How to write opinion What Kind of Student Faces an Opinion Essay Example: Family Systems Theory

Paragraph 5_Conclusion – here you summarize your argument by restating the reasons mentioned in the essay. You can end the essay by a “call for action” phrase challenging the readers to take some action and reconsider their opinion if they differ from yours. Read more in this article. 

This is what the simplest version looks like. However, depending on the level of language competency of your students you can choose to have 2 reasons.
In the input session, when presenting the structure of the essay, it’s best to work on sample essays to reinforce assimilation while learning on-job. I have been using the one here and it has been quite helpful for the students. Working on sample essays gives the students a chance to grasp the general point and not to get confused when working on the hometask. 
It is a good idea to write a short sample essay in class as well, on a topic of your choice, so that you can monitor and see how confident the students feel about the new material. In my classroom the students are always writing the first piece in pairs to help each other and generate ideas for speculation. When doing so, bear in mind that it’s best if you have similar ability students working together, as the stronger one will always take over the writing leaving the weaker one unclear on both the task and the workflow. The recent topic I’ve used has been: “Nowadays, food has become easier to prepare. Has this change improved the way people live? Use specific reasons and examples to support your answer.”
Sample essays
Below, we’re going to look at a couple essays my students have come up with together with the feedback they’ve received. The sample you’ll see were the first drafts of the essay.
The task:

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  Write an Opinion essay on the following topic: “Nowadays, food has become easier to prepare. Has this change improved the way people live? Use specific reasons and examples to support your answer”
  
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  Use specific reasons and examples to support your viewpoint.
  
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  Word count 200-250
  

Sample 1


You can see the feedback below.
The basic idea in providing feedback here is to try to guide the student to correct their mistakes themselves rather than provide them with the answers. It helps them to better assimilate the material.
As you can see from the essay above, the student had some issues with applying the correct structure together with some language errors. The next step is to work on the second draft and try to improve it following the comments and referring to the background information presented during the class.
Sample 2

You can see the feedback below:

As you can see, this essay was much better formulated (this is a much stronger student), most of the comments have to do with word choice and formulation. The task for the second draft is the same – improve it based on the comments.