For many students, constructing a concise, compelling, and coherent essay can be a daunting task. It doesn’t need to be. Here we will look at some strategies and concepts that can be applied in the essay writing process.
Essay Structure
Most of the essays that students have to write in high school are 5-paragraph, argumentative essays. The purpose of such an essay is to convince the reader of an opinion, or thesis. As its name suggests, a 5-paragraph essay has 5 paragraphs, as outlined below:
- Introduction
- Body paragraph 1
- Body paragraph 2
- Body paragraph 3
- Conclusion
Looking at each of these paragraphs will give us a good idea of how to approach writing an essay.
Introduction
Unsurprisingly, the introduction paragraph focuses on introducing the reader to the topic of our essay. Often this begins with a hook. A hook is something that should grab your reader’s attention in relation to the topic of your essay. It can be a quote, anecdote, statistics, question, or anything else that makes a reader interested in the essay.
After beginning with a hook, we move to introducing the topic of our essay with a thesis statement. This is often a single sentence that explicitly states what the essay is about. Remember that in this type of essay (argumentative), we are expression our opinion or point-of-view on something. As such, our thesis statement should resemble our perspective as opposed to a statement of fact. For example, “grass is green” is not a thesis statement, but “pizza is the best type of food” is a valid thesis statement.
The final component of our introduction is to briefly state our points that support our thesis statement. There should be 3 of these, each corresponding to one of our body paragraphs.
Body Paragraphs
In each body paragraph, we focus on one of our supporting points that we listed in our introduction. In these body paragraphs, we will expand upon these points, provide evidence, and show how the point contributes to our thesis. For many essays in English classes, it is good practice to include a quote to support each point in your body paragraphs.
A best-practice to make writing body paragraphs easier is to use the “sandwich” method. In this method, we focus on 3 components, the top slice of bread, the insides, and the bottom slice of bread. The top slice of bread is a sentence that introduces the reader to the supporting point your body paragraph is about. It is a miniature introduction. The insides (i.e. lettuce, tomatoes, sliced meat) are the quotes, details, and other evidence that you use to expand on the focus of this paragraph. This should usually be 3-5 sentences. Finally, the bottom slice of bread is a miniature conclusion. Here, we restate the supporting point that this paragraph is about, how it relates to our thesis, and introduce the next paragraph.
Conclusion
Finally, we end our essay with a conclusion. In this paragraph we restate our thesis and supporting points. Aside from having a hook, our conclusion will have much of the same information as our introduction. There are two main differences though.
- In our conclusion we are ending our essay as opposed to introducing it. Our word choice and tone should reflect that level of finality.
- We have already written an entire essay trying to convince the reader of our thesis. As such, we can be bold and confident as we restate our thesis and supporting points. The reader may still disagree with our thesis, but we should look to present our thesis as though it has now been proven.
Additional Tips
Writing an essay involves more than adhering to the structure outlined above. Some additional considerations to remember are as follows:
- Consistent verb tense – avoid mixing the past, present, and future tenses
- Consistent perspective – in some essays 1st person (I, me, etc) is preferred. In others, the 3rd person (it, them, they) is better. Pick one and stick to it.
- Make sure your supporting points always link back to your thesis – don’t get too focused on presenting everything you know about the topic of the essay. Everything should relate to and contribute towards supporting your thesis
This has been a brief introduction to essay structure. For more information on this topic as well as assistance with homework and test preparation, feel free to reach out to an Academic Director toll-free at 1 (877) 545-7737 or via our Contact Us page.
