Essay Organization

What are some ways that you can organize your essays in college? One
standard structure for expository essays is to offer the main idea, or assertion,
early in the essay and then offer categories of support.

One way to think about this standard structure is to compare it to a courtroom

argument in a television drama. The lawyer asserts, “My client is not guilty.”
Then the lawyer provides different reasons for lack of guilt: no physical
evidence placing the client at the crime scene, the client having no motive for
the crime, and more.

In writing terms, the assertion is the thesis sentence, and the different reasons
are the topic sentences. Consider the following example:

Thesis Sentence (assertion): The 21st-century workforce will require a unique

set of personal skills.

Topic Sentence (reason) #1: Workers need to learn how to deal with change.
Topic Sentence (reason) #2: Because of dealing with such a rapidly changing
work environment, 21st-century workers need to learn how to learn
Topic Sentence (reason) #3: Most of all, in order to negotiate rapid change and
learning, workers in the 21st century need good communication skills.

As you can see, the supporting ideas in an essay develop out of the main
assertion or argument in the thesis sentence.

Essay Organization
The structural organization of an essay will vary, depending on the type of
writing task you’ve been assigned, but they generally follow this basic
structure: The thesis and the topic sentences are all concerned with workers
and what they need for the workforce.
Introduction
The introduction provides the reader with context about your topic. You may
be familiar with the cliché about how first impressions are important. This is
true in writing as well, and you can think of your introduction as that first
impression. The goal is to engage the readers, so they want to read on.
Sometimes this involves giving an example, telling a story or narrative, asking a
question, or building up the situation. The introduction should almost always
include the thesis statement.

Body Paragraphs
The body of the essay is separated into paragraphs. Each paragraph usually
covers a single claim or argues a single point, expanding on what was
introduced in the thesis statement. For example, according to the National
Institute of Mental Health, the two main causes of Schizophrenia are genetic
and environmental. Thus, if you were writing about the causes of
Schizophrenia, then you would have a body paragraph on the genetic causes of
Schizophrenia and a body paragraph on the environmental causes.

A body paragraph usually includes the following:

Topic sentence that identifies the topic for the paragraph.
Several sentences that describe and support the topic sentence.
Evidence from outside sources.
Correctly formatted in-text citations indicating which source listed on the
Works Cited page has provided the evidence,

Remember that information from outside sources should be placed in the

middle of the paragraph and not at the beginning or the end of the paragraph
so that you have time to introduce and explain the outside content.
Quotation marks are placed around any information taken verbatim (word for
word) from the source.

Summary sentence(s) that draws conclusions from the evidence.

Transitions or bridge sentences between paragraphs.

Conclusion
If you began with a story, draw conclusions from that story in your conclusion.
If you began with a question, refer back to the question and be sure to provide
the answer.

A concluding paragraph:
summarizes final conclusions from the key points;
provides a brief comment on the evidence provided in the paper;
ties in the introduction.

Adapted from: “Essay Organization”

https://courses.lumenlearning.com/englishcomp1/chapter/essay-
organization/

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