Writing An Opinion Essay On Television Promoting Violence

If you are tasked with writing an essay on television promoting violence, there are a few things you must take into consideration:

1. The first thing you must note is that nearly all academic writing is opinionated to some degree, meaning that no matter what you are writing, your goal is to present your opinion, often with facts. That being said, when writing on this particular topic, your goal is to present enough facts to support your point of view.


2. In this instance, you need to take the stance that the viewing of TV or modern TV productions actually promote violent action or behavior or even thoughts. Now, this is quite a broad idea and as such, you might be better off working toward the idea that modern TV shows enhance blood flow or stimulate certain areas of the brain, or even focus on one or two shows that do this in order to adequately cover your point in the amount of space provided. This is key. You need to take your otherwise broad topic and bring it down into something more manageable.


3. Once you have your main idea, you need to convert it into a thesis. This needs to be a single sentence which tells your reader what your perspective or point of view, or your purpose is. You want your opinionated thought regarding the viewing of TV and its relation to violence to be summarized in one sentence, one sentence that you can present at the end of your introductory paragraph.


4. Depending on the length of your paper you will need anywhere from three to however many points or main arguments will satisfy the length of your paper. For this, you want one key point or key argument for each individual paragraph. Inside each of the body paragraphs, you want a topic sentence which feeds off of the paragraph above it and presents the main idea for the current paragraph, as well as supporting evidence.

For example: if you want to focus on three TV shows in particular and the aggressive behavior in children who view them, or the studies that have confirmed changes in aggressive areas of the brain while viewing certain shows, then you might want each of the three shows to be represented in a separate paragraph, or each of the findings from each of the three shows in a separate paragraph. You can choose to order it however you see fit.