Purpose
Developing a framed outline (thesis and topic sentences) before you draft a full sentence outline will provide you with focus and guidance as you write your full sentence outline.
Directions
- After you have completed your research and your Annotated Bibliography for your Argument Research Essay, use your thesis statement to create a topic sentence outline for your argument essay on fracking or offshore oil drilling. Review the readings, Argument (Links to an external site.) and Thesis Statements. (Links to an external site.)
- Check to make sure your thesis includes the subject/topic, your claim/stance about that subject/topic, and a list of supports/main ideas that you will use to prove that claim/stance.
- Check to make sure your list of supporting/main ideas in your thesis exhibits parallel (Links to an external site.) structure.
- Write potential topic sentences that support your thesis, and make sure the thesis and topic sentences have unity (Links to an external site.).
- Remember to use transitional words or phrases to connect ideas and to add coherence between topic sentences.
The Sample Topic Sentence Outline below is an example of a topic sentence outline that shows parallelism, transitions, and unity. Like the annotated bibliography, this topic sentence outline discusses child beauty pageants. This topic sentence outline also shows you how to create a topic sentence idea into more than one body paragraph.
- Imagine you have A LOT to discuss about a child’s self-image, the main idea presented in Topic Sentence 1 below. Rather than creating a paragraph that fills an entire page, consider dividing this information into more than one body paragraph.
- To create more than one body paragraph for this information, begin each sub-point paragraph with a transitional word or phrase to link it back to the previous paragraph and to connect the idea back to the topic sentence idea.
- For example, in Topic Sentence 1 below, note how the repeated phrase “self-image can change” links Sub-point Sentence A to Topic Sentence 1, and the repetition of Sub-point Sentence A’s key term “attractiveness” is used in Sub-point Sentence B as a way to link B to A. Likewise, note how Sub-point Sentence C repeats several key concepts from the ideas that precede it: self-image, distortion, and overemphasis on beauty. This links Sub-point Sentence C to ideas shared in A and B, which in turn link ideas back to Topic Sentence 1. This sort of linking of ideas creates unity and coherence of ideas in an essay.
Sample Topic Sentence Outline
Thesis: Child beauty pageants should be banned because they distort a child’s self-image, put a child’s health at risk, and ruin a child’s formative years.
Topic Sentence 1: When a child participates in beauty pageants, her self-image can change.
- Sub-point Sentence A: Self image can change when children learn that the only characteristic that is important is their attractiveness.
Evidence: According to Marina M. Cartwright in her article titled “Child Beauty Pageant: What Are We Teaching Our Girls?” found in Psychology Today, young girls who retire from the pageant scene often struggle “with perfection, dieting, eating disorders and body image….” (1).
Analysis: Young girls need to experience environments where they can think and act based on who they are so their self-image is founded on their whole being rather than solely on their outside appearance. - Sub-point Sentence B: Instead of obsessing about their attractiveness, young people need to be taught to love what they see in the mirror each morning before they put on makeup and fake hair.
Evidence:
Analysis: - Sub-point Sentence C: To prevent possible self-image distortion and overemphasis on beauty, some governments are banning beauty pageants.
Evidence:
Analysis:
Topic Sentence 2: It is a shame that parents put the health of their children at risk because of a crown.
Topic Sentence 3: Children need time to play, learn, and grow, and little of this is possible if they participate in the beauty pageant circuit.
NOTE: The pattern for providing supporting ideas for each topic sentence is shown for topic sentence 1. When using this sample sentence outline to write an essay, each topic sentence may need more than a single body paragraph to provide adequate support. That means the essay that this sample topic sentence outline represents could have more than three body paragraphs.
Grading
This activity is an ungraded assignment, but it is a crucial step to writing the full sentence outline for your Argument Research Essay, which is a graded assignment.