Introduction: Write a Well Organized Essay
See our referencing section for more information on academic referencing, how to reference academic work and the different common formats used.You know youre planning too much if you always find yourself writing your paper a day before its due after spending weeks doing research and devising elaborate plans. I set the leftover stew I brought from home in a Dutch oven on the wood cookstove to warm. Already the nice walk and quiet evening have begun to organize my jumbled thoughts onto the proper shelves in the recesses of my mind. Writing an essay (or other assignment) is an important part of the learning process. In the writing of an assignment, learning occurs as you think through and interpret the points raised (together with those of other writers on the subject). The sections below present several organizational templates for essays: the chronological approach, the compare-and-contrast approach, and the problems-methods-solutions approach. The first is that your argument should move from the simplest claim to the most complex. The body of a good argumentative essay often begins with simple and widely accepted claims, and then moves towards more complex and contentious ones. There are two main things to keep in mind when working on your essay structure: making sure to include the right information in each part, and deciding how youll organize the information within the body.
It develops your powers of criticism, analysis and expression, and gives you a chance to try out your and other writers' ideas on the subject. The structure of the body is flexible, but you should always spend some time thinking about how you can organize your essay to best serve your ideas. Today, in fact, the chill has left the air and I am spring-cleaning, tidying up the less-than-organized closets and cupboards. I show my husband six tins of bamboo shoots and seven little jars of cream of tartar just culled from the cupboards. "What will we ever do with all these? Bake bamboo-shoot meringue pie?" Cream of tartar and bamboo shoots are great examples of my distracted mind made visible. For example, book reviews typically begin with a summary of the book youre reviewing. They then often move on to a critical discussion of the books strengths and weaknesses. They may conclude with an overall assessment of the value of the book. These typical features of a book review lead you to consider dividing your outline into three parts: (1) summary; (2) discussion of strengths and weaknesses; (3) overall evaluation.
All of this sounds like an awful lot of stuff to include, but with a little bit of practice youll find out that it is a fairly repeatable process. Once youve got the hang of it, youll produce one great introduction after another without having to think about it too much.
If the essay is reasonably well-organized, you should have one point in the margin for each paragraph, and your points read out in order should form a coherent argument. You might, however, discover that some of your points are repeated at various places in your essay. Other points may be out of place, and still other key points may not appear at all. Think of all these points as the ingredients of an improved outline which you now must create. Use this new outline to cut and paste the sentences into a revised version of your essay, consolidating points that appear in several parts of your essay while eliminating repetition and creating smooth transitions where necessary. This kind of essay works great if youre discussing methods for resolving a problem, like knowing how to distinguish between credible and non-credible sources when youre doing research for assignments. It can also work when youre tasked with explaining why certain solutions havent worked to fix the problems they were created for.
Thinking carefully about how you are going to argue your paper and preparing an outline can only add to the quality of your final product. Nevertheless, some people find it more helpful than others to plan. Those who are good at coming up with ideas but find writing difficult often benefit from planning. By contrast, those who have trouble generating ideas but find writing easy may benefit from starting to write early. Putting pen to paper (or typing away at the keyboard) may be just what is needed to get the ideas to flow. The tabs again show a general template, followed by another essay on distance learning, this time with the body structured in blocks. You have to find out for yourself what works best for you, though it is fair to say that at least some planning is always a good idea. Think about whether your current practices are serving you well. You know youre planning too little if the first draft of your essays is always a disorganized mess, and you have to spend a disproportionate amount of time creating reverse outlines and cutting and pasting material.
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The second and most substantial part will likely break down into
two sub-parts. It is up to you to decide the order of the two
subpartswhether to analyze strengths or weaknesses first. And of
course it will be up to you to come up with actual strengths and
weaknesses. Duringcollege I had aprofessor, Dr. G, who helped me
understand what the teachers in High School failed to teach. This
way of writing an essay was not crated by Dr. G, but heinspired a
way to write an essay faster. Dr. G pointed out the main problem
with essays is organization. Hopefully this will help anyone in
high school whom has yet to write a proper essay. Also I wrote
thisbecausemost of my teachers said an essay is "beginning, three
topics, end. " I find it to be useless and a waste of time. If
you get this as ananswerfrom a teacher this ible is like a breath
of fresh air.
The basic structure of an essay always consists of an
introduction, a body, and a conclusion. But for many students,
the most difficult part of structuring an essay is deciding how
to organize information within the body. When you begin planning,
ask the following questions: What type of essay am I going to be
writing? Does it belong to a specific genre? In university, you
may be asked to write, say, a book review, a lab report, a
document study, or a compare-and-contrast essay.
Rememberalwayswrite your essay based on the question that issetandnoton another aspect of the subject. Although this may sound obvious, many students do not fully answer the essay question and include irrelevant information. The primary aim of an academic essay is to answer the task set, in some detail. Still unsure? You could always hire a specialist EFL editor to help with essay structure. They can also help with editing or proofreading your work. Get in touch to find out more. The second of these two paragraphs is much stronger, largely because it is not plot-driven. It makes a well-defined point about Hamlets moral nature and sticks to that point throughout the paragraph. Notice that the paragraph jumps from one scene to another as is necessary, but the logic of the argument moves along a steady path. At any given point in your essays, you will want to leave yourself free to go wherever you need to in your source material. Your only obligation is to further your argument. Paragraph (a) sticks closely to the narrative thread of Act 3, Scene 4, and as a result the paragraph makes several different points with no clear focus. It is self-evident that a well-planned paper is going to be better organized than a paper that was not planned out.
Though there are no easy formulas for generating an outline, you can avoid one of the most common pitfalls in student papers by remembering this simple principle: the structure of an essay should not be determined by the structure of its source material. For example, an essay on an historical period should not necessarily follow the chronology of events from that period. Similarly, a well-constructed essay about a literary work does not usually progress in parallel with the plot. Your obligation is to advance your argument, not to reproduce the plot. Transition sentences may be included to transition between different paragraphs or sections of an essay. A good transition sentence moves the reader on to the next topic while indicating how it relates to the previous one. When you have completed your first draft, and you think your paper can be better organized, consider using a reverse outline. Reverse outlines are simple to create. Just read through your essay, and every time you make a new point, summarize it in the margin.
- Critical Reading
- Get the Most from Reading
- Notes from Research
- New Words
- Research Using Internet
- Preview
- Skim and Scan
- Summarize
You can improve even the most carefully planned essay by creating a reverse outline after completing your first draft. The process of revision should be as much about organization as it is about style. Please dont make the same mistake. It takes around five minutes to make a plan which helps you organise your thoughts and ideas in a way that makes sense. You will be able to focus on your language and arguments instead of worrying about possibly forgetting to include content while saving you time. It works and you should do it as well. The reference section of your essay is a list, or bibliography, of all the sources cited in the essay. You need to reference every source you have used or taken ideas from, otherwise you will be committing plagiarism. With all the information provided in this article I hope you feel ready to start your journey to become an excellent essay writer. As you can see, the structure is clear and the tasks are always similar. Practise regularly in order to improve until essay writing becomes second nature for you. Writing is often the best possible way to assimilate and organise information. Writing helps to highlight any areas that you have not fully understood and enables you to make further clarifications.
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We will finish it with some useful vocabulary mostly used to organize information. Although it is taking a shortcut, if you learn several expressions for each paragraph in each type of text that could be on your exam, you will certainly be able to create a very consistent and well-organized text. The writer should keep the essay short and simple for it to be the most effective for the reader. This essay serves as a basic introduction into a person's history with the subject (if it were assigned by a math class, a person would write about experiences with math) and insight into a person's abilities and personality. Depending on who assigned the essay, the writer will want to include different things: They can mention where they are from, their age, and whether they are in school for something. Include socialization habits does the person like working with people? Is socializing difficult? The writer should talk about what they hope to get out of the class program, and why they joined. Another topic is likes and dislikes about the subject. It all starts here. This is where you introduce the topic youre discussing in your essay and briefly summarize the points youll make in the paragraphs that follow.
In summary, either approach would be a step in the right direction. In my view, it would be wise to prioritize dealing with reducing competitiveness first because I believe it would help young people feel better about the sports they already do. They could then, in turn, influence their friends to join in.