Beyond the Five Paragraph Essay
Introduction to the University Essay
Like many undergraduate students, you are probably aware that
university essays should be “different” from high-school
essays. However, you may be unclear on what this difference
ought to consist of. What, for instance, distinguishes the
standard high-school approach to essay-writing, the five
paragraph approach, from a university-level approach to essaywriting? This module will guide you through the process of
moving beyond the five paragraph essay.
The Five Paragraph
Paragraph Essay The five-paragraph
approach has two major limitations. First, the approach
produces extremely simple essays. Second, the approach is
very formulaic.
The five-paragraph structure can only articulate a very simple
form of argument, involving a major claim and three
supporting claims. In order to avoid being limited to this
argument-form, the student requires the ability to build the
structure of an essay around her own ideas. This ability
requires an understanding of how the essay works, not
knowledge of an essay-writing formula (like the five-paragraph
essay).
The Essay An essay is a written defense of a position (a
thesis) on a topic. A good essay-topic will motivate a line of
inquiry that is manageable for the essay-writer. To this end, it
is extremely important to ensure that the topic is adequately
narrow.
A thesis is the concluding point of the line of inquiry motivated
by the topic. Thus, a thesis is not a restatement of a topic. The
thesis of your essay should be framed in relation to your topic.
It is your opinion or argument on your topic
The topic asks a question; the thesis answers the question
according to the writer's opinion, based on his or her research.
The essay is organized to explore the question and support your
answer or opinion.
Organizing the Essay
If and when you were taught to
write a five paragraph essay, you were taught to have three
body paragraphs. A university essay is more flexible than that,
depending on its length and on what it is trying to say.
A short university essay may have three body paragraphs, but it
may have more. And a long paper, of 2500, 3000 or 4000
words will have many more. It may be useful to think in terms
of sections of an essay, rather than paragraphs and to forget
about the number three. You will need as many sections as you
will need.
So, an essay may look something like this:
1. Introduction
2. Major section
3. Major section.
4. Major section
5. Major section
6. Conclusion
Each section will contain paragraphs, maybe one, two, three or
four. Not every section will have the same number of
paragraphs. One section, after all, may be more important than
another and require more paragraphs to do it justice.
Whether an essay is five paragraphs, or has many more, each
kind follows the basic shape of the essay and has the three
basic building blocks: introduction, body, and conclusion. The
body section is just much more flexible than you may have
been used to thinking of it. Don't worry about this. It is, in fact,
freeing. You are free to support and develop your thesis in the
best possible way.
The Outline When writing a university essay, you should
still make an outline. But rather than thinking of the five
paragraph skeleton that you must force your ideas into, think of
the outline as the mid-point between your thoughts and the
finished essay, which closely reflects your topic and thesis.
This might be clearer with an example: Say you are writing a
2000 word essay on University Students and Proposed Tuition
Hikes. You have already decided that your thesis is "University
students cannot afford any further tuition hikes."
You already know that you have three points that you think
need to be discussed in the essay:
•
•
•
you need to talk about current fees
you need to talk about the proposed increase
you need to talk about the difficult financial situation
that this creates for students
So it does appear that you have three main points, but as you
think about what you have, you realize that your thoughts are
following a cause and effect pattern. A tuition increase will
have the effect of students not being able to afford university.
So another way to think of the essay is as a cause and effect
essay.
In a cause and effect essay, there is another way to organize
your points:
•
•
•
Situation now
Cause or new factor (tuition hikes)
Effect or prediction (students not affording university)
You decide to go with this second way of organizing the paper
(yes, it is three parts). But as you think about your topic more
and do a little research, you find that your three parts have
subdivisions you need to cover:
1. Situation now
A. Income
i. parents
iii. loans
B. Expenses
i. food
iii. tuition
ii. jobs
iv. other
ii. rent
iv. other
II.
II. Cause – Tuition Increase
A. Why it is thought to be needed
B. How much it will be for each student
III.
III. Effect of Proposed Increase on Students
A. Income of students will remain same but expenses will
will
go up
B. Students will not be able to afford university
So, even though you have a three part-essay, it will be much
more than three paragraphs. Each section falls into two main
sub-divisions, and the first section's subdivisions are divided
even further. This will be a good essay that is logically
organized to argue the thesis the writer wants to get across.
Paragraphs Essays are made up of paragraphs, so let's look
at what makes up a paragraph. There are four main types of
paragraphs:
•
•
•
•
introductory
concluding
developing
transitional
Most of us are familiar with introductory and concluding
paragraphs, but let's look at the other two more closely in the
next two sections
Developing Paragraphs As the name suggests,
developing paragraphs "develop" your ideas. Generally, every
developing paragraph does four things (not always in this
order):
Topic Sentence:
• introduces the one idea that this paragraph will develop
Evidence:
• shows what makes you think this
• presents the evidence that supports the topic
Discussion/Explanation:
• shows how your evidence supports the point made in
the topic sentence
• answers the question, "So what?"
Conclusion/Transition:
• sums up what your paragraph has shown or discussed
and may connect it to the next paragraph
The following is an excerpt from a developing paragraph from
the essay on university students and tuition hikes whose outline
was discussed previously. It comes from the first section of the
paper, under A. Income - jobs.
Students cannot afford a tuition fee hike for another reason:
income from summer and part-time jobs is declining as these
jobs become harder to find (Topic Sentence).
Sentence) These figures
clearly show that ...(Evidence)
(Evidence).
(Evidence) Thus, we can see that
student income is declining, and less income means less
ability to pay ... (Discussion/Explanation).
(Discussion/Explanation) As a result of
this decline, students have had no choice but to turn to
student loans ... (Conclusion/Transition).
Conclusion/Transition)
While this is what a typical developing paragraph may look
like, paragraphs, like essays, are flexible. A paragraph may
have more than one of each kind of sentence. Not every
paragraph has or needs a transition. And for our purposes, the
most important thing to remember, is that not every paragraph
has to be one major section of your essay. It may contribute to
a larger section made up of many developing paragraphs.
Transitional Paragraphs Transitions carry the reader
from one idea to the next; in other words, transitions link your
ideas or your sections. Transitional paragraphs summarize what
has just happened and introduce what will happen next. So
while developing paragraphs may have a transitional sentence
at the end, at the end of a section of an essay, it may be
appropriate to have a transitional paragraph, summing up the
previous paragraphs, before moving on to the next section of
the essay.
The following transitional paragraph comes in the first major
section of the essay on university students and tuition hikes and
fits between A. Income and B. Expenses::
As the evidence shows, the "recession" has reduced the
amount of money available to students from traditional
sources: parents, many of whom have lost their jobs;
summer and part-time work, which has been taken by the
newly-unemployed; and student loans, which have been
restricted. If reduced income is not bad enough, students'
costs have increased to the point where many are finding it
difficult to attend university even with the current level of
tuition; these students will not be able to handle an increase.
Exactly what are these costs?
Analyzing Essays and Articles
As you read articles
for your courses and for research for your own essays, you will
see that most articles are structured like essays, with
introductions, conclusions, and body paragraphs that work
together to argue a thesis. Knowing this will help you to read
efficiently and critically; by reading the introduction and
conclusion first you get a handle on the topic and thesis, and
then reading through the body, you see how the writer has
structured a logical, coherent development of the thesis.
With any article you read for any course, make a point to
notice its structure. You will realize how flexible the essay
format is, and it will help you structure and write your own
essays.
The Academic Skills Centre, Trent University
www.trentu.ca/academicskills
acdskills@trentu.ca
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