Sample Essay - Money is the Root of All Evil. Do you agree?

In this blog, I will demonstrate writing an essay by utilising the techniques. I will show you a sample argumentative essay (there are a few patterns of essays you need to know in English 1119 and this section will be discussed on the coming blogs)I have written in Form 4. This essay was my mentor teacher's favourite and was published in my school magazine in 2007(in Form 5).

The title is:-

"Money is the root of all evil. Do you agree?"

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What is money? I bet that everyone knows "money" very well. In short, money is the medium in a trade. Yes, money is nothing but only a medium in a trade. Hence, I totally disagree that money is the root of all evil. Money itself is not an evil, it is harmless. In fact, evil comes from money users, that is, we, human beings!

Again, money is an object, a medium in a trade and it is harmless. It is labelled "an evil" because of human beings - their evil thoughts and actions! Because of money, a lot of crimes occur like robbery, snatch, theft and burglary. People are willing to commit crimes mentioned because of their greed. They desire wealth, status and power. Laconically, greed in mankind leads them to crimes, but not money!

Take gambling for instance - a game, which requires people to risk their money, in order to get more! Wow, we could win a big amount of money in a gamble if we are fortunate enough! We could "earn" money without working! How wonderful it is! Obviously, most people will risk their money in gabling, in the hope to win great amount of money. Like the Chinese saying goes, if a little money does not go out, great money will not come in. Because of this sort of saying, most people especially Chinese are willing to risk their "little money" to win "great money". Some compulsive gamblers may encounter bankruptcies as a result of indulging themselves in gambling. Is this money's fault? No, it is not! It is the fault of humans - their evil thoughts! In general, greed, again, causes evil, not money.

Maladministration is also an evil caused by human beings. Why do they do so? Without doubt, they want to gain profit, namely, money! Unscrupulous businessmen, for example, give priority to profit rather than the quality of products or services. For instance, this has provoked a furore among Malaysians, that is, chemicals were used on hogs to make them fatter. This is a maladministration done by the farmers in Malaysia. In order to earn more money, they ignored the health of consumers and injected chemicals into hogs' body to make them fat quickly.

As a conclusion, evil is not caused by money. Money looks like ab evil because it is used by "evil" humans to accomplish their "evil" plans like the points mentioned above. Consequently, humans themselves are considered as the root of all evil, money is only a "victim".

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Discussion:

1. Starting from the second paragraph, which is the beginning of the body, you can see that each paragraph only contains 1 main idea.

For example,
2nd paragraph - the main idea is about crimes. Humans commit crimes due to money.
3rd paragraph - the main idea is about gambling. Humans gamble for money.
4rd paragraph - then main idea is about maladministration(=dishonest business management).

2. In the essay, you can notice that there is a variety of sentence structures - simple, compound and complex sentences.

3. To make the essay flow smoothly, conjunctions and logical connectors are used.