How to Write an Effective Essay
Brainstorming
* You should always begin an essay by brainstorming…
Ask Yourself:
- What am I trying to prove?
(Example: Being a musician is a great career choice.)
-What are my main points/evidence?
(Example: Musicians make a lot of money, people look up to them and they get to be
creative and make music.)
* Once you’ve answered these questions…you can move on to the writing part.
The Essay
There are 3 main sections in every essay:
I.
The Introduction paragraph
II.
The Body
III.
The Conclusion
*Your essay should ALWAYS be organized the way it’s shown above.
Now, let’s start working on each part of the essay…
Section 1: The Introduction Paragraph
The introduction has 3 parts to it:
a) The “attention grabber”
b) The transition sentence
c) The thesis statement
A) The “attention grabber” should be 1-2 sentences long. It’s something that will grab
the attention and interest of the person reading your essay. This could be a statistic,
quote, question or statement. (example: “Without music, life would be a mistake.–
Friedrich nierzsche)
B) The Transition sentence is just something to go between your attention grabber and
your thesis statement. It basically explains your attention grabber. (Example: Music is
a very important part of our live, and the people who make music are very special in
this world.)
C) The thesis statement is THE MOST IMPOTANT PART OF YOUR ESSAY!
The thesis statement says what you are trying to prove and gives your reasons behind
it. It’s good to follow the format of -----because----, ---, ---. If you are writing about a
book you should state the title and author of the book in this sentence. (Example:
being a musician is a great career because the salary is good, a lot of people admire
you and it brings out you creativity.)
* So, just put the 3 parts above together…and have your introduction paragraph!!
Section 2: The Body
The body consists of paragraphs that talk about the things you stated in your thesis
statement. You should have about 1 or 2 paragraphs for each of the reasons in your thesis
statement.
So, if your thesis statement is
Being a musician is a great career because the salary is good, a lot of people admire you
and it brings out your creativity.
Then, you will have a least…
- 1 paragraph talking about the good salary.
- 1 paragraph talking about how people admire you
- 1 paragraph talking about how being a musician brings out your
creativity.
*In these paragraphs you are going to give facts, statistics, opinions, and data. You
basically just the reader proof for why you gave that reason.
Don’t forget NOT TO PLAGIARIZE. Plagiarize means to copy something from
somebody else and not give credit to that person. This is illegal and you can remove from
school for doing this. You give credit to a person by putting quotations (“…”) around
what they said and by putting their name with it somewhere-either in the beginning or at
the end.
Example: “The Princeton Review states that the average salary of a musician is
50,000.” Or “The average salary of a musician is $50,000” [Princeton Review]
*Now, let’s work on how to write the paragraph for the body…
- The reader can clearly see that….
- The Princeton review was clearly stating that…
- The above statistic shows that…
(Example: The above statistic shows that most musicians earn about $50,000 per
year, but this is after they have been in the music industry for about 10-15 years)
V. THE EXPLANATION OF THE QUOTE
You should always explain a quote to the reader. After you transition out of the
quote, you basically put the quote into your own words and explain it.
(Example: the above statistic shows that most musicians earn about $50,000 per
years, but this is after they have been in the music industry for about 10-15 years.
VI. THE CLOSING STATEMENT
You should always close and conclude your paragraph with about 1 to 4
sentences. These are basically going to summarize the main points of your paragraph and
transition into the next paragraph. You can feel free to state an opinion in these
statements.
(Example: although musicians earn an average salary of about $50,000, this is
only after 10-15 years of being in the music industry. Before they reach this salary, most
musicians probably struggle just to make ends meet and pay the bills. And yet, there are
many other reasons, besides salary, of why a person would want to be a musician. One of
those reasons is the admiration of people all over the world.)
* So, just put all of the parts above together…and you have a paragraph. Do this for all
the paragraphs in your body.
Section 3: The conclusion
For the conclusion, you are basically just going to re-state your introduction
paragraph into different words. This paragraph is suppose to just “wrap-up” and
summarize you whole paper. You can state your opinion in this paragraph. This
paragraph should no include any quotes or any new subject/topics and should be about 4
to 5 sentences long. If you are writing about a book, don’t forget to re-state the title and
author of the book in this paragraph.
(Example of how to re-stateOriginal thesis statement in INTRODUCTION paragraph: being a musician is a
great career because the salary is good, a lot of people admire you and it brings
out your creativity.
New thesis statement is CONCLUSION paragraph: Working in the music industry
as a musician has a lot of benefits. Some of these benefits are a high salary, the
admiration of the public and the fact that being a musician requires you to use
your creativity.
How a paragraph is structured:
A paragraph has 6 parts to it:
I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
VI.
The opening statements
The transition INTO a quote
The Quote
The transition OUT OF the quote
The explanation of the quote
The closing statements
* You should always try to follow the above format.
I. OPEINING STATEMENTS
The opening statements just briefly state what your main point for the paragraph
is going to be. The opening statements should be about 1 to 2 sentences.
(Example: Musicians, on the average, earn a very good salary.)
II. THE TRANSITION INTO A QUOTE
When you add a quote or statistic to your paragraph, you should have to introduce
it somehow…this is called a transition onto a quote. Some transitions that you can use
are:
- The author states…”
- The Author explains…”
- The writer describes…
- The Princeton Review states…”
- Hamlet thinks to himself…”
(Example: The Princeton Review states that the average musician earns about
$50,000 per year after 10-15 years.)
III. THE QUOTE
After the transition, you add your quote, statistic or whatever data you have to
prove your point.
(Example: The Princeton Review states that the average musician earns about
$50,000 per year after 10-15 years.)
IV. THE TRANSITION OUT OF THE QUOTE
After your quote, you are going to need to explain the quote; you transition OUT
OF your quote and into an explanation by using some of these transitions:
As you can see from the above quotation…
The above quotation clearly shows that…