What is an essay? We could say an essay is a piece of writing in which you try to make a point or answer a question. I use the word try because the the word essay comes from the French word essayer, which means to try. You’re basically trying to get your reader to see things from, or agree with, your point of view. (If you’re not successful in changing readers’ minds, at least you tried?)
Like academic writing in general, an essay is an argumentative form of writing.
Writing is a process.
Breaking down the writing process
You’re probably familiar with the writing process. There are different ways to represent it, but the main idea is that good writing generally goes through multiple stages where the writer thinks of ideas, writes a crappy first draft, gets feedback, revises their draft, and then cleans up grammar and wording before turning it in.
The idea that writing is a process stands in contrast to the view that good writing is something that pours out of someone in a moment of inspiration. Sure, that happens sometimes, but it’s usually in movies. Writing — especially academic writing — is a process of discovery, confusion, insight, frustration, and learning.
Don’t forget to read & take notes
Taking notes is part of the writing process. Before you write about a subject for an academic audience, it’s important to know what others say about your topic. Reading what others have said, and taking careful notes while reading, is an important part of getting started.
Three sections of an Academic Essay
The beginning, middle, and end of an essay
The academic essay genre is a format you’re probably at least somewhat familiar with from your previous academic experience. (If not, don’t worry — we’ll be breaking it down in detail.)
There are basically three parts to an academic essay:
- Introduction
- Body
- Conclusion
Each section of a the essay is made up of its own specific type of paragraph. The largest of these sections is the body of the essay, which generally contains multiple paragraphs.
What do you already know about each type of paragraph? How do the paragraphs in each section of the essay function — what is their job? Where should you tell the reader what your thesis is (what it is you’re arguing in the essay)? Watch the 2.5-minute video for answers to those questions and an overview of the types of paragraphs you’ll be using in your academic essays.
Introducing the thesis
Crafting an essay introduction
What’s the point of an introduction?
The above video says that it’s the job of the introduction paragraph to hook the reader. And how do you hook a reader? Well, there are lots of different ways.
One way we can hook a reader is to point out a conflict or tension between ideas. Maybe if you’re describing a really difficult decision about what career to pursue, you could start by briefly summarizing both choices and explaining why the decision was difficult.
Another tactic you could use is to begin with a striking anecdote about your life. Maybe you remember enjoying fishing with your family when you were little, and that’s when you realized you wanted to be a marine biologist.
But the most important part of the introduction comes at the end: the thesis statement. It’s perhaps the most important part of the essay.
As mentioned, the introduction paragraph contains the thesis statement, which is probably the most important part of the essay. Often, your thesis statement should be a sentence or two at the end of the introduction paragraph. Ask your instructor for their specific expectations, however.
What is a thesis statement? It’s basically a summary of your argument. It might sound more exciting to keep your reader in suspense and tell them the point of your essay in the final paragraph. But suspense doesn’t usually work well with argumentative writing because arguments generally aren’t effective if readers don’t understand what the argument is from the beginning. Telling readers what your argument is at the start of the essay helps them understand what you’re trying to accomplish in your essay.
Hook
Begin by grabbing the reader’s attention and getting them interested in your essay. It’s important, but I’d say it’s the least important part of the introduction. Strategies you could use could include asking a thought-provoking question, providing a striking fact, or offering an intriguing anecdote.
Context
Provide essential context, without going into too much detail, to set up your thesis statement. Give a little background and explain concepts that are important for the audience to understand. (Think about those scenes in James Bond movies where that old dude shows Bond how the spy gizmos work. Without those scenes, the audience would be lost later on when Bond uses the gizmos.)
Thesis statement
Clearly state the main argument of the essay. The body of the essay will basically support and illuminate this claim. Try to frame your claim as a response to another viewpoint to provide it with “productive tension” and help the reader to see why your argument is worth making.
A basic introduction
Read the introduction paragraph below. There’s not really a traditional hook, but there is context provided to set up the thesis statement. And the thesis is framed as a response to another view. Try to identify those elements, and then click “Show breakdown” to how I broke down the introduction paragraph into those parts.
supporting & illuminating the thesis
Crafting a body paragraph
What’s the point of a body paragraph?
The paragraphs in the body of your essay provide evidence, explanations, and analysis that support or illuminate your thesis statement. For each body paragraph, you’ll need to provide support for the main point of the paragraph. A kind of simple “formula” for writing a body paragraph is TEA:
- Topic Sentence(s): The main idea of the paragraph, explicitly stated (can be more than one sentence)
- Evidence: Facts, data, or viewpoints, often from sources.
- Analysis: Breaking things down, synthesizing ideas, adding your interpretation, tying the main idea of the paragraph back to the thesis.
You certainly don’t have to structure things in that exact order. You could include multiple pieces of evidence in one body paragraph or put your topic sentence at the end of the body paragraph, for example. You could have one body paragraph that’s just evidence and another that’s just analysis.
Topic sentence
The main idea of the paragraph is often explicitly stated at the beginning of a body paragraph in a topic sentence. Confusingly, a topic sentence can be more than one sentence. While I suggest that newer academic writers place topic sentences toward the beginnings of their body paragraphs, they might also be found elsewhere in the paragraphs, or the main idea of the paragraph might be implied, rather than explicitly stated. What’s most important is that each body paragraph is focused on a specific main idea to help guide the reader through the essay’s argument.
Evidence
Often, evidence appears in the form of a quotation from or summary of source, but you could also include anecdotal evidence (stories about you or other people), hypothetical examples, and so on. The basic idea is that you need facts, statistics, viewpoints, and so on that you can then respond to with your own views and analyses.
Analysis
Evidence on its own isn’t enough to support an argument. It needs to be broken down, synthesized with other ideas, interpreted, and/or tied back to the main idea of the paragraph and the thesis. In other words, you need to include analysis in order to show how the evidence supports or illuminates the thesis.
A basic body paragraph
Now let’s look at an example body paragraph. The body paragraph below is from an essay arguing we should follow a passion when choosing a career. See if you can identify the following.
- Topic Sentence(s): The main idea of the body paragraph, explicitly stated
- Evidence: Often a quotation or summary of source
- Analysis: Break things down, synthesize ideas, add your interpretation, tie the main idea of the paragraph back to the thesis