Picking the best opinion essay topics is the first step toward writing outstanding academic papers. Understand that selecting a great topic may not be relatively easy. Your selection should be narrow and focused enough to allow exciting composition yet broad enough to include sufficient information. The topic you choose for your essay will determine how attractive your analysis is and the kind of sources you include in your opinion essay. This article offers guidelines for choosing the best opinion essay topics.
What Are Opinion Essay Topics?
During your time in college, you will be asked to work on multiple assignments, notably the opinion essay. This type of short prose project asks the writer to form an opinion regarding a given topic, usually in response to a question. The student is expected to use factual and anecdotal evidence to support the opinion, hoping to sway others to believe its validity.
Opinion essay topics aim to allow students to clearly and informatively articulate their position. Even when the position adopted for the opinion essay goes against common belief and requires extensive justification, opinion essays can be informative and exciting. Remember, your goal in writing an opinion essay is to emphasize your view and show why you believe it to be true.
How to Write Opinion Essay Topics?
Opinion essay topics and ideas can be a great way to express your thoughts and opinions on various issues. This kind of writing allows students to explore various exciting topics and express their views. Students have several options when writing opinion essays. Here are a few steps to follow if you want to create good essay topics for your opinion essay.
Read and Understand the Instructions
The natural step in developing a good opinion essay topic for your opinion essay is ensuring you read and understand the instructions. Every academic paper you are assigned for college will come with a prompt containing strict requirements on how the task is to be handled. Before choosing topics, go through the requirements, clarifying what your professor wants you to do.
Break down complex instructions and seek guidance on the vague elements before you start working on a challenging task. How long should your essay be? How many sources should be used? What is the essay question? When you know what is expected, you can choose an appropriate topic for the scope and length of the task. If you need help, engage a professional paper writer.
Brainstorm for Ideas
Once you have understood what is expected of you for the opinion paper topics, it is time to start brainstorming for ideas. Brainstorming is developing ideas for your topics and exploring those ideas to develop an exciting topic and thesis. It can mean writing down whatever comes to mind regarding a subject and developing your notes further through preliminary research.
Brainstorming can be intimidating for most college students in the present educational system as they struggle to find a path. Fortunately, you can use a few tricks to generate ideas when brainstorming. For instance, you can use the brain dump approach. This is where you read the instructions, internalize them, and write down whatever you can think about relating to the issue.
Conduct Preliminary Research
Once you have created a few ideas for writing your paper, conduct some preliminary research on your opinion essay options before settling on one for your paper. Understand that the best topics allow you to provide enough evidence to build up an understandable argument.
You need to check online to verify whether sufficient sources will support your analysis. The more authoritative and current the sources you can get on a topic, the better your chances of ending up with a good opinion essay. You can also get insights for your essay by ordering write my paper help online from professional writers.
Narrow Down Your Topic
After considering the availability of sources, interests, and the assignment question, you will have settled on a topic to base your writing on. You will need to narrow down the topic from that general opinion essay topic into something specific. After that, you can create a research question to inform the rest of your analysis.
Narrowing down your essay topic is crucial as it allows you to explore the opinion essay thoroughly. It also allows you to determine the general direction you wish your paper to take. A more general topic will lack substance and leave you struggling to come to conclusions within the scope of the assignment. With a broader topic, you will find too many sources, and choosing the best ones can be challenging. You also find too general information, making it hard to formulate an analysis framework.
How to Select the Best Opinion Essay Topic?
When choosing history opinion essay topics, you need to consider the purpose of your writing. Are you writing the essay to inform, persuade, or entertain? The main reason for writing the opinion essay is to let your views on an issue be heard.
The audience you write the personal opinion essay to also matters in your consideration. Choose a topic that will interest the reader while keeping you motivated during the planning and research process. You must also consider the number of sources you will need for your topic and their availability.
A List of Opinion Essay Topics
The best public opinion essay topics are clear, concise, and interesting. Have you been tasked with writing an excellent paper but cannot create impressive topics? Here is a list of opinion essay topics to guide you:
- Should hardcopy books be banned?
- Abortion should be legalized
- Students should be allowed to grade teachers
- Grading students is immoral
- The problem of bullying in modern classrooms
- Online learning is as good as in-person instruction
- Technology and its effects on social relationships
- Video games have an important role to play in college education
- Dangers of technology in academia
- Gender issues in access to a college education
Opinion Essay Topics for High School Students
High school students are often assigned opinion essays to improve their research skills and help them develop their written communication skills. You could write about government control religious practices. Here are a few topics high school students may choose for their opinion essays:
- Should students be allowed to use smartphones in school?
- Is mandatory school uniform morally right?
- The importance of physical education classes in high school
- Should prayers be allowed in schools?
- Benefits of listening to music during study time
- The ethics behind using animals for scientific research
- The impact of social media on student’s academic performance
- Benefits of part-time jobs and their appropriateness for high-school students
Some Great Examples of Opinion Essay Questions
Like other essays, the opinion essay contains three parts — an introduction, body paragraphs, and a conclusion. However, unlike other essay formats, the opinion essay has a thesis based on the writer’s opinion rather than an objective analysis. Academic writing is anchored on facts, personal relationships, events, and logical arguments for argumentative, persuasive, and expository essays. When deciding the topic for your opinion essay, understand that the writing is based on your opinion. Here are some essay questions to help you choose the best topics:
- Is the use of animals for research ethical?
- Should the use of marijuana be legalized outside of medicine?
- Should the contributions from third-world countries towards global warming match those of developed ones?
- Is the use of GMOs in food production ethical?
- Do governments have a moral obligation to address the issue of racial inequality?
- Is the presence of the United States in the Middle East morally justifiable?
- Should college athletes receive payment for participation in sporting activities?
- How did the coronavirus pandemic transform the education sector?
A Few Examples of Opinion Essay Ideas
Once you have narrowed down your topic, research your choice to consider opposing viewpoints and be ready to address them in your essay. It would help if you also chose topics that are timely and relevant. Here are some ideas for your opinion essay topics:
- Write about the impact of social media
- Write about the effects of animal testing by the cosmetic industry
- Write about gun control laws and the need to make them stricter
- Write about abortion and issues to do with its morality
- Write about issues relating to racism in the healthcare sector
- Discuss policy changes you would make to the healthcare sector
- Talk about the benefits of collaborative learning and the impact of technology in making it possible
- Write about shiftwork and its impact on nurses’ well-being
Conclusion
The best topics are those you are passionate about, and you need to narrow down your selection to ensure you thoroughly understand a topic. To narrow down your topic, focus on the aspect, which is the lens through which you choose to view the research problem. It would be best to determine the composition of the general opinion essay topic you wish to pursue. Methodology, time, place, and time are other strategies to narrow down your topic.
Iskra Banović is our seasoned Editor-in-Chief at Blufashion. She has been steering the website’s content and editorial direction since 2018. With a rich background in fashion design, Iskra’s expertise spans across fashion, interior design, beauty, lifestyle, travel, and culture.