A five paragraph essay is one of the most common and basic forms of academic documents. It is used as a learning point to help students understand the art of writing academic articles. So it is essential for students to understand and learn how to write a five paragraph essay.
By definition, an essay is a short piece of writing in which a writer reflects his thoughts and opinions on a particular topic. It is for this reason, an essay is considered as one of the most versatile and adaptable literary compositions, as there is no set format and you have the freedom to structure it the way you want to.
For a majority of students in high school as well as college and university, the task of writing a five paragraph essay seems like a huge challenge, which brings in a lot of question regarding the essay. It many times sends them into a whirlpool of questions, which never seem to end, and only wastes precious time.
In this article; we shall cover the most important points of information that you need to know in order to understand how to write a five paragraph essay. In addition to that, we have brought you 6 comprehensive steps in which you can draft an award-winning essay on any topic.
Most students, judge the efforts and skills required for writing an essay through its length, and even then, many of them get it wrong. It true that essay writing is a skill, which can take years to master; however, the assumption that the bigger the essay, the tougher it will be is completely wrong.
In fact, the truth is most academic writers would tell you the exact opposite. When writing a long format essay, the author has the ability to include a lot of information; this gives them the freedom to structure the essay the way they want to. However, as the length of the essay decreases, this freedom diminishes, and it becomes much more challenging for the author to incorporate all of the important knowledge into the essay and still maintain a consistent flow.
The Paragraphs of a five paragraph essay
It is important to know what goes into writing different formats of essays while trying to understand how to write a five paragraph essay. A five paragraph essay is not considered as a long format essay, it, in fact, leans towards the shorter formats, if not intermediate at best. The essay length ranging from 3 to 5 paragraphs, is found to be the most common forms of essays written by college and university students.
The 5 paragraphs of this essay are:
Para 1: Introduction
The paragraph consists of an introduction that introduces the topic of the essay to the readers, along with some background information and a solid thesis statement. Make it engaging for the readers and provide a ‘hook’ statement at the end that intrigues the readers and also serves as a transition between introduction and the following paragraphs.
Para 2: First Body paragraph
It is the first of the three body paragraphs, and therefore should serve as a transition from the last line of the introduction, and provide the main arguments, evidence, and illustration supporting the thesis statement. The first sentence of all the body paragraphs should highlight the main idea of that paragraph, whereas the final sentence should help the reader transition from one idea to the other.
Para 3: Second Body Paragraph
The second body paragraph should be aimed at keeping the reader engaged, as once the reader reaches the first body paragraph, their curiosity to understand and find answers about the thesis statement reduces. It is why you should structure all three of the body paragraphs in such a way that, they provided important knowledge and information, in the most effective manner.
Provide the other supporting information, to the thesis statements and then lay the groundwork, towards the conclusion of the essay, by guiding the readers towards the final argument of your essay.
Para 4: Third Body Paragraph
It is the final paragraph of the body section, which means that it is your last chance to provide any additional facts and information to the readers. Use the final sentence of this paragraph to link the main idea or argument of the paragraph to the essay topic.
Para 5: The Conclusion
It is the final paragraph of how to write a five paragraph essay. The conclusion brings together, all the arguments and ties up all the loose ends. But, it should be kept in mind that you cannot provide any new bits of information in conclusion.
Therefore, using the information provided by you in the body sections, and answers the questions raised by you in the introduction, restate the thesis statement, and present a conclusion to it using the key points presented by you.
Let us now jump into understanding how to write a five paragraph essay, effortlessly!
6 Steps on how to write a five paragraph essay:
As with every academic task, the first and the most difficult hurdle to cross are to start the process. It is the step, most students struggle, because of many reasons such as lack of knowledge, insufficient time, short deadline, numerous other tasks and assignments etc.
With this 6 steps plan to understand how to write a five paragraph essay, you can ensure that you get the confidence to begin writing your essay and submit it within the due date.
Step 1: Select your topic
It is the first and the most important step of any academic assignment, as it dictates the quality, relevance and the contents of the whole article. Your college or university may provide you with a subject or a vague idea of the field you are to explore in your essay, but the choice of selecting a good topic completely rests, at the hands of the students.
Select a topic, which is not overdone and cliché. The topic you select must provide you with enough scope to perform research in order to find something out of the ordinary. But most importantly, the topic you select should provide you with enough freedom to write a good five paragraph essay and a compelling thesis statement.
Step 2: Conduct thorough research
Research is the second most important aspect of any great essay or academic article after the selected topic. Once you select a topic of your interest which you’re confident about, you should then spend time in research and learning more about the topic. It will help you in understanding the range of previous research already done on the topic. If needed, many times, students have to alter or change the selected topic slightly, during research as they find out a better topic for their essay.
Step 3: Formulate a Thesis
Once you understand the topic better and gather up the required information needed to write the essay, you should now formulate a good thesis statement, as per your refined essay topic. It is the reason why, the thesis statement should always be written after conducting thorough research, as during research the new information you find enables you to make a more impressive thesis statement to polish the scope of your essay.
Step 4: Make an essay outline
Before you start writing your essay, you must always make an essay outline, that highlights the main ideas and information to be included in each paragraph of the essay. Since you have only five paragraphs, you need to make a detailed outline. It will assist you in understanding how to write a five paragraph essay and enable you to make a more precise and to the point essay.
The outline helps the author while writing, as it protects them from drifting away from the targeted topics and ideas and stick to the main points to make the essay as engaging as possible.
Step 5: Write your Essay
Once you are done with making the outline, now is the time to start writing the essay. Try to stick to the points identified by you in the outline, as it will serve as a guideline while writing the essay. It also makes the task of writing the essay so much easier, as you will know what you need to write, and how you need to write it. Complete the introduction, body paragraphs, and the conclusion of the essay.
Step 6: Proofread and Edit
You should always try to keep a gap between writing and proofreading your essays. It is not advisable to get into proofreading any article as soon as you finish writing it. Try to keep a gap of a few hours, before you try to proofread and edit it. Read the essay from top to bottom multiple times and simply note down and highlight the area that needs improvement. Check for contextual errors, grammatical mistakes, structuring errors and lastly, the formatting of the essay.
Do not edit as you proofread, this will divert your mind, and you might end up skipping a few key errors in the text. Once you note down all the areas of improvement, edit and correct the mistakes and then give it a final read.
After following all the above points, you only have to submit your essay! It completes our 6 step plan on how to write a five paragraph essay. We hope this article helps you in submitting a great essay which gets you the best scores in the class!
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