Writing an Essay
The Essay
• An essay is a piece of writing several paragraphs long instead of just one or two paragraph. It is written about one topic, just as a paragraph is. However, the topic of an essay is too long and too complex to discuss in one paragraph. Therefore, you must divide the topic into several paragraphs, one for each major point. Then you must tie all of the separate paragraphs together by adding an introduction and a conclusion.
• Writing an essay is no more difficult than writing a paragraph, except that an essay is longer. The principles of organization are the same for both ; so if you can write a good paragraph, you can write a good essay.
• An essay has three main parts
• 1. An introductory paragraph
• 2. A body ( at least one, but usually two or more paragraphs )
• 3. A concluding paragraph
• Introductory paragraph
• The introductory paragraph consist of two parts : a few general statements about your subject to attract your reader’s attention, and a thesis statement, to state the specific subdivisions of your topic and / or the “plan” of your paper. A thesis statement for an essay is just like a topic sentence for a paragraph : It names the specific topic and the controlling ideas or major subdivisions of the topic.
• The body consist of one or more paragraphs. Each paragraph develops a subdivision of your topic, so the number of the paragraph in the body will vary with the number of subdivisions. The paragraphs of the body are like the main supporting points of a paragraph; furthermore, just as you can organize the ideas in a paragraph by chronological order or by order of importance, you can organize the paragraphs in an essay in the same way.
• The conclusion in an essay, like the concluding sentence in a paragraph, is a summary or review of the main points discussed in the body.
• The only additional element in an essay is the linking expression between the paragraphs of the body. These are just like transitions within a paragraph. You use transition with in a paragraph to connect the ideas between two sentences.
• Similarly, you use transitions between paragraphs to connect the ideas between them.
• You can see that writing an essay is essentially the same as writing a paragraph. En essay is just longer. The chart below shows you how the parts of a paragraph correspond to the parts of an essay.