2.7 The Essay
Nancy Ami; Natalie Boldt; Sara Humphreys; Jemma Llewellyn; and Erin Kelly
Let’s start with perhaps the most common (and dreaded?) of academic sub-genres (and assignments), the essay. There are so many variations of the essay in academic writing that it’s impossible to include all of them. We have supplied the basic conventions of any essay here. Once you understand the basics, you’ll then be able to better understand how to write a position paper, research essay, or any kind of essay, really.
But first, it might help to remember what you learned at the beginning of the chapter about academic writing and stories. The essay is a type of story you are telling your reader:
Every essay has a story that leads the reader through the discussion. To help identify the story of your essay, think about how you would verbally explain your focus to someone who is not familiar with your topic. Once the story is in place, consider what information you can provide to help your reader understand the story and why it’s important, even if they don’t share your background knowledge. Filling in those details will highlight the relationships between ideas and give you the opportunity to demonstrate your critical thinking on your topic.[1]
Thanks to Elder Shirley Alphonse (THE-LA-ME-YÉ), Elder Nadine Charles (TEȺȽIE), and Theresa Bell for this insightful explanation of how essay writing works.
As Elders Alphonse and Charles and the Manager of Blended Learning Success Theresa Bell make clear, the audience is key to writing your essay. Let’s say that one more time: understanding your reader makes all the difference in essay writing (and, let’s face it, in all writing). This might be a new concept for you. In fact, we are fairly sure your first essay was the good, old five paragraph essay. That’s completely fine—we all have to start somewhere.
Starting Where You Are – The Five-Paragraph Essay
It’s likely you’ve already been taught one genre of writing that is appropriate for many high school classroom writing assignments, but doesn’t work as well for the type of complex topics and research you need to engage with at the post-secondary level. The five-paragraph essay is an effective formula for organizing and structuring an argument when you are writing to readers who expect to find information presented in a certain way.
At its most basic, a five-paragraph essay looks something like this:
- Paragraph one: An introduction to the essay; starts broad and narrows down; last sentence is a one-sentence thesis statement that offers an overview of the content that follows.
- Paragraph two: Point number one supporting or developing the thesis; the key idea gets presented in a topic sentence at the start of the paragraph; three to five sentences of evidence, support, and explanation follow.
- Paragraph three: Point number two supporting or developing the thesis; the key idea gets presented in a topic sentence at the start of the paragraph; three to five sentences of e