Every essay has a basic structure which consists of three main parts: the introduction, the body of the essay, and a conclusion. The introductory and concluding parts of an essay are seemingly easier for students to handle because they tend to struggle with how to structure the essay body. Many students don’t know how to organize the information they want to pass or the argument they’re making in the body of their essay. This article provides the template, tip and ideas for structuring an essay and organizing your text in the body.
The Basics of an Essay Structure
When creating an essay structure, consider two major things: ensure that each part of the essay includes the right information and decide how you want to organize the information in the essay body.
The Three Parts of an Essay
As mentioned earlier, an essay is made up of three parts which are described below:
Introduction:
This is the first part of the essay that presents or ‘introduces’ the essay topic. It also gives readers a background into the topic and your thesis statement for the essay.
Body:
This is the main part of the essay that contains the analysis and core arguments of the essay. It presents evidence, such as quotes, to back up the discussed point. Each point starts with a new paragraph in the body, and each paragraph begins with a topic sentence. All the points discussed in the body and the paragraphs relate to the thesis statement.
Order of information
Presenting the information in the essay body is a crucial part of essay writing. This is something that many students fail at and is one of the reasons why they continue to patronize essay writing services for their assignments and essays.
The first principle for writing the body is that your argument should be progressive, from the simplest to the most complex. This is the commonest method in which writers go from a widely accepted or easily acceptable claim to a more contentious and complex one. For instance, you can start by describing a widely accepted philosophical concept before applying it to a new concept. Understanding the general concept may make it easier for your readers to understand this new application.
The second method is for the background information to appear at the beginning of the essay. The introduction presents the general background, but if there is additional background information, it has to come at the start of your essay body.
The third method is that every part of the essay and everything mentioned should be relevant and relate to the thesis. So, you must continually ask yourself if the piece of information you’re writing provides some background for the thesis or advances your argument. Otherwise, it shouldn’t be in the essay. Also, make sure that the relevance of each piece of information is clearly stated in the text.
Types of Essay Structures
There are three different types of structures you can employ when writing your essay: the chronological structure, compare-and-contrast structure, and the problems-methods-solutions structure. The inability of students to understand these structures and use them is why they have to pay to buy college essays online.
1. Chronological Structure
This is also called the cause-and-effect approach and is the easiest way to structure your essay. It means you’re discussing events in order of their occurrence and how they’re related. This approach is useful for essays that involve a series of events.
2. Compare-and-Contrast Structure
When an essay has two or more subjects of discussion, it often uses the compare-and-contrast structure. There are two main methods for this type of structure: the alternating method and the block method.
Alternating Method
This method compares the subjects based on a specific point of interest. Therefore, each paragraph is defined by different points of interest used to compare the subjects. For instance, if you’re writing an essay comparing and contrasting traditional classroom learning with distance learning, some points of interest that define the paragraphs include accessibility issues, the teacher’s capacity to help each student and personal interaction.
Block Method
This method covers all the subjects in a go and can achieve this across multiple paragraphs. So if you’re comparing two subjects, you may write three paragraphs with different points about the first subject, then write another three paragraphs on the same points about the second subject while making comparisons to the first.
3. Problems-Methods-Solutions Structure
This is mostly used for an essay about a specific problem. As the name implies, you start by defining the problem, then discuss a method or theory that can solve the problem. Finally, you analyze the problem in line with this theory or method to derive a solution. If it’s a theoretical problem, then the analysis in your essay might be the solution. Otherwise, you may be presenting a proposed solution.
Conclusion
The difficult part of writing an essay is structuring the essay’s body. However, this is a simple problem to solve, and the solutions are discussed in this article.
