STRUCTURE OF A

GOOD ESSAY
Prabha Zacharias
Brainstorming
◦ lists, bubble charts, and diagrams that identify and connect important points from the research to illustrate
their relationships
◦ pick a method that works well for you- pre-writing – outlining
◦ Do not try to include everything you learned from your research.
◦ Save those ideas for other research papers
◦ structure the paper around key insights you gained or opinions you formed.
◦ It requires more than simply stringing together paragraphs that summarize your research.
◦ Focus on the research that best supports your discussion, findings, or argument.
Prewriting
◦ Your ability to use your research to support and enhance the quality of your discussion is what counts
◦ prewriting exercises - filtering out information that is irrelevant to your insights or point of view and
focusing on building a strong case for what you choose to include.
◦ Making Lists- easy to produce once we have the information
How to Organize Your List
◦ List the most interesting things you learned in your research in order of their importance.
◦ Leave plenty of white space between the points on your list so that you can add information later.
◦ Review the list.
◦ Check to see that your list includes all the key points you learned in your research.
◦ Change the order of items on your list to ensure that the most important information is at the top and to
group related ideas and information together.
Making Charts
◦ Bubble charts and Venn diagrams allow you to organize information visually so that you can easily
identify common themes, information, and relationships in the information you have discovered.
◦ Bubble charts - useful in helping to identify relationships.
◦ Lines and arrows connecting related clusters in a bubble chart show which ideas go together.
How to Create a Bubble Chart
◦ Write your topic in the middle of a piece of paper.
◦ Think of the most interesting things you learned about it.
◦ Write those things down, circling the topic to look like a “bubble.”
◦ As you think of more and more things, keep writing them down, circling the topic.
◦ When you are finished, draw lines or arrows between bubbles with related information to point out
common themes, ideas, arguments, and relationships.
◦ Using a bubble chart to connect the facts and ideas you uncovered in your research helps you identify the
relationships in the information you found, form conclusions about it, and construct persuasive arguments
that will make your paper more meaningful to readers
Venn Diagram
◦ show overlapping themes and facts. They reveal commonalities and differences that can be used to make
comparisons and contrasts
Creating an Outline
◦ An outline allows you to begin to structure your information in the order you will present it in your paper.
◦ Outlining begins with a review of the lists, charts, or diagrams you created as prewriting exercises.
◦ Your outline, like your paper, will be organized around a thesis.
◦ The thesis is the main point of the paper or, if you are writing a persuasive paper, a claim you will make
based on your research.
◦ The paragraphs that follow will be constructed to sustain the thesis with supporting evidence. This will be
quotations, examples, descriptions, or anecdotes from your research.
How to Organize Your Outline
◦ Identify a thesis and list it as your main point. Later, it will provide the topic of your introduction, the first
paragraph of your paper.
◦ In order of their importance, list the most interesting points from your research that support the thesis. These will
be the topics of supporting paragraphs. Leave plenty of white space between points so you can list evidence that
supports them.
◦ Use the white space under each point to list the evidence that supports that point. Use only the most relevant and
interesting information.
◦ Edit your list.
◦ If one point seems to repeat another or there are close similarities, rewrite them as one point that groups related
information.
◦ List your points in order of importance.
◦ Add a final point identifying the conclusion you want your readers to draw from the evidence or the most
important observation they should make.
◦ Under it, list the reasons why.
The five paragraph structure
◦ Paragraph 1: Introduction/thesis
◦ Paragraph 2: First point, description, or argument
◦ Paragraph 3: Second point, description, or argument
◦ Paragraph 4: Third point, description, or argument
◦ Paragraph 5: Conclusion
Paragraph 1 (Introduction)
• Write a sentence that introduces your subject.
• Write a sentence that explains the importance of your subject.
• Write the thesis, a sentence that appears near the end of your introduction, stating the key point you want
to make about the subject of your paper. This will be your thesis statement.
• Write a sentence that provides a smooth transition, or connection, to the first topic you will present in
support of your thesis.
Paragraph 2 (Body)
• Write a topic sentence that introduces the most important observation from your research that supports
your thesis.
• Present a quotation, example, or argument that supports the topic.
• Write a transition sentence that suggests, or is linked to, the next topic.
Paragraph 3 (Body)
• Write a topic sentence that introduces the second most important topic you will present in support of your
thesis.
• Present a quotation, example, or argument that supports the topic.
• Write a transition sentence to the next topic.
Paragraph 4 (Body)
• Write a topic sentence that introduces the third topic you will present in support of your thesis.
• Present a quotation, example, or argument that supports the topic.
• Write a transition sentence to the conclusion.
Paragraph 5 (Conclusion)
• Summarize the evidence or arguments presented in the three preceding paragraphs.
• Write a sentence that reintroduces, or restates, your thesis using different words.
• Write a sentence that identifies what you want readers to learn from your paper or how you want them to
act on your findings.
Expanding beyond Five Paragraphs
• extensive research cannot be represented in a mere five paragraphs
• build your analysis by exploring, and discussing the implications of, additional topics