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When you are writing an academic essay, it implies that you have to fashion your ideas in a coherent manner that show the progression of your argument to the reader. Academic essays are a liner, in that they portray and discuss each idea at a time. They must present these ideas in a way that makes more sense to the reader. When you are structuring your essay, you must attend to the reader’s logic. In other words, your essay must be clear right from the language aspect to the way you arrange your ideas.
Since these essays are linear, it is easy to predict their structure. This structure dictates the information that is necessary for the readers and the order in which they are going to appear. This makes the paragraph structure of your essay crucial to the way you are arguing your central claim. Academic essays have different guidelines for instance when you are writing an argumentative or expository essay. However, there is no set formula for the essays.
The general standard of writing academics includes the introduction, the body paragraphs, and a conclusion. Every essay, irrespective of its length, must have these sections. Every part of the essay plays a crucial role in introducing the argument, analyzing the data, raising counter-arguments, and concluding. As for the introduction and conclusion, they have fixed places where they appear in an essay. Every paragraph of an essay must be well structured and should have an independent thought. The entire essay follows the argument established in the introduction. For instance, counter-arguments can appear in a within a paragraph, as a stand-alone section or part of the beginning or before the ending.
Poorly structured paragraphs make the essay lose its effectiveness. The reader is unable to follow what the writer is discussion, thereby making the intended purpose a failure. When you are structuring your essay, pay attention to the way you arrange the contents of each paragraph. When you are writing the paragraphs of your essay, think of it as a way of answering a series of questions that the reader might have when he encounters your thesis. The questions to answer include:
What?
This is the first question to think about. The readers want to see the evidence that describes your phenomenon in your thesis as true. As such, you must examine your evidence and demonstrate your claim. This is the paragraph or section that comes directly after the introduction of your essay.
How?
The audience wants to ascertain the truth of the claim in your thesis statement. They want to see how your current claim confronts the existing counterargument. They want to see how the introduction of new material, or a new way of looking at the evidence affect the claims within your thesis statement.
Why?
The reader wants to know what is at stake in your claim. They want to know if the interpretation you have on the issue matters to anyone else apart from you. This question deals with the larger implication of your thesis and gives the reader a better understanding of the essay in a much larger context.
When you are writing your essay, paragraphs are important in discussing different aspects of your thesis statement. Writing a good paragraph demands one to know and understand the essential elements of paragraph writing. Each element has a role to play in contributing to the ensure structure of the essay as well as the discussion therein. When writing the paragraphs of your essay, you should consider the unity, order, coherence, and completeness.
There is nothing that is fundamentally important than writing a solid paragraph. It helps in making the essay more effective and strengthens the discussion of the entire topic.
What is a paragraph?
This is a composition of sentences that are organized and revolve around a particular central topic. The cardinal rule of structuring your paragraph is to focus on a single idea. When you write a solid paragraph, you take you readers on a clear path without digressing. If you master this aspect, then you are on the highway to writing an effective essay altogether.
A basic paragraph of an essay consists of five sentences, which include the topic sentence, three supporting sentences, and a concluding sentence. However, you have to consider the essential elements of a solid paragraph. If you use them correctly, your paragraph morphs from ordinary to a great paragraph.
Exposition on elements of a good paragraph
Unity
The unity of a paragraph starts with the topic sentence. Every paragraph of an academic essay must have a single controlling idea expressed in the topic sentence. Actually, it is the first sentence in a paragraph. The paragraph now becomes united in this main idea and the supporting sentences provides the details and discussion. If you want to write a good topic sentence, think of your theme and the points you want to make in that paragraph. Identify the point that drives the rest and then write as the topic sentence for that particular paragraph.
Order
This is the way you organize your supporting sentences, regardless of choosing the chronological order, the order of importance, or any other logical presentation of the detail. Ensure that your paragraph follows a definite organization that is easy to follow. It also helps the reader to get your meaning without getting confused.
Coherence
This quality makes your essay understandable. Sentences in your paragraph must connect with each other and work together to support the central argument. The best way to achieve coherence is using transition words. They connect t one sentence to the next. When using transitions, use words that show order, for instance, first, second, third and so on. You can also use words that show logic like furthermore, in addition, in fact and so on. Other ingredients of coherence include the consistent and correct use of verb tense and point of view.
Completeness
This indicated that the paragraph is well developed. When all the sentences in your paragraph tie to the central argument, then your paragraph is complete. When there are inadequate sentences or information to prove your thesis, then your paragraph is not complete. For a paragraph to be complete, it must have the topic sentence, three supporting sentences, and a concluding sentence. The concluding sentence should summarize your central theme and reinforce the topic sentence.
The supporting details used in body paragraphs can come from personal examples, statistics, quotes and so on. When writing an academic essay that requires the use of such evidence, this information is supposed to support the topic sentence. A majority of academic essay consists of multiple body paragraphs where the main information is presented. If your essay is long, you will require more boy paragraphs. Since body paragraphs present important information, they should be written in a way that contributes to the success of the essay. This success depends on the way you explain, describe, or argue your point of view in the essay.
If you know how to structure your paragraph, then your essay will be easy to understand. That student looking for a better grade can try to follow the above tips to make their essays more effective.
As earlier stated, when you are structuring your essay, you need to attend to the reader’s logic by examining your thesis and anticipating what the reader wants to know, the sequence to use for the reader to grasp your argument. This can be achieved by the way you discuss each idea in a paragraph. An essay that has solid paragraphs delivers the message logically and the reader is reminded of the central argument at every turn.
As such, it becomes easy for the writer to know the kind of information to include in a paragraph, irrespective of whether it is background information, counterargument, close analysis of the primary source or turning to secondary material. Writing successful paragraphs calls for revision and practicing. One develops the ability to eliminate unnecessary details and write a well-structured and solid paragraph.
Writing good paragraphs allows the writer to pen about what they know and like. Their focus can be on the writing process especially when they are using the four elements of a good paragraph. For instance, counter-arguments if you have a prompt like ‘Explain why football is your favorite sport? you will have to develop a topic sentence as well as supporting sentences in proper order. You have to include transitions to achieve coherence and conclude the paragraphs to achieve completeness.
Students can develop good writing skills and a high level of comfort especially when they are dealing with an academic essay. As it stands not, the above information provides a starting point that they can use to structure their paragraphs better. The idea is to create an essay that is solid in its entirety. If the paragraph structure is good, the message will be easy to understand.
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