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Essay Structure

The document summarizes the structure of an essay in 3 sentences: The structure of an essay divides a complex topic into paragraphs, with one paragraph devoted to each major point, and includes an introduction to present the topic and thesis and a conclusion to summarize the main ideas. Writing an essay is similar to writing a paragraph in that both require organization and coherence, with an essay consisting of an introductory paragraph, at least one body paragraph developing subdivisions of the topic, and a concluding paragraph. An effective essay introduction attracts the reader with general statements and includes a thesis statement announcing the main idea, while body paragraphs each focus on a subdivision of the topic and the conclusion reviews the main points.

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Safar Zitoun Maroua
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86 views

Essay Structure

The document summarizes the structure of an essay in 3 sentences: The structure of an essay divides a complex topic into paragraphs, with one paragraph devoted to each major point, and includes an introduction to present the topic and thesis and a conclusion to summarize the main ideas. Writing an essay is similar to writing a paragraph in that both require organization and coherence, with an essay consisting of an introductory paragraph, at least one body paragraph developing subdivisions of the topic, and a concluding paragraph. An effective essay introduction attracts the reader with general statements and includes a thesis statement announcing the main idea, while body paragraphs each focus on a subdivision of the topic and the conclusion reviews the main points.

Uploaded by

Safar Zitoun Maroua
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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First session – L2

The Structure of an Essay


The topic of an essay is too complex to discuss in one paragraph, you need to divide it into several
paragraphs, one for each major point. Then you need to tie the paragraphs together by adding an
introduction and a conclusion.
Writing an essay is no more difficult than writing a paragraph except that an essay is longer. The
principles of organization are the same for both, so if you can write a good paragraph, you can write a
good essay.
An essay has three main parts: an introduction (introductory paragraph), a body (at least one, but
usually two or more paragraphs), and a conclusion (concluding paragraph)
The following chart shows you how the parts of a paragraph correspond to the parts of an essay.
An essay introduction consists of two parts: a few general statements to attract your reader's
attention and a thesis statement to state the main idea of the essay. A thesis statement for an essay is
like atopic sentence for a paragraph: It names the specific topic and gives the reader a general idea of
the contents of the essay. The body consists of one or more paragraphs. Each paragraph develops a
subdivision of the topic, so the number of paragraphs in the body will vary with the number of
subdivisions or subtopics. The conclusion, like the concluding sentence in a paragraph, is a summary
or review of the main points discussed in the body.
An essay has unity and coherence, just as a paragraph does. Transition signals and the repetition of
key nouns link the paragraphs into a cohesive whole.
Questions:

1. How many paragraphs does this essay contain? How many paragraphs are in the body?
2. Underline the topic sentence of each body paragraph, and double underline the topic.
(Note: The topic sentence is not necessarily the first sentence in every paragraph.)

3. Notice which noun phrase appears four times in the introduction. Circle each
repetition of this key noun in the other paragraphs of the essay.

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