Writing an essay without any structure is like trying to find your way around an unfamiliar place without a map; frustrating, ineffective, and a bit of a garbled mess. Structure gives your essay a clear voice and coherency and makes marking a lot easier for your teacher or tutor! Here are a few general tips I often use when writing essays to maximise the effect of my argument and achieve the best results I can both in high school and university.
Text structure
While the content of essays varies, the skeleton structure never changes. In order to clearly articulate an idea, an essay needs a beginning, middle, and an end.
Start with a macro sentence - use an interesting quote, fact, or idea which gives the reader a broad sense of what your essay will cover. This is the reader’s first impression of your essay and can determine their whole attitude while reading it, so make it effective!
Briefly outline the main ideas and thesis - in absence of an abstract, your introduction will need to show the main ideas you will be covering so as to support your thesis, or answer the essay question. You will need to clearly express your position and how you intend to argue the point.
Set the limits - sometimes, the scope of an essay question can be very broad, or perhaps there’s a focus to your thesis not all ready indicated. Define the limits of your essay, whether they be a set of years for a history topic, or looking at specific artists who contributed to an art style.
Define key terms - if a term is important to the understanding of your essay, or perhaps you’ve taken your own approach to its meaning, be sure to define it in your introduction!
Separate each idea into a paragraph - ideas can generally be separated chronologically or conceptually. The section below explores this in more detail!
Start every paragraph with a topic sentence - introduce what the paragraph will discuss and how it relates to your thesis. Signpost it with critical words to make it easier to understand exactly what you are addressing. Ensure it is clear and to the point!
Make a claim and the support it - like in reality, when you make a claim you need to provide evidence to support it so it can be taken seriously. Make your claim early on in the paragraph, generally in the topic sentence, give relevant detail and explanation, analyse it, and then justify it with authoritative quotes, sources, examples, etc.
End every paragraph with a linking sentence - refer back to your thesis or question and make sure what you set out to cover in the paragraph actually addresses it! This is an opportunity to draw a link between this paragraph and the next.
Do more than just restate your points - your conclusion is more than just a rehash of your introduction. Link ideas together and demonstrate how they are interconnected on a less superficial level. An English teacher once told me, your essay is like a mountain. You put in all your hard work to climb it in your introduction and body paragraphs, your conclusion is a chance to look back, make connections where there were none before, and solidify your argument.
Establish the overarching theme and idea - what idea underlies all the points you have made? How does it relate to your thesis?
Draw a profound and insightful conclusion - what are the implications of this? Is there relevance today? This can transform a standard essay into a more profound and overall, more interesting essay.
Don’t introduce any new information - your essay is complete! All your information should have been expressed in the body paragraphs, so nothing new should be introduced here.
Reaffirm your thesis - restate it with some finality! Your body has provided all this evidence to support it, remind them of this.
Chronological or Conceptual?
For the most part, an essay can take one of two approaches; a chronological approach, where each body paragraph follows the text, history, etc., sequentially, or a conceptual approach, where the main idea is broken down into its constituent elements, each addressed in their own paragraph(s).
In my experience, conceptual essays usually score higher, showing a greater sense of understanding of the topic and its inner workings. You can demonstrate a funnel effect more easily, where each element funnels down from its body paragraph to the conclusion, contributing to the overall idea of the essay. A chronological approach, however, can be easier to follow and is occasionally implicit within the essay question. Choosing which approach to use depends on which you are comfortable writing with, the demands of the essay or your teacher, and can vary from essay to essay.
Continuity and Cohesion
Something I think is highly underrated, yet critical to holding an essay together, is transition words and phrases. They create continuity and cohesion between ideas and paragraphs, and serve as a bridge of sorts within your overall structure. Here are a few posts which have comprehensive lists of transition words and phrases:
Transition Words for Essays - @staedtlers-and-stabilos
Essay Transition Phrases - @study-like-you-mean-it
Transition Words For Your Essays - @soniastudyblr
I hope this can help with structuring your essays and getting the best marks you can! Please message me if you have any questions :)
Other essay writing posts:
How to reduce your word count
Understanding the Question
How to Write a Killer Unprepared Text Essay
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