In the minds of ESL exam candidates, e ssay writing is one of the most daunting tasks they are required to complete, regardless of the level of the exam, the administering body or the ease with which they themselves use the language. The same applies to students who are asked to write an essay by their teachers at school. In the previous sample essays posted on the blog, the main point I stress is the need to become acquainted with this form of writing (as opposed to writing a letter, review or report, for instance), to get a feel of what authorial voice is and how to organize and progressively express the arguments you wish to make in a coherent manner. Unfortunately, the best way to prepare for exam writing or learn how to write good essays for school is to read as many essays from as many sources as possible, then write as
By way of reminder, an entirely different organization is possible, but for the sake of helping exam takers sitting timed EFL (English as a foreign language and not the English Football League!) examinations, I stick to one particular style so that test-takers can focus on one kind of layout which should save time. Note also that I'm writing about academic essays and not letters or emails, reports, proposals, newspaper or magazine articles, or narratives. Those varieties of written work have their own traits and therefore need to be discussed in separate blog posts (which I hope to eventually address at some later time).
But for now, let's get back to our academic essay introduction.
The Introduction
Think of your first paragraph as an upside down triangle separated into three parts.
We said that the reason the triangle is upside down is because as we introduce the topic of our essay, we move from the more general to the more specific.
The three parts present in the diagram above should become three separate sentences (if you end up with two longish sentences, that's also fine). Having more sentences usually means you might not be making connections between ideas with relative pronouns or linking words and phrases like "thus" or "as a result of which" and this could end up costing you some points because you have shorter sentences (and therefore lack variety in vocabulary or grammatical constructions) than you ought to.
Turning back to our diagram, what do we include in each part of our essay's first paragraph? To answer this question, it is vital we deconstruct our rubric.
The rubric
The rubric is in actual fact the question itself. What we see written on the exam paper (or what our teacher submitted as a homework assignment) which gives us the topic of the essay is what is called the rubric.
The introduction we write will depend on two things that we have to extract from the rubric, which are:
- the topic
- the direction
The topic is of course the general subject matter we have been asked to discuss in our essay. The direction is how we are supposed to deal with the topic we have been given, what specific areas of the topic or issues related to it we need to cover in our essay. For instance, if the topic is fashion, here are some possible directions we might be asked to discuss:
- Is following fashion important?
- How is fashion harmful for the planet?
- What does it mean to be a 'fashion icon'? What effects do fashion icons have on teens?
- "Fast fashion destroys ethical consumerism." What might cause this?
Each of these statements is clearly asking us to deal with a different facet of the fashion industry because each takes the discussion about fashion in a different direction. Let's see what this means in each of the four questions.
1) Is following fashion important?
Topic: fashion
Direction: whether it is important to follow it
2) How is fashion harmful for the planet?
Topic: fashion
Direction: how harmful it is for the planet
3) What does it mean to be a 'fashion icon'? What effects do fashion icons have on teens?
Topic: fashion icon
Direction: define fashion icon + show the effects of fashion icons on teenagers
4) "Fast fashion destroys ethical consumerism." What might cause this?
Topic: fast fashion
Direction: state what makes fast fashion destroy ethical consumerismTherefore, to recap: from the rubric we need to pick out the topic and the direction, and once this is done, we can proceed to write our three sentences for the introduction. Let's see what these are.
The General Statement
The first sentence of the introduction will be a broad statement about the overall topic of our essay, without actually mentioning the topic itself. The reason I recommend students and exam candidates not mention the topic in the first sentence is so that they don't repeat themselves, but instead use different vocabulary words.
We write the general statement by taking our topic and placing it under a general category, then writing the general category in the first sentence. For instance, if our topic is fashion, we could place it under the general category of 'style' or 'trends' and use either of these words as the basic concepts around which we build our first sentence instead of the word 'fashion', which will undoubtedly reappear in our essay later on.
Here are some more examples of how we could transform topic words into general category words:
TOPIC
|
GENERAL CATEGORY
|
teachers
|
education
|
computers
|
technology
|
poverty
|
economy
|
genetic engineering
|
Medicine
|
capital punishment
|
Law
|
Once we've got our general category words, we write a sentence about them, without mentioning the topic.
The Bridge
Your bridge connects the general with the specific. Here is where you'll introduce your topic for the first time. Write a sentence containing the topic of the rubric and remember to tie it to your first sentence by:
- repeating a word used in the first sentence
- using a synonym of the main word of the first sentence tied to your topic
- using a pronoun or other determiners (like 'such') to refer back to a word or phrase in the 1st sentence
- using linking words or phrases like "therefore", "to be more specific", and the like
The Thesis Statement
This is the sentence where you give your reader a map, as it were, of your main body paragraphs. You specify, in other words, what you will particularly discuss in your essay by mentioning the direction your essay will take.
The word 'thesis' comes from Greek meaning 'position', so what you are doing is actually telling your reader what position you will take with regard to the topic you have been asked to write about. (Note: some textbooks refer to thesis statements as those present only in opinion essays and not for and against essays (pros and cons essays) or problem-solution essays. But let's not get into this for the time being and agree to use the term broadly to cover all types of academic essays.)
The more specific your thesis statement is, the easier it will be for your reader to follow your train of thought as you proceed to discuss your topic in the main body of your essay.
Having said this, let's look at an example and see how step by step we can write our introductory paragraph.
Example
Rubric:
The status of women over the last centuries has changed. What are the causes of this?
Topic: women / status of women
Direction: causes of the change (in women's status)
TOPIC
|
GENERAL CATEGORY
|
women
|
role of men & women
|
Or alternatively:
TOPIC
|
GENERAL CATEGORY
|
women's status
|
change (in women's status)
|
General category sentence:
(the highlighted sections indicate the general category words)
Due to socio-political upheavals, technological advances and scientific breakthroughs, history has recorded a number of changes in the way people perceive the role of men and women.
Bridge:
(the yellow highlighted section indicates the topic; linking devices are colored in green)
Women's status has especially been on the receiving end of such changes so it is with great pleasure that many have welcomed the move towards greater freedom and acquisition of rights for women that were long overdue.
Thesis Statement:
(the highlighted sections indicate the topic's direction)
The causes behind the greater freedom and increased number of rights enjoyed by women in most parts of the world can be narrowed down to two.
If you'd like to read this essay in its entirety, click on the image below.
The next post in this essay-writing series deals with the main body paragraphs.
Click on the following links for more posts concerning essay writing:
1) The Overall Organization of an Essay
2) The Main Body: Topic Sentence
3) The Main Body - Supporting Sentences
4) The Main Body - Concluding Sentence
And don't forget to take a look at other sample essays I've written so you can pick up vocabulary, ideas for debates, school assignments and English exams here.
