Essay

Essay Since that was not a requirement though, we kept the essay as-is to avoid sounding wordy or repetitive. If our thesis was that cell phones should NOT be controlled in college, we would explain the dangers of not having access to cell phones. The body paragraphs should provide support for the thesis. Why do you think this way, and what evidence do you have to support those beliefs? The paragraphs should flow from one to the next like a constant stream of thought. This is the same effect as a moviegoer looking at his phone in a theater. Even if the phone makes no noise, the light from the screen is enough to catch someone’s attention. The essay covered everything we wanted to without the need for extra words. If the prompt asked for at least 500 words, we would add another sentence to support one of the paragraphs. Either way, you can connect your discussion to others, demonstrating the larger importance of your specific argument. Conclusions need not be long arduous rearticulations of everything you've said. Each paragraph should conclude the statement made at the beginning of the paragraph. Everything in your essay revolves around your thesis. This is the big point you are trying to make, which is usually an answer to a question in the essay prompt. You will use the rest of the essay to support this thesis. You should approach all essays with the same mentality, regardless of their length. They can simply provide the final idea your paper leads up to . An essay built on such logic will be harder to attack. If each separate argument fits tightly into an overall argument then attacking one idea means attacking them all. The body paragraphs should flow well from one point to the next. Evidence â€" Again pretty self-explanatory, this is the stage in your paragraph where you provide evidence to back up your Point and Explanation. Now is the time to pull out your ammunition of carefully referenced sources to support your assertions that Your Point Is Important And Valid. Point â€" Present the main point of your paragraph. This will obviously vary in length, depending on the allocated word count of your essay, but should take between one and four sentences to introduce. Perhaps your paper exemplifies a larger thematic discussion or perhaps it should but that larger discussion doesn't exist yet. Your goal is to compose a piece that clearly guides the reader through your thoughts and reasoning. You may have to adjust how you convey those thoughts based on the length. Your essay should always have a beginning, middle, and end. 4-6 body paragraphs that provide evidence to back up your thesis. Each paragraph should be a cohesive element with an intro and conclusion. It can summarize the paragraph, connect the paragraph back to the thesis, or indicate how the next paragraph will follow. Once you provide your evidence, you need to discuss it. You must show how your evidence proves your argument. This means fully discussing the implications of your evidence and connecting it back to your topic sentence. While your topic sentence should be limited to a single sentence, your elaboration can be longer. Together, these two or more sentences form your full statement of argument. Where you place your thesis in your introduction is up to you. Generally, I don't recommend placing it first, where context should go, nor in the last sentence. This is harder to do than criticizing discrete arguments that do not build on each other. To eliminate redundancy, every paragraph should advance the essay further than the last. Organizing your essay means identifying the separate functions of each paragraph and understanding how each function fits into the essay overall. Each paragraph should have a separate purpose, just as each sentence has a separate function. A transition sentence can conclude a paragraph in a number of ways.