making someone agree with your point of view. If you’re struggling to write an argumentative essay or just want to learn more about them, seeing examples can be a big help.

After giving an overview of this type of essay, we provide three argumentative essay examples. After each essay, we explain in-depth how the essay was structured, what worked, and where the essay could be improved. We end with tips for making your own argumentative essay as strong as possible.

What Is an Argumentative Essay?

An argumentative essay is an essay that uses evidence and facts to support the claim it’s making. Its purpose is to persuade the reader to agree with the argument being made.

A good argumentative essay will use facts and evidence to support the argument, rather than just the author’s thoughts and opinions. For example, say you wanted to write an argumentative essay stating that Charleston, SC is a great destination for families. You couldn’t just say that it’s a great place because you took your family there and enjoyed it. For it to be an argumentative essay, you need to have facts and data to support your argument, such as the number of child-friendly attractions in Charleston, special deals you can get with kids, and surveys of people who visited Charleston as a family and enjoyed it. The first argument is based entirely on feelings, whereas the second is based on evidence that can be proven.

The standard five paragraph format is common, but not required, for argumentative essays. These essays typically follow one of two formats: the Toulmin model or the Rogerian model.

• The Toulmin model is the most common. It begins with an introduction, follows with a thesis/claim, and gives data and evidence to support that claim. This style of essay also includes rebuttals of counterarguments.
• The Rogerian model analyzes two sides of an argument and reaches a conclusion after weighing the strengths and weaknesses of each.

3 Good Argumentative Essay Examples + Analysis

Below are three examples of argumentative essays, written by yours truly in my school days, as well as analysis of what each did well and where it could be improved.

Argumentative Essay Example 1

Proponents of this idea state that it will save local cities and towns money because libraries are expensive to maintain. They also believe it will encourage more people to read because they won’t have to travel to a library to get a book; they can simply click on what they want to read and read it from wherever they are. They could also access more materials because libraries won’t have to buy physical copies of books; they can simply rent out as many digital copies as they need.

However, it would be a serious mistake to replace libraries with tablets. First, digital books and resources are associated with less learning and more problems than print resources. A study done on tablet vs book reading found that people read 20-30% slower on tablets, retain 20% less information, and understand 10% less of what they read compared to people who read the same information in print. Additionally, staring too long at a screen has been shown to cause numerous health problems, including blurred vision, dizziness, dry eyes, headaches, and eye strain, at much higher instances than reading print does. People who use tablets and mobile devices excessively also have a higher incidence of more serious health issues such as fibromyalgia, shoulder and back pain, carpal tunnel syndrome, and muscle strain. I know that whenever I read from my e-reader for too long, my eyes begin to feel tired and my neck hurts. We should not add to these problems by giving people, especially young people, more reasons to look at screens.

Second, it is incredibly narrow-minded to assume that the only service libraries offer is book lending. Libraries have a multitude of benefits, and many are only available if the library has a physical location. Some of these benefits include acting as a quiet study space, giving people a way to converse with their neighbors, holding classes on a variety of topics, providing jobs, answering patron questions, and keeping the community connected. One neighborhood found that, after a local library instituted community events such as play times for toddlers and parents, job fairs for teenagers, and meeting spaces for senior citizens, over a third of residents reported feeling more connected to their community. Similarly, a Pew survey conducted in 2015 found that nearly two-thirds of American adults feel that closing their local library would have a major impact on their community. People see libraries as a way to connect with others and get their questions answered, benefits tablets can’t offer nearly as well or as easily.

While replacing libraries with tablets may seem like a simple solution, it would encourage people to spend even more time looking at digital screens, despite the myriad issues surrounding them. It would also end access to many of the benefits of libraries that people have come to rely on. In many areas, libraries are such an important part of the community network that they could never be replaced by a simple object.

The author begins by giving an overview of the counter-argument, then the thesis appears as the first sentence in the third paragraph. The essay then spends the rest of the paper dismantling the counter argument and showing why readers should believe the other side.

What this essay does well:

• Although it’s a bit unusual to have the thesis appear fairly far into the essay, it works because, once the thesis is stated, the rest of the essay focuses on supporting it since the counter-argument has already been discussed earlier in the paper.
• This essay includes numerous facts and cites studies to support its case. By having specific data to rely on, the author’s argument is stronger and readers will be more inclined to agree with it.
• For every argument the other side makes, the author makes sure to refute it and follow up with why her opinion is the stronger one. In order to make a strong argument, it’s important to dismantle the other side, which this essay does this by making the author's view appear stronger.
• This is a shorter paper, and if it needed to be expanded to meet length requirements, it could include more examples and go more into depth with them, such as by explaining specific cases where people benefited from local libraries.
• Additionally, while the paper uses lots of data, the author also mentions their own experience with using tablets. This should be removed since argumentative essays focus on facts and data to support an argument, not the author’s own opinion or experiences. Replacing that with more data on health issues associated with screen time would strengthen the essay.
• Some of the points made aren't completely accurate , particularly the one about digital books being cheaper. It actually often costs a library more money to rent out numerous digital copies of a book compared to buying a single physical copy. Make sure in your own essay you thoroughly research each of the points and rebuttals you make, otherwise you'll look like you don't know the issue that well.

Argumentative Essay Example 2

There are multiple drugs available to treat malaria, and many of them work well and save lives, but malaria eradication programs that focus too much on them and not enough on prevention haven’t seen long-term success in Sub-Saharan Africa. A major program to combat malaria was WHO’s Global Malaria Eradication Programme. Started in 1955, it had a goal of eliminating malaria in Africa within the next ten years. Based upon previously successful programs in Brazil and the United States, the program focused mainly on vector control. This included widely distributing chloroquine and spraying large amounts of DDT. More than one billion dollars was spent trying to abolish malaria. However, the program suffered from many problems and in 1969, WHO was forced to admit that the program had not succeeded in eradicating malaria. The number of people in Sub-Saharan Africa who contracted malaria as well as the number of malaria deaths had actually increased over 10% during the time the program was active.

One of the major reasons for the failure of the project was that it set uniform strategies and policies. By failing to consider variations between governments, geography, and infrastructure, the program was not nearly as successful as it could have been. Sub-Saharan Africa has neither the money nor the infrastructure to support such an elaborate program, and it couldn’t be run the way it was meant to. Most African countries don't have the resources to send all their people to doctors and get shots, nor can they afford to clear wetlands or other malaria prone areas. The continent’s spending per person for eradicating malaria was just a quarter of what Brazil spent. Sub-Saharan Africa simply can’t rely on a plan that requires more money, infrastructure, and expertise than they have to spare.

Additionally, the widespread use of chloroquine has created drug resistant parasites which are now plaguing Sub-Saharan Africa. Because chloroquine was used widely but inconsistently, mosquitoes developed resistance, and chloroquine is now nearly completely ineffective in Sub-Saharan Africa, with over 95% of mosquitoes resistant to it. As a result, newer, more expensive drugs need to be used to prevent and treat malaria, which further drives up the cost of malaria treatment for a region that can ill afford it.

Instead of developing plans to treat malaria after the infection has incurred, programs should focus on preventing infection from occurring in the first place. Not only is this plan cheaper and more effective, reducing the number of people who contract malaria also reduces loss of work/school days which can further bring down the productivity of the region.

One of the cheapest and most effective ways of preventing malaria is to implement insecticide-treated bed nets (ITNs).  These nets provide a protective barrier around the person or people using them. While untreated bed nets are still helpful, those treated with insecticides are much more useful because they stop mosquitoes from biting people through the nets, and they help reduce mosquito populations in a community, thus helping people who don’t even own bed nets.  Bed nets are also very effective because most mosquito bites occur while the person is sleeping, so bed nets would be able to drastically reduce the number of transmissions during the night. In fact, transmission of malaria can be reduced by as much as 90% in areas where the use of ITNs is widespread. Because money is so scarce in Sub-Saharan Africa, the low cost is a great benefit and a major reason why the program is so successful. Bed nets cost roughly 2 USD to make, last several years, and can protect two adults. Studies have shown that, for every 100-1000 more nets are being used, one less child dies of malaria. With an estimated 300 million people in Africa not being protected by mosquito nets, there’s the potential to save three million lives by spending just a few dollars per person.

Reducing the number of people who contract malaria would also reduce poverty levels in Africa significantly, thus improving other aspects of society like education levels and the economy. Vector control is more effective than treatment strategies because it means fewer people are getting sick. When fewer people get sick, the working population is stronger as a whole because people are not put out of work from malaria, nor are they caring for sick relatives. Malaria-afflicted families can typically only harvest 40% of the crops that healthy families can harvest. Additionally, a family with members who have malaria spends roughly a quarter of its income treatment, not including the loss of work they also must deal with due to the illness. It’s estimated that malaria costs Africa 12 billion USD in lost income every year. A strong working population creates a stronger economy, which Sub-Saharan Africa is in desperate need of.  

This essay begins with an introduction, which ends with the thesis (that malaria eradication plans in Sub-Saharan Africa should focus on prevention rather than treatment). The first part of the essay lays out why the counter argument (treatment rather than prevention) is not as effective, and the second part of the essay focuses on why prevention of malaria is the better path to take.

• The thesis appears early, is stated clearly, and is supported throughout the rest of the essay. This makes the argument clear for readers to understand and follow throughout the essay.
• There’s lots of solid research in this essay, including specific programs that were conducted and how successful they were, as well as specific data mentioned throughout. This evidence helps strengthen the author’s argument.
• The author makes a case for using expanding bed net use over waiting until malaria occurs and beginning treatment, but not much of a plan is given for how the bed nets would be distributed or how to ensure they’re being used properly. By going more into detail of what she believes should be done, the author would be making a stronger argument.
• The introduction of the essay does a good job of laying out the seriousness of the problem, but the conclusion is short and abrupt. Expanding it into its own paragraph would give the author a final way to convince readers of her side of the argument.

Argumentative Essay Example 3

There are many ways payments could work. They could be in the form of a free-market approach, where athletes are able to earn whatever the market is willing to pay them, it could be a set amount of money per athlete, or student athletes could earn income from endorsements, autographs, and control of their likeness, similar to the way top Olympians earn money.

Proponents of the idea believe that, because college athletes are the ones who are training, participating in games, and bringing in audiences, they should receive some sort of compensation for their work. If there were no college athletes, the NCAA wouldn’t exist, college coaches wouldn’t receive there (sometimes very high) salaries, and brands like Nike couldn’t profit from college sports. In fact, the NCAA brings in roughly $1 billion in revenue a year, but college athletes don’t receive any of that money in the form of a paycheck. Additionally, people who believe college athletes should be paid state that paying college athletes will actually encourage them to remain in college longer and not turn pro as quickly, either by giving them a way to begin earning money in college or requiring them to sign a contract stating they’ll stay at the university for a certain number of years while making an agreed-upon salary.  

Supporters of this idea point to Zion Williamson, the Duke basketball superstar, who, during his freshman year, sustained a serious knee injury. Many argued that, even if he enjoyed playing for Duke, it wasn’t worth risking another injury and ending his professional career before it even began for a program that wasn’t paying him. Williamson seems to have agreed with them and declared his eligibility for the NCAA draft later that year. If he was being paid, he may have stayed at Duke longer. In fact, roughly a third of student athletes surveyed stated that receiving a salary while in college would make them “strongly consider” remaining collegiate athletes longer before turning pro.

Paying athletes could also stop the recruitment scandals that have plagued the NCAA. In 2018, the NCAA stripped the University of Louisville's men's basketball team of its 2013 national championship title because it was discovered coaches were using sex workers to entice recruits to join the team. There have been dozens of other recruitment scandals where college athletes and recruits have been bribed with anything from having their grades changed, to getting free cars, to being straight out bribed. By paying college athletes and putting their salaries out in the open, the NCAA could end the illegal and underhanded ways some schools and coaches try to entice athletes to join.

People who argue against the idea of paying college athletes believe the practice could be disastrous for college sports. By paying athletes, they argue, they’d turn college sports into a bidding war, where only the richest schools could afford top athletes, and the majority of schools would be shut out from developing a talented team (though some argue this already happens because the best players often go to the most established college sports programs, who typically pay their coaches millions of dollars per year). It could also ruin the tight camaraderie of many college teams if players become jealous that certain teammates are making more money than they are.

They also argue that paying college athletes actually means only a small fraction would make significant money. Out of the 350 Division I athletic departments, fewer than a dozen earn any money. Nearly all the money the NCAA makes comes from men’s football and basketball, so paying college athletes would make a small group of men--who likely will be signed to pro teams and begin making millions immediately out of college--rich at the expense of other players.

Those against paying college athletes also believe that the athletes are receiving enough benefits already. The top athletes already receive scholarships that are worth tens of thousands per year, they receive free food/housing/textbooks, have access to top medical care if they are injured, receive top coaching, get travel perks and free gear, and can use their time in college as a way to capture the attention of professional recruiters. No other college students receive anywhere near as much from their schools.

People on this side also point out that, while the NCAA brings in a massive amount of money each year, it is still a non-profit organization. How? Because over 95% of those profits are redistributed to its members’ institutions in the form of scholarships, grants, conferences, support for Division II and Division III teams, and educational programs. Taking away a significant part of that revenue would hurt smaller programs that rely on that money to keep running.

While both sides have good points, it’s clear that the negatives of paying college athletes far outweigh the positives. College athletes spend a significant amount of time and energy playing for their school, but they are compensated for it by the scholarships and perks they receive. Adding a salary to that would result in a college athletic system where only a small handful of athletes (those likely to become millionaires in the professional leagues) are paid by a handful of schools who enter bidding wars to recruit them, while the majority of student athletics and college athletic programs suffer or even shut down for lack of money. Continuing to offer the current level of benefits to student athletes makes it possible for as many people to benefit from and enjoy college sports as possible.

This argumentative essay follows the Rogerian model. It discusses each side, first laying out multiple reasons people believe student athletes should be paid, then discussing reasons why the athletes shouldn’t be paid. It ends by stating that college athletes shouldn’t be paid by arguing that paying them would destroy college athletics programs and cause them to have many of the issues professional sports leagues have.

• Both sides of the argument are well developed, with multiple reasons why people agree with each side. It allows readers to get a full view of the argument and its nuances.
• Certain statements on both sides are directly rebuffed in order to show where the strengths and weaknesses of each side lie and give a more complete and sophisticated look at the argument.
• Using the Rogerian model can be tricky because oftentimes you don’t explicitly state your argument until the end of the paper. Here, the thesis doesn’t appear until the first sentence of the final paragraph. That doesn’t give readers a lot of time to be convinced that your argument is the right one, compared to a paper where the thesis is stated in the beginning and then supported throughout the paper. This paper could be strengthened if the final paragraph was expanded to more fully explain why the author supports the view, or if the paper had made it clearer that paying athletes was the weaker argument throughout.

3 Tips for Writing a Good Argumentative Essay

Now that you’ve seen examples of what good argumentative essay samples look like, follow these three tips when crafting your own essay.

#1: Make Your Thesis Crystal Clear

The thesis is the key to your argumentative essay; if it isn’t clear or readers can’t find it easily, your entire essay will be weak as a result. Always make sure that your thesis statement is easy to find. The typical spot for it is the final sentence of the introduction paragraph, but if it doesn’t fit in that spot for your essay, try to at least put it as the first or last sentence of a different paragraph so it stands out more.

Also make sure that your thesis makes clear what side of the argument you’re on. After you’ve written it, it’s a great idea to show your thesis to a couple different people--classmates are great for this. Just by reading your thesis they should be able to understand what point you’ll be trying to make with the rest of your essay.

#2: Show Why the Other Side Is Weak

When writing your essay, you may be tempted to ignore the other side of the argument and just focus on your side, but don’t do this. The best argumentative essays really tear apart the other side to show why readers shouldn’t believe it. Before you begin writing your essay, research what the other side believes, and what their strongest points are. Then, in your essay, be sure to mention each of these and use evidence to explain why they’re incorrect/weak arguments. That’ll make your essay much more effective than if you only focused on your side of the argument.

#3: Use Evidence to Support Your Side

Remember, an essay can’t be an argumentative essay if it doesn’t support its argument with evidence. For every point you make, make sure you have facts to back it up. Some examples are previous studies done on the topic, surveys of large groups of people, data points, etc. There should be lots of numbers in your argumentative essay that support your side of the argument. This will make your essay much stronger compared to only relying on your own opinions to support your argument.

Summary: Argumentative Essay Sample

Argumentative essays are persuasive essays that use facts and evidence to support their side of the argument. Most argumentative essays follow either the Toulmin model or the Rogerian model. By reading good argumentative essay examples, you can learn how to develop your essay and provide enough support to make readers agree with your opinion. When writing your essay, remember to always make your thesis clear, show where the other side is weak, and back up your opinion with data and evidence.

What's Next?

Do you need to write an argumentative essay as well? Check out our guide on the best argumentative essay topics for ideas!

You'll probably also need to write research papers for school. We've got you covered with 113 potential topics for research papers.

Your college admissions essay may end up being one of the most important essays you write. Follow our step-by-step guide on writing a personal statement to have an essay that'll impress colleges.

Christine graduated from Michigan State University with degrees in Environmental Biology and Geography and received her Master's from Duke University. In high school she scored in the 99th percentile on the SAT and was named a National Merit Finalist. She has taught English and biology in several countries.

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Model papers from the disciplines.

Professional writers often read works by other writers to think about new techniques. Although reading a good paper cannot teach you everything you need to know about writing in a given discipline, it can be enormously helpful. The papers below are past winners of the  Writing Center essay contest . We hope you find some of these helpful for expanding your writing repertoire.

It can be even more valuable to ask your professors for sample essays that they admire. In fact, if your field is not represented below, please encourage your professors to send us a model paper in that discipline.

Currently, we have winning essays posted from the 2019-20 and 2020-21 academic years. 21-22 and 22-23 will be posted during Spring 2024. If you are looking for earlier essays, they won’t be available online again until January 2025, but please email Alfred Guy if you are looking for specific essays or genres. (You may see more essays listed near the bottom of this page, but those links are currently not working.)

Professional writers often read works by other writers to think about new techniques. Although reading a good paper cannot teach you everything you need to know about writing in a given discipline, it can be enormously helpful. The papers below are past winners of the Writing Center essay contest . We hope you find some of these helpful for expanding your writing repertoire.

The headings below expand to show a list of downloadable papers within the selected department or discipline.

English 114

“ Occupy Wall Street: Creating a Successful Movement from a Chaotic Structure ,” by Kelsea Jeon ’20. ENGL 114: Writing Seminar, Professor Annie Killian.

“ The Limits of Moral Ideology in Foreign HIV/AIDS Intervention ,” by Akielly Hu ’19. ENGL 114: Acting Globally, Professor Karin Gosselink.

" Treat the Problem, Not the Disease: The Necessary Shift from Vertical Programs to Horizontal Programs for Treating HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa ," by Xiuqi Cao ’17. ENGL 114: Writing Seminar, Professor Karin Gosselink.

“ Muahaha!: Defining Evil Laughter ,” by Spencer Katz ’13. ENGL 114: Writing Seminar, Professor Ryan Wepler.

“‘ The Moral Meaning of a Pause’: Ethics Committees and the Cloning Debate ,” by Lindsay Gellman ’12. ENGL 116: Writing Seminar, Professor Raymond Malewitz.

“ My Secret ,” by Lydia Martin ’12. ENGL 114: Writing Seminar, Professor Paula Resch.

“ The Camera as Dictator: Photography and Fascism at Abu Ghraib ,” by Stephanie Lynch ’09. ENGL 114: Writing Seminar, Professor Raymond Malewitz.

“ Israel’s Withdrawal from Gaza: Legitimizing Civil Disobedience from Both Sides ,” by Aya Shoshan ’10. ENGL 114: Writing Seminar, Professor Andrew Ehrgood.

“ The Curiosity of Humanity ,” by Michael Rodriguez ’10. ENGL 114: Writing Seminars 1, Professor Suzanne Young.

“ The Corrective Lens of Satire ,” by Benjamin Solarz ’09. ENGL 114: Writing Seminars I, Professor Alfred E. Guy Jr.

Literary Analysis

“ Obscuring Gender into Oneness: in Canto 21 of ‘Song of Myself ,’” by Minh Vu ’20. ENGL 127: Readings in American Literature, Professor Caleb Smith.

“ Vision, Voice, and Women in The Winter’s Tale ,” by Oriana Tang ’19. ENGL 200: Shakespeare, Comedies & Romances, Professor Catherine Nicholson, Teaching Fellow Clay Greene.

“ License to Build: Readership and Authorship in Pynchon and Melville ,” by Marc Shkurovich ’19. ENGL 127: Readings in American Literature, Professor John Durham Peters.

" ‘A Pattern of Your Love’: Sainthood as Erotic Example in ‘The Canonization’ and ‘The Relic ,’" by Eve Houghton ’17. ENGL 125: Major English Poets, Professor Benjamin Glaser.

“ How Mary Hillhouse Read Her Gray: Commonplacing the Elegy, 1768 – 1816 ,” by Eve Houghton ’17. ENGL 238: Poetry and Modernity, Restoration to Romantic, Professor Jonathan Kramnick.

“ The Governess Question: Modes of social engagement in Agnes Grey and Jane Eyre ,” by Helen Knight ’13. ENGL 431: The Brontes & Their Afterlives, Professor Linda Peterson.

“ Whither Hast Thou, Fortune, Led? ,” by Daniel Pollack ’16. ENGL 129: Tragedy, Professor Margaret Homans.

“ The Limited Potential of True Reform ,” by Bianca Yuh ’12. ENGL 117: Literature Seminars II, Professor Andrew Karas.

“ The Prophet Who Protested Too Much ,” by Sam Ayres ’09. ENGL 395: The Bible as Literature, Professor Leslie Brisman.

“ Want, Need, and Reason: Milton and Cause ,” by Annie Atura ’11. ENGL 125: Major English Poets, Professor Christopher Miller.

“ Within You, Without You: Cannibalism and Consciousness in the Transatlantic World ,” by Carina del Valle Schorske ’10. ENGL 420: Literature of the Middle Passage, Professors Shameem Black and Caryl Phillips.

“ Holiest Love: The Spiritual Valediction in ‘A Hymne to Christ ,’” by Alexandra Schwartz ’09. ENGL 125: Major English Poets, Professor George Fayen.

“ Harmony of the Flesh: The Primitivist Poetry of Disgrace ,” by Samuel Ayres ’09. ENGL 328: Fiction Without Borders, Professor Shameem Black.

“ Creation, Destruction, and Stasis in Three Poems by Shelley ,” by Noah Lawrence ’09. ENGL 249: Eng Lit & the French Revolution, Professor David Bromwich.

“ The Collapse of Difference in Stoppard’s Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead ,” by Maria Spiegel ’09. ENGL 129: The European Literary Tradition, Professor Andrea Walkden.

“ From Ass to Audience: Imagination as an Act of Translation ,” by Carina del Valle Schorske ’09. ENGL 129: The European Literary Tradition, Professor Laura Frost.

“ The Convergence of American Identity and Experience: Walt Whitman’s Concept of Democracy in ‘Song of Myself’ ,” by Alexandra Schwartz ’09. ENGL 127: Introduction to the Study of American Literature, Professor Elizabeth Dillon.

“ Love Overheard ,” by Tian Ying “Tina” Wu ’08. ENGL 125: Major English Poets, Professor Matthew Giancarlo.

“ Heart and Soul ,” by Meredith Williams ’09. ENGL 125: Major English Poets, Professor Leslie Brisman.

“ When Hell Freezes Over: Dante as Pilgrim and Poet in Inferno XXXII ,” by Lukas Cox ’19. DRST001: Literature, Professor Kathryn Slanski.

“ The essay (which others call the List) ,” by Caroline Sydney ’16. DRST 002: Directed Studies Literature, Professor Mark Bauer.

“ Paradise Lost, Again ,” by Eliana Dockterman ’13. Directed Studies: Literature, Professor Mark Bauer.

“‘ Both Soles of Every Sinner Were On Fire’: Contrapasso in Canto XI ,” by Alice Baumgartner ’10. Directed Studies: Literature, Professor Shameem Black.

“ Knocking Down the Puppet Show: Dangerous Readers in Cervantes’ Don Quixote ,” by Katy Waldman ’10. Directed Studies: Literature, Professor Richard Maxwell.

“ Sanity’s Dream: Reason and Madness, Modernity and Antiquity in King Lear and Don Quijote ,” by Joshua Tan ’09. Directed Studies: Literature, Professor Charles Hill.

" The Preserved Party: A Metonymical Still Life ," by Janine Chow ’15. LITR 202: Nabokov and World Literature, Professor Marijeta Bozovic, Teaching Fellow Daria Ezerova.

“ A-Foot and Under-Foot: Peripheries and the Footnote ,” by Catherine Reilly ’08. LITR 142: World Literature, Professor Barry McCrea.

Directed Studies

" Formulating Maxims to Test Their Morality: Sources of Ambiguity in Kant's Moral Philosophy ," by Dan Friedman ’17. Directed Studies: Philosophy, Professor Daniel Greco.

“ Charlotte’s Finite Web: Causality in Aristotle’s Metaphysics ,” by Anya Richkind ’16. Directed Studies: Philosophy, Professor Epifanio Elizondo.

“ A Reconstruction and Critique of the Refutation of Idealism ,” by Minh Alexander Nguyen ’15. Directed Studies: Philosophy, Professor Matthew Noah Smith.

“ The Cost of Duty-Free and Duty: John Stuart Mill’s Failed Critique of Immanuel Kant, and Further Critiques of Both Philosophers ,” by Noah Lawrence ’09. Directed Studies: Philosophy, Professor Jonathan Gilmore.

“ Telling a Lie to Save a Life: Kant’s Moral Failure and Mill’s Mere Suitability ,” by Brian Earp ’10. Directed Studies: Philosophy, Professor Gregory Ganssle.

Personal Essays

“ Self-Service ,” by Lucy McCurdy ’21. ENGL 120: Reading and Writing the Modern Essay, Professor Andrew Ehrgood.

“ Remembering the Treehouse: The Magic Between the Lines ,” by Oscar Lopez Aguirre ’20. ENGL 115: Literature Seminar, Professor Ryan Wepler.

" Laura Lee, Ink on Skin, Personal Collection of the Artist ," by Maia Hirschler ’17. ENGL 120: Reading and Writing the Modern Essay, Professor Briallen Hopper.

“ To Rufus, Who Was a Shitty Gerbil ,” by Abigail Bessler ’17. ENGL 255: Writing Humor, Professor Ryan Wepler.

" Not Today ," by Emile Greer ’15. ENGL 121: Styles of Academic and Professional Prose, Professor John Loge.

“ Why I Powerlift ,” by Chelsea Savit ’13. ENGL 120: Reading and Writing the Modern Essay, Professor Andrew Ehrgood.

“ Collecting Time ,” by Kathryn Culhane ’15. ENGL 121: Styles of Academic and Professional Prose, Professor John Loge.

“ Choice ,” by Joanna Zheng ’14. ENGL 120: Reading and Writing the Modern Essay, Professor Kim Shirkhani.

“ The Flood ,” by Michael Schulson ’12. ENGL 120: Reading and Writing the Modern Essay, Professor Barbara Stuart.

“ Choosing Terms ,” by Sarah Nutman ’11. ENGL 120: Reading and Writing the Modern Essay, Professor Richard Deming.

“ Mid-winter Walk on the Beach ,” by Kathryn Mathis ’07. ENGL 248: Nature Writing in Britain and the Colonies, Professor Linda Peterson.

“ Reindeer Bells ,” by John Thornton ’09. ENGL 120: Reading and Writing the Modern Essay, Professor William Broun.

“ The History of a Mushroom Enthusiast ,” by Sita Sunil ’19. ENGL 120: Reading and Writing the Modern Essay, Professor Kimberly Shirkhani.

“ Waking Up the Warriors: The Rise of Cancer Immunotherapy ,” by Malini Gandhi ’17. ENGL 121: Styles of Academic and Professional Prose, Professor Randi Epstein.

" Choosing to Walk the Tightrope ," by Emma Fallone ’16. ENGL 240: Writing Narrative Nonfiction, Professor Edward Ball.

" Unthinkable ," by Karen Tian ’15. ENGL 121: Styles of Academic and Professional Prose, Professor Randi Epstein.

“A Security Debriefing with R. Rosarbo on the Subject of Wilbur Cross High School ,” by Sophie Dillon ’17. ENGL 120: Reading and Writing the Modern Essay, Professor Ryan Wepler.

“ Prove It ,” by Jeremy Lent ’11. ENGL 467: Journalism, Professor Jill Abramson.

“ Round Up These Characters ,” by Presca Ahn ’10. ENGL 469: Advanced Nonfiction Writing, Professor Anne Fadiman.

“ When Culture Trumps Law ,” by Emma Sokoloff-Rubin ’11. ENGL 454: Non-Fiction Writing, Voice & Structure, Professor Fred Strebeigh.

“ Vignettes From a Carpetbagger: Four Parables of the Katrina Era ,” by Easha Anand ’08. ENGL 454: Non-Fiction Writing, Voice & Structure, Professor Fred Strebeigh.

“ 17 Genesis ,” by Isaac Selya ’08. ENGL 450: Daily Themes, Professor Bill Deresiewicz.

“ Rapha ,” by Allison Battey ’08. ENGL 454: Nonfiction, Voice and Structure, Professor Fred Strebeigh.

“ Breaking Rock ,” by Paul Gleason ’06. ENGL 469: Advanced Non-Fiction: At Home in America, Professor Anne Fadiman.

“ La Barbieria ,” by Edward Scheinman ’07. ENGL 469: Advanced Non-Fiction: At Home in America, Professor Anne Fadiman.

Cultural Criticism

“ Prom King ,” by Aaron Orbey '19. ENGL 121: Cultural Critique: Style as Argument, Professor Kimberly Shirkhani.

" The Beauty of Illness ," by Jacquelyn Nakamura ’15. ENGL 121: Styles of Academic and Professional Prose, Professor Kim Shirkhani.

“ Privatization as Violence: Iraqi Oil and a Contractor Army ,” by Rosa Shapiro-Thompson ’19. HIST 042: Oil and Empire, Professor Rosie Bsheer.

" Silencing the Past  by Michael-Rolph Trouillot: A Revolutionary History ," by Chentian (Lionel) Jin ’18. HIST 007: The History of U.S.-Latin American Relations, Professors Jennifer Van Vleck and Taylor Jardno.

“ Selling Dentifrice from New Delhi: Chester Bowles in India, 1951-53 ,” by Harrison Monsky ’13. HIST 134: Yale and America, Professor Jay Gitlin.

“ Silent Protection and the Burden of Silence ,” by Emma Sokoloff-Rubin ’11. HIST 160: Topics in Lesbian and Gay History, Professor George Chauncey.

“ Modern Blood Libels and the Masking of Egyptian Insecurities ,” by Matthew Bozik ’10. HIST 434: Anti-Semitism in Modern Times, Professor Paula Hyman.

“ The Progressives’ Attempts to Link America’s Rural Past and Modern Future ,” by Brooks Swett ’09. HIST 496: Nationalism in American Politics and Culture, Professor Samuel Schaffer.

“ Meanings in Canada’s Vimy Ridge Memorial ,” by Michael Birnbaum ’08. HIST 423: Cultural History of World War I, Professor Bruno Cabanes.

“ Lollard Bible Translation: Severing the Connection Between Language and Intellectual Privilege ,” by Louisa Inskip ’08. HIST 406: Medieval Heresy and Inquisition, Professor Brian Noell.

“ The Samuel and Mary Attempted Piracy Outside the Port of Cephalonia: A Case Study of Piracy Law as a Transitional Factor Away from Lex Mercatoria ,” by Michael A. Gousgounis ’06. HIST 416: Venice & The Mediterranean, 1400-1700, Professor Francesca Trivellato.

“ Entrepreneur, Democrat, Patriot: Sameness and Difference in Charles Willson Peale’s Philadelphia Museum ,” by Jordan Cutler-Tietjen ’20. HUMS 220: Collecting Nature and Art, 1500–1850, Professor Paola Bertucci, Teaching Fellow Sarah Pickman.

“ The Impossibility of P. Grad. 4 in the Thebaid and Implications for Ptolemaic Rule ,” by Jennifer Barrows ’12. CLCV 204: Alexander and the Hellenistic World, Professor Joseph Manning, Teaching Fellow Caroline Stark.

History Junior Seminar

“ Following Thread: Understanding History and Materiality in Frida Kahlo’s Clothes ,” by Deborah Monti ’19. HIST 358J: Mexico Since Independence, Professor Gilbert Joseph.

“‘ The Tories of 1812’: Decoding the Language of Political Insults in the Early Republic ,” by Zoe Rubin ’17. HIST 133J: Creation of the American Politician, Professor Joanne Freeman.

" Big Trouble in the Big Easy: The Battle of Canal Street and the Independence of Black Political Power ," by Jacob Wasserman ’16. HIST 139J: The American South Since Reconstruction, Professor Glenda Gilmore.

" Thomas Clap, Ezra Stiles, and Yale's First Revolution ," by Thomas Hopson ’16. HIST 135J: The Age of Hamilton and Jefferson, Professor Joanne Freeman.

" The Trolley Problem: The Demise of the Streetcar in New Haven ," by Jacob Wasserman ’16. HIST 116J: Roads and Cars in American Life, Professor David Spatz.

“‘ In the Fold of America’: Immigration Politics in the Alien and Sedition Era ,” by Jacob Anbinder ’14. HIST 135J: Age of Hamilton and Jefferson, Professor Joanne B. Freeman.

“ Managing History: The Federalist Attempt To Shape the Hartford Convention’s Legacy ,” by Nathaniel Zelinsky ’14. HIST 133J: The Creation of the American Politician, 1789–1820, Professor Joanne Freeman.

“ Hearts of Darkness: Opium Dens and Urban Exploration in Late Victorian London ,” by Teo Soares ’13. HIST 225J: London and Modernity, Professor Becky Conekin.

“ Mr. Madison Meets His Party: The Appointment of a Judge and The Education of a President ,” by Ryan Jacobs ’11. HIST 135J: The Age of Hamilton and Jefferson, Professor Joanne Freeman.

“ Stages of Modernity: The Thaw-Nesbit-White Scandal, the New York Press and the Drama of the Century ,” by Randall Spock ’11. HIST 126J: Murder and Mayhem in Old New York, Professor Mary Lui.

“ Dissidence in China and Eastern Europe and the Search for a New Pragmatism ,” by Eli Bildner ’10. HIST 231J: Responses to Totalitarianism, Professor Marci Shore.

“ Dancing with Knives: Voguing and Black Vernacular Dance ,” by Eliza Robertson ’18. THST 380: History of Dance, Professor Brian Seibert.

“ Having Her Pie and Eating It Too: Sara Bareilles’ Representation of Women through the Convergence of Singer-Songwriter, Stage Character, and Composer in Waitress: The Musical ,” by Sofía Campoamor ’20. MUSI 335: Women on Stage, Professors Gundula Kreuzer and Annelies Andries.

“City of Elms: The Myth of the Urban Pastoral ,” by Rebecca Ju ’21. EVST 120: American Environmental History, Professor Paul Sabin, Teaching Fellow Kelly Goodman.

“ Avoiding the sublime: Photography and the ongoing legacy of nuclear technology ,” by Colin Hemez ’18. HSAR 401: Critical Approaches to Art History, Professors Erica James and Monica Bravo.

“ Public health in the age of nuclear fallout: St. Louis and the Baby Tooth Survey 1958-1963 ,” by Kathleen Yu ’17. HSHM 448: American Medicine and the Cold War, Professor Naomi Rogers.

“ Walking With, Moving Through ,” by Holly Taylor ’17. THST 244: Writing about Movement, Professor Brian Seibert.

" From Sanctuary to Cemetery: The Fate of Astoria and the Italian Immigrant Community ," by Giovanni Bacarella ’15. AMST 348: Space, Place, & Landscape, Professor Laura Barraclough.

“‘ That’s What It Is’: Musical Potential and Stylistic Contrast in Act One, Scene One of The Most Happy Fella ,” by Dan Rubins ’16. MUSI 246: American Musical Theatre History, Professor Daniel Egan.

“ An Unattainable Salvation: Dirt, Danger & Domesticity in Old New York ,” by Catherine Carson Evans ’13. AMST 207: American Cultural Landscapes, Professor Dolores Hayden, Teaching Fellow Chloe Taft.

“ Pruitt-Igoe: Utopic Expectations Meet Tenement-Infused Realities ,” by Evan Frondorf ’14. AMST 207: American Cultural Landscapes, Professor Dolores Hayden, Teaching Fellow Liz Bondaryk.

“ The Numerous Faces of South Korea’s Burgeoning Medical Tourism Industry ,” by Lisa Wang ’12. AMST 192: Work and Daily Life in Global Capitalism, Professor Michael Denning.

“ The Prisoner Dis-Analogy as a Defense of Stem Cell Research on Spare Embryos ,” by Ilana Yurkiewicz ’10. CSDC 362: Bioethics and the Law, Professor Dov Fox.

“ Regarding the Body: The Spectacle of Dissection and Its Uses in the 18th Century ,” by Mihan Lee ’10. HSHM 431: Science/Spectacle in Enlightenment, Professor Paola Bertucci.

“ Ignoring the Call to Murder: The Evolution of Surrealist French Cinema ,” by Christopher Adler ’09. FILM 240: World Cinema, Professor Dudley Andrew.

“ The Photograph: A Personal Exploration ,” by Hannah Shearer ’09. FILM 099: Film and the Arts, Professor Dudley Andrew.

“ That Make the Strong Heart Weak ,” by Justin Jannise ’09. FILM 099: Film and the Arts, Professor Dudley Andrew.

“ Save Yourself from Yourself ,” by Ryan Hollander ’12. PLSC 114: Intro to Political Philosophy, Professor Steven Smith, Teaching Fellow Meredith Edwards.

“ Feel Like a Natural Human: The Polis by Nature, and Human Nature in Aristotle’s The Politics ,” by Laura Zax ’10. PLSC 114: Intro to Political Philosophy, Professor Steven Smith, Teaching Fellow Justin Zaremby.

“ Federal Funding for Embryonic Stem Cell Research ,” by Jurist Tan ’09. BENG 090: Stem Cells: Science & Politics, Professor Erin Lavik.

Film, Visual Arts, & Performing Arts

Political science.

“ A Tale of Two States: Takeaways from Massachusetts and Louisiana in the Quest for a New Federal Education Policy ,” by Emil Friedman ’20. PLSC 214: Politics of U.S. Public Policy, Professor Jacob Hacker, Teaching Fellow Baobao Zhang.

“ Fools & Self-Representation: A Defense of Faretta v. California ,” by Daniel Cheng ’13. PLSC 252: Crime & Punishment, Professor Gregory Huber, Teaching Fellow Jeremy Kaplan-Lyman.

“ Reconsidering Broken Windows: A Critique of Moral and Pragmatic Justifications ,” by Aseem Mehta ’14. PLSC 252: Crime and Punishment, Professor Gregory Huber, Teaching Fellow Jeremy Kaplan-Lyman.

“ Pressured Justice: Activating the Courts for the Protection of Female Laborer ,” by David Wheelock ’09. PLSC 373: Comparative Judicial Politics, Professor Frances Rosenbluth, Teaching Fellow Stephen Engel.

“ Fixing Poverty: What Government Can and Cannot Do To Make America Better ,” by James Kirchick ’06. PLSC 203: Inequality and American Democracy, Professor Jacob S. Hacker, Teaching Fellow Nicole Kazee.

“ Suffering and Redemption in the Eyes of Lincoln ,” by Katerina Apostolides ’06. PLSC 314: Lincoln—Principle, Statesmanship, and Persuasion, Professors Steven Smith and David Bromwich.

Sociology, Anthropology, & Linguistics

“ The Presentation of Disability in Everyday Life ,” by Jack Lattimore ’20. SOCY 152: Topics in Contemporary Social Theory, Professor Ron Eyerman, Teaching Fellow Roger Baumann.

“ Across the Islands: Lexical and Phonetic Variation in Hawai‘ian Dialects ,” by Jackson Petty ’21. LING 112: Historical Linguistics, Professor Jonathan Manker, Teaching Fellow Martín Fuchs.

" A Diachronic Perspective on Semantic Maps ," by Robert Yaman ’15. LING 121: Historical Linguistics, Professor Claire Bowern, Teaching Fellow Sean Gleason.

" Preserving Values in a Market for Kidneys ," by Cynthia Hua ’15. SOCY 321: Sociology of Markets, Professors Devin Singh and Frederick Wherry, Teaching Fellow Andrew Cohen.

" Unweaving the ‘Development Narrative’: Bt Cotton and Farmer Suicides in India ," by Alina Aksiyote Bernardete ’16. ANTH 276: South Asian Social Worlds, Professor Sara Shneiderman.

“ Imagined Identities: The Tibetan Government-in-exile and the Western Vision of Tibet ,” by Emily Kruger ’08. ANTH 455: Religion and Globalization in East Asia, Professor Gareth Fisher.

Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies

“ Congratulations, It’s a Social Construct: Production and Reproduction of (Trans) Gendered Bodies ,” by Laura Goetz ’17. WGSS 340: Feminist and Queer Theory, Professor Margaret Homans.

" Chronicles of My Life: A Minority Reading of the Dominant Narrative ," by Cathy Shen ’17. WGSS 327: Constructing Self: Autobiography, Professor Geetanjali Chanda.

Environmental Studies

“ Sex-Based Effects of Positive vs. Negative Message Framing on Intended Alcohol Use ,” by Sarah Stein ’19. PSYC 235: Research Methods in Psychology, Professor Woo-Kyoung Ahn, Teaching Fellow Natalie Wittlin.

“Effect of Excuses on Making Moral Judgments ,” by Angela Choi ’12. PSYC 235: Research Methods in Psychology, Professor Woo-Kyoung Ahn, Teaching Fellow Sarah Hailey.

“ Positive, Math-Unrelated Priming and Women’s Math Performance ,” by Jason Parad ’12. PSYC 235: Research Methods in Psychology, Professor Woo-kyoung Ahn, Teaching Fellow Jacqueline Smith.

“ Infants’ Use of Kind Information in Object Individuation and Implications for Conceptual Development ,” by Elizabeth Rawson ’07. PSYC 140: Developmental Psychology, Professor Frank Keil.

Health Studies

" Nutrition in Zambia ," by Christina de Fontnouvelle ’16. HLTH 230: Global Health Challenges and Responses, Professor Richard Skolnik, Teaching Fellow Jordan Emont.

" Importing Prescription Drugs from Canada: A Public Health Solution ," by Stephanie Heung ’15. PHYS 320: Science and Public Policy, Professor Bonnie Fleming.

“ Cardiovascular Disease in China ,” by Sudhakar Nuti ’13. HLTH 230: Global Health: Challenges and Responses, Professor Richard Skolnik, Teaching Fellow Nidhi Parekh.

“Neurometabolic Biomarkers for the Early Detection of Alzheimer’s Disease ,” by Ludivine Brunissen ’19. BENG 485: Fundamentals of Neuroimaging, Professors D.S. Fahmeed Hyder and Douglas L. Rothman, Teaching Fellow John J. Walsh.

“ The Construction of a Universal Entry Vector to Facilitate Genetic Modification of Rhizobia ,” by Sarah McAlister ’16. MCDB 201L: Molecular Biology Laboratory, Professor Maria Moreno.

“ Visualization of localization and expression of Arabidopsis thaliana gene AT1G52340, an ortholog of Tasselseed2 ,” by Kevin Hochstrasser ’15. MCDB 201L: Molecular Biology Laboratory, Professor Maria Moreno, Teaching Fellow Christopher Bartley.

“ Cloning of the Oryza sativa ferric chelate reductase promoter-terminator fusion into a pYU2735 plasmid: generation of a universal construct toward rice biofortification ,” by Micah Johnson ’13. MCDB 201L: Molecular Biology Laboratory, Professor Maria Moreno, Teaching Fellow Michael Turner.

“ Cloning of the Yellow Stripe 1 gene and of the promoter of a Tapetal Development and Function gene in  Oryza sativa japonica ,” by Sabrina Gill ’13. MCDB 201L: Molecular Biology Laboratory, Professor Maria Moreno.

Evolutionary Biology

“Antimicrobial Amyloid-β: The Antagonistic Pleiotropy between Innate Immunity and Alzheimer’s Disease ,” by Emma Healy ’18. E&EB 235: Evolution and Medicine, Professor Stephen Stearns, Teaching Fellow Stephen John Gaughran.

" The Sooner, the Better: Modeling Evolutionary Recovery Following Isolated Incidents of Environmental Pollution ," by Laura Goetz ’17. BIOL 104: Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, Professor Leo Buss.

" The Influence of Egg Crypsis on the Broken-Wing Display of the Killdeer ," by Casey McLaughlin ’15. E&EB 240: Animal Behavior, Professor Suzanne Alonzo, Teaching Fellow Stacy Arnold.

“ The Hygiene Hypothesis and the Increase of Cancer in the 20th Century ,” by Stacy Scheuneman ’14. E&EB 235: Evolution and Medicine, Professor Stephen Stearns, Teaching Fellow Vanessa Lamers.

“ Research Proposal: Do Octopuses Think Like Vertebrates? A New Comparative Test ,” by Dakota E. McCoy ’13. E&EB 122: Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior, Professor Stephen Stearns, Teaching Fellow Amanda Subalusky.

“ ‘Junk’: Breeding Innovation and Complexity ,” by Jared Shenson ’12. E&EB 122: Principles of Evolution, Ecology and Behavior. Professor Steven Stearns, Teaching Fellow Andrea Hodgins-Davis.

“ Evaluating the influence of evolution on human brain size ,” by Sarah Foote ’10. E&EB 122: Principles of Evolution, Ecology and Behavior. Professor Steven Stearns, Teaching Fellow Katy Richards-Hrdlicka.

“ Fly Sex: Adaptive manipulation of offspring sex ratio in Drosophila melanogaster ,” by Tse Yang Lim ’11. E&EB 240: Animal Behavior, Professor Suzanne Alonzo, Teaching Fellow Andrea Hodgins-Davis.

“ Recombination in Mitochondrial DNA: Nonzero but Rare ,” by Christina Hueschen ’10. E&EB 122: Principles of Evolution, Ecology and Behavior, Professor Stephen Stearns, Teaching Fellow Jeremy Draghi.

“ Reconstructing Calamites: Building Giants from Fragments ,” by Alena Gribskov ’09. E&EB 171: Collections of the Peabody Museum, Professor Leo Buss.

Physical Sciences

" Electrospray Synthesis of Graphene Oxide-Mized Metal Oxide Nanocomposites for Energy Storage ," by Brandon Ortiz ’18. STARS, Professor Alessandro Gomez, Teaching Fellow Justin Tang.

“ Determining the Ages, Metallicities, and Star Formation Rates of Brightest Cluster Galaxies ,” by Hannah Alpert ’15. SCIE S101: Scientific Research: Process and Presentation, Professor Maria Mareno.

“ An Introduction to Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy ,” by Andrew Yang ’12. CHEM 251L: Inorganic Chemistry Laboratory, Professor Jonathan Parr.

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Introduction

• Academic essays
• Thesis statement
• Question analysis

Sample essay

• Introduction paragraphs
• Beginner paragraphs
• Perfecting Paragraphs
• Academic paragraphs
• Conclusion paragraphs
• Academic writing style
• Using headings
• Using evidence
• Supporting evidence
• Citing authors
• Quoting authors
• Paraphrasing authors
• Summarising authors
• Tables & figures
• Synthesising evidence
• About academic reading
• Identify your purpose for reading
• Some reading techniques
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Sometimes a good example of what you are trying to achieve is worth a 1000 words of advice! When you are asked to write an essay, try to find some samples (models) of similar writing and learn to observe the craft of the writer. You can use the samples as a basis for working out how to write in the correct style.

About sample essays

Most books on essay writing will supply you with a number of model essays—collect some of these as they are great teachers! No matter what the topic is, you will see similarities between your writing tasks and these model essays. This is because many features of writing are common across subject areas. In some subjects (e.g. Law, Economics, Psychology and others), it is very useful to find subject -specific essay models as you can use these to work out the ‘peculiarities’ of writing for that subject area.

Read an academic essay

The following five paragraph essay has paragraph labels to show the parts of an academic essay. (Note: This essay does not contain authentic references and has been written specifically to use for this teaching task.)

Body paragraph 1

Body paragraph 2

Using assignment essays for assessment supports student learning better than the traditional examination system. It is considered that course-work assignment essays can lessen the extreme stress experienced by some students over ‘sudden-death’ end of semester examinations:

If we insist that all students write about everything they have learned in their study courses at the same time and in the same place (e.g. in examinations), we are not giving all of our students equal opportunities. Some students are not daunted by the exam experience while others suffer ‘exam nerves’ and perform at the lowest level of their capabilities. (Wonderland University, 2006, p. 4)

Additionally, Jones et al. (2004, pp. 36-37) propose that assignment essays can be used to assess student learning mid-course and so provide them with helpful feedback before they are subjected to the exam experience. Exams only provide students with a mark rather than specific feedback on their progress. Therefore, setting assignment essays for a substantial part of student assessment is a much fairer approach than one-off examination testing.

Body paragraph 3

Bloggs, J. (2003).  Linking teaching, learning and succeeding in higher education . London: Bookworld.

Jinx, J.M. (2004). Student essay writing.  Journal of Research in University Education, 9 (2), 114-125.

Jones, J., Smith, P.L., Brown, K., Zong J., Thompson, K., & Fung, P.A. (2004).  Helpline: Essays and the university student . Tokyo: Courtyard Printers.

Sankey, J.M., & Liger, T.U. (2003).  Learning to write essays  [CD-ROM]. Sydney: Wonderland University.

Taylor, G. (1989).  The student’s writing guide for the arts and social sciences . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Wonderland University. (2006).  Attributes of a university graduate . doi:10.1098/063-112

Yang, S., & Baker, O.E. (2005).  Essay writing and the tertiary student . Melbourne: Diamond Press.

Zapper, Y. (2006). Learning essay writing. In F.T. Fax & Y. Phoney (Eds.),  Learning Experiences at University  (pp. 55-70). Calcutta: Academic Scholar Press.

Analyse an academic essay

Most students really appreciate seeing a finished product. If you are to really benefit from model essays, you need to learn how to read the ‘techniques of the writer’. The following exercise helps you to get started with developing your ‘read the writer’ skills.

1. The introduction paragraph

2. Body paragraph 1

3. Body paragraph 2

4. Body paragraph 3

5. The conclusion paragraph

6. The reference list

• Write essays, reviews & reports

• Report broken link
• Found an error?
• Suggestions

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Essay – examples & model answers | B2 First (FCE)

FCE Essay Examples:  Topic (Environment) 

Example exam task:, example answer (grade: 3), example answer:.

I think that my country has problems with pollution to the environment like all other countries. This problem is normal for Russia. We have big problems with transport because there are too much cars in our country. And because of that we have problems with atmospeer, air in my city and in all Russia is really dirty and sometimes I can’t make a sigh because it smells around me and of course around that cars on the road. I’ve heard about tradition of one country. They don’t go anywhere by car one day a month or a year, they just use bycicle or their feet. I think it could be very good if we had a tradition like that.

So, what about the rivers and the seas? Yeah, there are some really good and clean rivers and seas where you can go, but there are not many of them. Once I saw the river OB in my city, it was about two years ago but I stil remember that in some places it was not blue, it was green or purple I didn’t really understand because it had different colours.

I don’t know what should we do. Maybe we should just open our eyes and look what we did. But Russian people don’t care about the world around them many people care only about themselves an that’s all.

So, the best idea is look around and try to do something good for our planet and for us and our children.

FCE, CAE, CPE

Practice, write & improve, examiners comments & grade:, example answer (grade: 3-4).

To begin with pollution and damage to the environment is the most serious and difficult problem for countries of all over the world. Scientists of different countries predict a global ecocatastrophe if people won’t change their attitude to our planet.

First of all a huge damage to the environment brings a transport. People can’t imagine their living without cars, buses, trains, ships and planes. But it’s an open secret that one of disadvantage of these accustomed things is harmful exhaust. Needless to say that use of environment friendly engines helps us to save atmosphere from pollution.

In addition to this our rivers and seas are in not less danger situation. It’s a fact of common knowledge that numerous factories and plants pour off their waste to ponds. Obviously that cleaning manufacturing water helps to avoid extinction of ocean residents.

Apart from this I’m inclined to believe that every person can and must contribute to solving this important problem. Doing a little steps for protection our environment every day we will be able to save our Earth. And it’s a task of each of us.

Model Answer (Grade: 5)

DEVELOPMENT VS ENVIRONMENT

If we surf the web looking for pollution and environmental catastrophes, we will find out that every country in the world suffers them. This is a natural consequence of the struggle between development and environment.

If a country decided to live isolated from the rest of the world, living on what it can naturally grow and produce, it surely wouldn’t be highly polluted. But we all want exotic food and technological items from all over the world, so we have to pay the price.

Investing on electrical transport would benefit the environment a lot. Even more if this electricity came from a natural source of energy like wind, rivers and solar boards. It’s difficult to achieve this because petrol companies will fight against these actions.

We also have to take care of our rivers and seas. We all have heard about factories throwing highly toxic substances to rivers, without minimizing their poisoning effects. A really strict law should be applied to fine these factories and make them change their policy.

But what about ourselves? We also can do a lot! If, when possible, we bought larger packs of food, we would be producing less rubbish. And this is only an example!

FCE Essay Examples: Topic (Fashion) 

In today’s world, the fashion industry has a strong importance in people’s lives. The fashion industry say to the society what to wear and creates new types of clothes all the time.

Some people claim that the fashion industry has a bad effect on people’s lives, they say that the fashion industry creates clothes that the society has to wear. Furthermore, the clothes’ price is extremely high and people, who can’t afford it, should not be in the society.

In the other hand, the fashion industry guide the people to be in a good appearance, because, nowadays, the appearance of the person is more important than the person itself.

In my opinion, the fashion industry doesn’t has a bad influence on people’s lives. It’s something which was created to help people what to wear.

Example Answer (Grade: 4)

Fashion industry is very a discussed subject nowadays: they create and design new clothes everyday in order to satisfy some people needs.

There are many people who claim that the fashion industry is important and good for society. According to them, this industry design beautiful clothes and thanks to that every person can wear shirts, trousers or any acessory which is on today’s fashion.

On the other hand, the fashion industry in some people opinion, controls the market of clothes and because of that they can’t wear what they want to. In addition, the industry can increase the price of clothes, forcing people who don’t want to be “oldfashioned” to buy and pay a large amount of money to keep “beautiful”.

In my opinion, we can’t let the fashion industry decide what we must or musn’t wear. We shouldn’t judge people for its appearance,because that is not important. We must wear whatever we like, want and feel confortable with.

The society we live today is characterised by technology in constant development, fast speed processes, information travelling and getting to people at a blink of an eye and a complex web of social networking. In this context, the fashion industry is becoming increasingly important and having a more and more paramount role in our lives.

On one hand, the fashion industry is undeniably a source of profit and income. It hires millions of people all over the world and generates millions of dollars every year. Furthermore, such profitable business is also believed to be able to spread and make known the culture of a people, encouraging and enhancing a better understanding of each other.

Nevertheless, for those who are neither impressed nor motivated by numbers and figures, the fashion industry is seen as one which segregates people, isolating those who not fit their laws and commands. It is stated that people place too much importance on appearance and the material, world, sadly true, and the fashion industry just spurs on such situation. Moreover, not only are the costs of fashion item unrealistically high, it is thought to be a money better spent on more pressing issues, such as poverty and hunger.

I do believe that the fashion industry, as it is today, has a harmful effect, because it values a minority of people in detriment to the majority. However, it has such a wide reach that, it put into a good use, it can save lives.

FCE Essay Examples: Topic (Languages) 

“There are more reasons to learn a foreign language than to pass a test”

Everything around us revolves around language(s), it is the most important thing in our lives. Society would just not function without it. They are It is our future and I would personaly love to learn as many as I possibly can.

Not everything in life is done because it is necessary. Learning a new language can be a lot of fun. Many people only do it as a hoby, or their knowledge is something that brings them pride and pleasure.

Secondly, we have people who do it simply to challenge themselves. Truly I believe that having a great outcome that stems from your hard work and dedication to learn something new is a wonderful way to challenge prove your ability to yourself and others. Then there is travelling. It is very important to be able to understand and have a conversation with someone abroad, unless you would like to get lost or worse.

To conclude, I think that learning a new language is an amazing thing no matter why you do it. It is always better to do things out of enjoyment, but even if you do it for a test, that knowledge will always be useful.

Learning a a foreign languages is very important nowadays. English, in particular, is essential because it allows is spoken all over the world. That’s the reason why we start studying it from the age of six years old. Going abroad and being able to speak to native people is very satisfying and that’s why I want to improve my knowledge about foreign languages.

I decided to take this exam to know how high my level of English is, but also because I need this certification to go abroad next summer. I really want to come back to Cornwall, an amazing region in the South-West of England. I’ve been there twice with my family, but now I want to go alone. Only being there to England I can really improve my English comprehension and speaking skills.

Fortunately I can will have some English lessons which taught in English at university and I can’t wait for it because it will be an interesting challenge for me. Studying foreign languages is essential to live and to travel. It isn’t simple and I surely have to challenge myself everyday, but the result is so satisfying that we I can’t do without it.

FCE Essay Example: Topic (History) 

A very common topic that is being discussed nowadays is wether schools should teach subjects that some may consider useless later in life. A clear example is history, since it is quite difficult to learn and does not help us in day-to-day activities.

However, many people do not realize the importance of it or that it affects our lives today. For example, our political system would not be this way if it weren’t for the Ancient Greeks, numerous politicians and wars who helped shape democracy and our constitution. Yet it is still thought that it’s useless.

In addition, it is very important that we never forget about our past since we must know where we were standing years ago. Moreover, there are some things, such as World War II, that we have to remember to prevent them from happening again. We should also know where we we were standing a century ago: our origins, our identity. The more you learn about your ethnicity, the better.

All in all, I think that it is extremely important to learn about one’s own country’s history. Anyone who gets the chance to do this should not waste it, since they are very fortunate to have this opportunity

Would you pass B2 First (FCE)?

83 Role Model Topics & Examples

If you wish to explore the qualities of a person you admire or talk about a celebrity, check these role model essay examples and original topics prepared by our team .

🤫 Secrets of Powerful Role Model Essays

🏆 best role model topics & essay examples, 📌 most interesting role models to write about, 👍 good role model topics for research, ❓ role model questions.

How can one define a role model? Who are the role models in today’s society? Role model essays serve the purpose of answering these questions. These assignments can help students to understand the meaning of role models better.

It is not hard to write a good role model essay, but you should know some secrets of making your paper powerful. Before we discuss some useful tips, you can select a problem for your research. Here are some essay topics and titles we can suggest:

• The significance of parents as role models
• The role of a teacher in society / Teachers as role models
• The significance of a role-model leadership
• What qualities do positive and negative role models have?
• The role of the mother in a family (or a role model essay on parents in general)
• How can negative role models affect children?
• Celebrities have a moral responsibility to be good role models

Remember that you can also ask your professor to provide role model essay examples, if possible. Once you have selected a topic for your paper, you can start working on the essay. Here are some secrets of creating a powerful essay:

Think of the issue you want to discuss (you can select one from our examples) and do preliminary research on it. Although the topic of a role model may not seem hard, it is best to learn as much about it as you can.

Ask your professors about the sources you can use. In general, scholarly sources and peer-reviewed articles are the most important sources of information.

Develop a role model essay outline. Your paper should be well-organized to keep the reader’s interest. Make separate sections for the most significant arguments and remember to include an introductory paragraph and a conclusion.

Your introduction should present the problem you are discussing. Include a thesis statement at the end of the paragraph. A thesis can look like this:

• Celebrities should be aware of their responsibility to be positive role models.
• Define a role model. You can look up the definition in dictionaries and discuss your opinion on it. Discuss examples of positive and negative role models.
• Discuss the qualities that make a person a role model. Should someone be smart to become a role model? Is kindness important? Do academic achievements make someone a role model? Make your paper engaging by discussing these debatable issues.
• Support your arguments with evidence from your preliminary research. It will make your opinions look reliable. At the same time, do not rely on outside sources solely. Your essay should incorporate a unique perspective on role models and existing knowledge on the issue.
• When working on an argumentative essay, include a refutation paragraph and discuss an alternative viewpoint on the issue. You should prove that your opinion is more reliable.
• A role model essay conclusion should include all of your arguments and the main points of the paper.
• Make sure that you use correct grammar and sentence structures. Check it several times to make sure that there are no mistakes in it. Pay attention to the spelling of words, too. If you are not sure that the grammar is correct, ask your peers to look through the paper for you.

Do not forget that we also have some free paper samples that will provide you with ideas for your essay!

• Celebrities as Good Role Models In the conclusion, it was affirmed that celebrities’ accomplishments are easily identifiable to the public, as is the case with Angelina and Oprah, and this makes them good role models.
• Role Model: Nelson Mandela Through the African National Congress party, Mandela was determined to undergo any form of suffering for the sake of the South Africans blacks who were facing a lot of suffering at the hand of apartheid.
• Willy Loman, a Poor Role Model to His Two Sons Biff and Happy The main theme in the play is sustained in the play with the sons of Willy attaining their personality from their father.
• Role Model as a Communicator My role model as a public communicator is very intelligent and ethical when presenting his speech to the public; he sticks to a single topic throughout.
• Positive Role Model in “A Doll’s House” by Henrik Ibsen To sum up, A Doll’s House presents the harsh life of the mother and wife, Nora, who is trapped with her husband with no choices and goals.
• Ernie Davis as a Football Role Model He was an exceptional player born ahead of his time, as he stood out on the football field as the first African American to win the Heisman trophy in 1961, and to be chosen for […]
• The Role Model ‘Central Woman’ in the Literature The other side of her personality is the merciful woman. What seems to be motivating the grandmother is her role and responsibility as a grandmother.
• Oprah Winfrey as Role Model The young Oprah was raised on a farm by her grandmother, and she maintains that the care her grandmother gave her early on probably saved her life.
• Gloria Steinem: A Role Model for Millions of Women However, for the majority of women, the situation changed considerably after the initiation of the suffrage movement in the 19th century, which found its reflection in the women’s rights movement of the 20th and 21st […]
• Father as a Male Role Model During the days when schooling was considered to be accessible only to the children of the opulent, those who were not privileged enough to go to school, remained at home and helped their parents in […]
• Education and Leadership Role Modeling Generally, the article is of great significance to education, for it provides a guideline on what leadership trainers should emphasize in their endeavors of ensuring that education builds all round and sound mind leaders, who […]
• Significance of a Male Role Model for Forming Tomas and Gabe’s Personal It is possible to pay attention to Tomas and Gabe’s visions of masculinity referring to the ideas developed by Tomas in relation to the question, to the opinion which is characteristic for Gabe, and to […]
• Parents as Failed Role Models: A Doll’s House and Fight Club The drinking culture of parents revealed in the story of the Fight Club underscores the elements that increase children’s exposure to alcohol and drug taking.
• Nutrition and Excellent Role Model
• Prophet Muhammad as Role Model for Religious Teachers
• The Misconception of a Role Model and the Relation to an Athlete
• The Importance Of A Role Model In The Adventures Of Huckberry Finn By Mark Twain
• Religion Is A Role Model For Majority Of People
• Selena Gomez as a Positive Role Model
• Role Model Worthy For The Field Of Social Work
• Towards a Holistic Innovation Policy: Can the Swedish National Innovation Council Serve as a Role Model
• The Barbie Doll’s Role Model For Children
• The Role Model Qualities Shown by the Finchs’s Maid in To Kill a Mocking
• Tupac as a Role Model
• Strategy Development to Launch a New Product! Launching Of iPhone As a Role Model
• Raising Awareness of My Own Voice Through My Vocal Role Model and Non-Model
• Taylor Swift: My Role Model
• Who Is the Role Model for Young Women? Pride and Prejudice and Bj’s Diary
• True Grit Is Not A Good Role Model For Young Women Today
• The Life and Work of Jane Goodall, a Scientist and Role Model
• Women Rhetoricians’ Role Model and Pan Chao
• The Value of a Role Model in the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
• Parents Need To Be A Role Model For Teenagers
• Princess Diana as a Role Model and People’s Princess
• The Role Of Models Of A Role Model
• The Story of an Influential Role Model, George Washington
• The Loss of a Role Model in In Red Sky At Morning by Richard Bradford
• The Constitution of India is a Role Model for The World
• The Importance of the Father as a Role Model
• Professional Athletes Should Be Role Model to Kindergartners in Modern Society
• The Best Role Model Of The Worst People
• A Description of Eleanor Roosevelt as a Good Role Model
• Why I Chose Martin Luther King as My Role Model
• Tennyson’s Ulysses as a Victorian Role Model
• The Possibility of the United States to Become the World Moral, Economic and Political Role Model
• White Teeth: The Problem of Lacking a Role Model
• Willy Lohan, A Poor Role Model To His Two Sons Biff And Happy
• Positive Role Model in the Children and Young Peoples Workforce
• What Makes A Modern Role Model
• What Makes A Role Model Like A Good Outlook
• The Importance of Having a Good Role Model
• Teacher Role Model and Students’ Physical Activity
• Walt Disney as a Role Model
• What Is a Role Model?
• How Do Role Models Help in Forming Identity?
• Are Celebrities Good Role Models?
• What Makes a Good Role Model?
• Why Do Celebrities Become Role Models?
• How to Become a Role Model in Your Home?
• Are Athletes Good Role Models?
• Who Should Be a Role Model?
• Do We Need Adults as Role Models?
• How to Be a Good Role Model?
• Why Are Celebrities Bad Role Models?
• What Is Better: Being A Leader Or Role Model?
• What Makes a Role Model?
• How Do Role Models Influence Our Lives?
• Who Is the Best Role Model?
• Why Is It Important to Be a Positive Role Model?
• How Do Positive Role Models Affect One’s Behavior?
• Do Role Models Matter?
• Can You Be Your Role Model?
• What Are the Qualities of a Role Model?
• How Do Role Models Affect You Emotionally?
• Is It Okay to Not Have a Role Model?
• Why Do Adults Need Role Models?
• Who Are Role Models in Today’s Society?
• How Do Role Models Affect Employees’ Performance?
• Why Parents Are the Best Role Models?
• What Are the Three Important Traits of a Good Role Model?
• Is It Important for Everyone to Have a Role Model?
• How Many Types of Role Models Are There?
• In What Ways Are Role Models Important for Leaders?
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2023, November 9). 83 Role Model Topics & Examples. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/role-model-essay-examples/

"83 Role Model Topics & Examples." IvyPanda , 9 Nov. 2023, ivypanda.com/essays/topic/role-model-essay-examples/.

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IvyPanda . 2023. "83 Role Model Topics & Examples." November 9, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/role-model-essay-examples/.

1. IvyPanda . "83 Role Model Topics & Examples." November 9, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/role-model-essay-examples/.

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IvyPanda . "83 Role Model Topics & Examples." November 9, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/role-model-essay-examples/.

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3.4: Cause and Effect Model Essay 3

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Read the following essay, fill in the blanks with suitable cause-effect signal words and phrases. Pay attention to the sentence structure to help you decide. There may be more than one correct sign word or phrase.

First Name Last Name

Professor Name

Course Name and Number

Month Day Year

The Effects of Dropping Out of High School

(1) Every year thousands of teenagers drop out of high school. Some of these teenagers are wage earners who need to contribute to the family income. For them, the immediate need of helping out financially overrides their need for a diploma. Some teenagers did not get a strong academic foundation in elementary and middle school, so the high school curriculum proves to be too challenging, which leads to frustration. They find it easier to leave school and start life as working adults. Still others become involved in illegal activities, which often includes drug use. Such a lifestyle is not compatible with regular attendance and study necessary for high school success. In spite of the efforts of parents, teachers, and counselors, these teens end up leaving school to face whatever “real life” brings them. In their situations, it is difficult for them to see that leaving school will have profound effects on their finances, their ability to function in society, and even their sense of self-worth.

(2) Clearly, leaving high school without a diploma will have a negative (a) ____________on a person’s finances. Though there are jobs that do not require a high school diploma, these are often not suitable for the long term. Most of these are minimum-wage paying jobs, paying hourly wages that barely cover basic living expenses. Such jobs are usually in the service industry and are often physically demanding. They typically do not offer a lot of job satisfaction. Though there are some better-paying jobs that do not require a high school diploma such as utility line installers, heavy equipment operators, and communications installers, these jobs rarely (b)______________ higher-level managerial positions without a high school diploma. (c) _____________, for the rest of his life, the high school dropout is locked in a job with little hope of significant pay increases to keep up with the cost of living or to provide for a family beyond life’s basics.

(3) Dropping out of high school can also negatively (d) ______________a person’s ability to function as a fully participating member of society. High school math skills, which go beyond the basics, are necessary to function as an informed consumer. These skills affect good decision making about everything from home mortgages to retirement plans. The advanced reading and critical thinking skills that are part of the high school curriculum are also necessary to make good choices, whether choosing a cell phone plan or voting in local and national elections. The ability to be a fully participating member of society is severely hindered if a person lacks the skills learned in high school.

(4) Finally, a less obvious (e) ________________ of dropping out of high school concerns the person’s sense of self-worth. A high school diploma is considered a measure of a basic level of learning for citizens in modern societies. The vast majority of people complete this educational milestone. A person who drops out, however, cannot claim this accomplishment. (f) _________________, he may feel that he is not as valuable to society as others or that other people are somehow better than he is. Though this is not necessarily always the case, the lack of a diploma can lead to a lack of confidence. This could affect his interaction with other people, whether during a casual conversation when meeting new people at a party or during a high stakes job interview. A person may even feel he does not belong to a group of people with more education than he has.

(5) In short, the knowledge and skills learned in high school form a foundation for full participation in our society. Without a diploma, a teen has limited opportunities financially and socially. For those who choose not to complete this degree, life will provide a series of unique challenges, so it is important that anyone thinking of dropping out really understands the consequences.

Questions about the Model 3

1. Highlight the thesis statement of this essay.

2. Does the writer focus on causes or effects?

3. Does the writer give any causes? If so, where? What are they?

4. Can you think of any additional effects?

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AI has moved into its era of deployment; throughout 2022 and the beginning of 2023, new large-scale AI models have been released every month. These models, such as ChatGPT, Stable Diffusion, Whisper, and DALL-E 2, are capable of an increasingly broad range of tasks, from text manipulation and analysis, to image generation, to unprecedentedly good speech recognition. These systems demonstrate capabilities in question answering, and the generation of text, image, and code unimagined a decade ago, and they outperform the state of the art on many benchmarks, old and new. However, they are prone to hallucination, routinely biased, and can be tricked into serving nefarious aims, highlighting the complicated ethical challenges associated with their deployment.

Although 2022 was the first year in a decade where private AI investment decreased, AI is still a topic of great interest to policymakers, industry leaders, researchers, and the public. Policymakers are talking about AI more than ever before. Industry leaders that have integrated AI into their businesses are seeing tangible cost and revenue benefits. The number of AI publications and collaborations continues to increase. And the public is forming sharper opinions about AI and which elements they like or dislike.

AI will continue to improve and, as such, become a greater part of all our lives. Given the increased presence of this technology and its potential for massive disruption, we should all begin thinking more critically about how exactly we want AI to be developed and deployed. We should also ask questions about who is deploying it—as our analysis shows, AI is increasingly defined by the actions of a small set of private sector actors, rather than a broader range of societal actors. This year’s AI Index paints a picture of where we are so far with AI, in order to highlight what might await us in the future.

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Computer Science > Computation and Language

Title: llm2vec: large language models are secretly powerful text encoders.

Abstract: Large decoder-only language models (LLMs) are the state-of-the-art models on most of today's NLP tasks and benchmarks. Yet, the community is only slowly adopting these models for text embedding tasks, which require rich contextualized representations. In this work, we introduce LLM2Vec, a simple unsupervised approach that can transform any decoder-only LLM into a strong text encoder. LLM2Vec consists of three simple steps: 1) enabling bidirectional attention, 2) masked next token prediction, and 3) unsupervised contrastive learning. We demonstrate the effectiveness of LLM2Vec by applying it to 3 popular LLMs ranging from 1.3B to 7B parameters and evaluate the transformed models on English word- and sequence-level tasks. We outperform encoder-only models by a large margin on word-level tasks and reach a new unsupervised state-of-the-art performance on the Massive Text Embeddings Benchmark (MTEB). Moreover, when combining LLM2Vec with supervised contrastive learning, we achieve state-of-the-art performance on MTEB among models that train only on publicly available data. Our strong empirical results and extensive analysis demonstrate that LLMs can be effectively transformed into universal text encoders in a parameter-efficient manner without the need for expensive adaptation or synthetic GPT-4 generated data.

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Chain-of-Thought Prompting Elicits Reasoning in Large Language Models

Part of Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 35 (NeurIPS 2022) Main Conference Track

Jason Wei, Xuezhi Wang, Dale Schuurmans, Maarten Bosma, brian ichter, Fei Xia, Ed Chi, Quoc V Le, Denny Zhou

We explore how generating a chain of thought---a series of intermediate reasoning steps---significantly improves the ability of large language models to perform complex reasoning. In particular, we show how such reasoning abilities emerge naturally in sufficiently large language models via a simple method called chain of thought prompting, where a few chain of thought demonstrations are provided as exemplars in prompting. Experiments on three large language models show that chain of thought prompting improves performance on a range of arithmetic, commonsense, and symbolic reasoning tasks. The empirical gains can be striking. For instance, prompting a 540B-parameter language model with just eight chain of thought exemplars achieves state of the art accuracy on the GSM8K benchmark of math word problems, surpassing even finetuned GPT-3 with a verifier.

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11 Apr 2024  ·  Aounon Kumar , Himabindu Lakkaraju · Edit social preview

Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly being integrated into search engines to provide natural language responses tailored to user queries. Customers and end-users are also becoming more dependent on these models for quick and easy purchase decisions. In this work, we investigate whether recommendations from LLMs can be manipulated to enhance a product's visibility. We demonstrate that adding a strategic text sequence (STS) -- a carefully crafted message -- to a product's information page can significantly increase its likelihood of being listed as the LLM's top recommendation. To understand the impact of STS, we use a catalog of fictitious coffee machines and analyze its effect on two target products: one that seldom appears in the LLM's recommendations and another that usually ranks second. We observe that the strategic text sequence significantly enhances the visibility of both products by increasing their chances of appearing as the top recommendation. This ability to manipulate LLM-generated search responses provides vendors with a considerable competitive advantage and has the potential to disrupt fair market competition. Just as search engine optimization (SEO) revolutionized how webpages are customized to rank higher in search engine results, influencing LLM recommendations could profoundly impact content optimization for AI-driven search services. Code for our experiments is available at https://github.com/aounon/llm-rank-optimizer.

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Gig workers are writing essays for AI to learn from

• Companies are hiring highly educated gig workers to write training content for AI models .
• The shift toward more sophisticated trainers comes as tech giants scramble for new data sources.
• AI could run out of data to learn from by 2026, one research institute has warned. 

As artificial intelligence models run out of data to train themselves on, AI companies are increasingly turning to actual humans to write training content.

For years, companies have used gig workers to help train AI models on simple tasks like photo identification , data annotation, and labelling. But the rapidly advancing technology now requires more advanced people to train it.

Companies such as Scale AI and Surge AI are hiring part-timers with graduate degrees to write essays and creative prompts for the bots to gobble up, The New York Times reported . Scale AI, for example, posted a job last year looking for people with Master's degrees or PhDs, who are fluent in either English, Hindi, or Japanese and have professional writing experience in fields like poetry, journalism, and publishing.

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Their mission? To help AI bots "become better writers," Scale AI wrote in the posting.

And an army of workers are needed to do this kind of work. Scale AI has as many as tens of thousands of contractors working on its platform at a time, per the Times.

"What really makes the A.I. useful to its users is the human layer of data, and that really needs to be done by smart humans and skilled humans and humans with a particular degree of expertise and a creative bent," Willow Primack, the vice president of data operations at Scale AI, told the New York Times. "We have been focusing on contractors, particularly within North America, as a result."

The shift toward more sophisticated gig trainers comes as tech giants scramble to find new data to train their technology on. That's because the programs learn so incredibly fast that they're already running out of available resources to learn from. The vast trove of online information — everything from scientific papers to news articles to Wikipedia pages — is drying up.

Epoch, an AI research institute, has warned that AI could run out of data by 2026.

So, companies are finding more and more creative ways to make sure their systems never stop learning. Google has considered accessing its customers' data in Google Docs , Sheets, and Slides while Meta even thought about buying publishing house Simon & Schuster to harvest its book collection, Business Insider previously reported.

Watch: Nearly 50,000 tech workers have been laid off — but there's a hack to avoid layoffs

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• How to write a descriptive essay | Example & tips

How to Write a Descriptive Essay | Example & Tips

Published on July 30, 2020 by Jack Caulfield . Revised on August 14, 2023.

A descriptive essay gives a vivid, detailed description of something—generally a place or object, but possibly something more abstract like an emotion. This type of essay , like the narrative essay , is more creative than most academic writing .

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Descriptive essay topics, tips for writing descriptively, descriptive essay example, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about descriptive essays.

When you are assigned a descriptive essay, you’ll normally be given a specific prompt or choice of prompts. They will often ask you to describe something from your own experience.

• Describe a place you love to spend time in.
• Describe an object that has sentimental value for you.

You might also be asked to describe something outside your own experience, in which case you’ll have to use your imagination.

• Describe the experience of a soldier in the trenches of World War I.
• Describe what it might be like to live on another planet.

Sometimes you’ll be asked to describe something more abstract, like an emotion.

If you’re not given a specific prompt, try to think of something you feel confident describing in detail. Think of objects and places you know well, that provoke specific feelings or sensations, and that you can describe in an interesting way.

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The key to writing an effective descriptive essay is to find ways of bringing your subject to life for the reader. You’re not limited to providing a literal description as you would be in more formal essay types.

Make use of figurative language, sensory details, and strong word choices to create a memorable description.

Use figurative language

Figurative language consists of devices like metaphor and simile that use words in non-literal ways to create a memorable effect. This is essential in a descriptive essay; it’s what gives your writing its creative edge and makes your description unique.

Take the following description of a park.

This tells us something about the place, but it’s a bit too literal and not likely to be memorable.

If we want to make the description more likely to stick in the reader’s mind, we can use some figurative language.

Here we have used a simile to compare the park to a face and the trees to facial hair. This is memorable because it’s not what the reader expects; it makes them look at the park from a different angle.

You don’t have to fill every sentence with figurative language, but using these devices in an original way at various points throughout your essay will keep the reader engaged and convey your unique perspective on your subject.

Use your senses

Another key aspect of descriptive writing is the use of sensory details. This means referring not only to what something looks like, but also to smell, sound, touch, and taste.

Obviously not all senses will apply to every subject, but it’s always a good idea to explore what’s interesting about your subject beyond just what it looks like.

Even when your subject is more abstract, you might find a way to incorporate the senses more metaphorically, as in this descriptive essay about fear.

Choose the right words

Writing descriptively involves choosing your words carefully. The use of effective adjectives is important, but so is your choice of adverbs , verbs , and even nouns.

It’s easy to end up using clichéd phrases—“cold as ice,” “free as a bird”—but try to reflect further and make more precise, original word choices. Clichés provide conventional ways of describing things, but they don’t tell the reader anything about your unique perspective on what you’re describing.

Try looking over your sentences to find places where a different word would convey your impression more precisely or vividly. Using a thesaurus can help you find alternative word choices.

• My cat runs across the garden quickly and jumps onto the fence to watch it from above.
• My cat crosses the garden nimbly and leaps onto the fence to survey it from above.

However, exercise care in your choices; don’t just look for the most impressive-looking synonym you can find for every word. Overuse of a thesaurus can result in ridiculous sentences like this one:

• My feline perambulates the allotment proficiently and capers atop the palisade to regard it from aloft.

An example of a short descriptive essay, written in response to the prompt “Describe a place you love to spend time in,” is shown below.

Hover over different parts of the text to see how a descriptive essay works.

On Sunday afternoons I like to spend my time in the garden behind my house. The garden is narrow but long, a corridor of green extending from the back of the house, and I sit on a lawn chair at the far end to read and relax. I am in my small peaceful paradise: the shade of the tree, the feel of the grass on my feet, the gentle activity of the fish in the pond beside me.

My cat crosses the garden nimbly and leaps onto the fence to survey it from above. From his perch he can watch over his little kingdom and keep an eye on the neighbours. He does this until the barking of next door’s dog scares him from his post and he bolts for the cat flap to govern from the safety of the kitchen.

With that, I am left alone with the fish, whose whole world is the pond by my feet. The fish explore the pond every day as if for the first time, prodding and inspecting every stone. I sometimes feel the same about sitting here in the garden; I know the place better than anyone, but whenever I return I still feel compelled to pay attention to all its details and novelties—a new bird perched in the tree, the growth of the grass, and the movement of the insects it shelters…

Sitting out in the garden, I feel serene. I feel at home. And yet I always feel there is more to discover. The bounds of my garden may be small, but there is a whole world contained within it, and it is one I will never get tired of inhabiting.

If you want to know more about AI tools , college essays , or fallacies make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!

• Ad hominem fallacy
• Post hoc fallacy
• Appeal to authority fallacy
• False cause fallacy
• Sunk cost fallacy

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The key difference is that a narrative essay is designed to tell a complete story, while a descriptive essay is meant to convey an intense description of a particular place, object, or concept.

Narrative and descriptive essays both allow you to write more personally and creatively than other kinds of essays , and similar writing skills can apply to both.

If you’re not given a specific prompt for your descriptive essay , think about places and objects you know well, that you can think of interesting ways to describe, or that have strong personal significance for you.

The best kind of object for a descriptive essay is one specific enough that you can describe its particular features in detail—don’t choose something too vague or general.

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Caulfield, J. (2023, August 14). How to Write a Descriptive Essay | Example & Tips. Scribbr. Retrieved April 9, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/academic-essay/descriptive-essay/

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