logo for you-can-teach-writing.com
sp
Home : Essay writing

First steps to essay writing
A primer on essay format

Class room graphic

Knowing essay format is simpler than writing essays. You can introduce essay writing even if you know no more than is on this page.

Of course, you'll have to learn how to use the essay format right along with your students, but you would have to do that no matter how much you knew starting out.

The essay doesn't get much respect, but it is a powerful and pervasive communications tool. It's also a tool that lends itself to both teaching and learning.

The definition of essay

An essay is a type of short (less than book-length) expository nonfiction built around a thesis statement, which is simply an assertion or opinion about a topic. The topic could be anything at all.

Classifications of essays

Essays can be classified two ways:

  • By degree of formality (formal or informal).

  • By overall organizational pattern.

Essay format isn't used in all essays

What English teachers refer to as essay format or essay structure is actually the organizational pattern of the persuasive essay with its clearly defined thesis and supporting evidence for the thesis.

The organizational opposite of the persuasive essay is the narrative essay. Between the two organziational patterns on the essay continuum are other types of essays that contain varying amounts of the two basic patterns.

The persuasive-pattern essay

In its purest form, the persuasive-pattern essay is developed in units of three:

  • Three sections (beginning, middle, and ending or introduction, body, and conclusion).

  • Three points supporting the thesis statement.

  • Three pieces of evidence supporting each point.

The shortest piece of writing that can display all the classical components of that pattern is five paragraphs long. That's where the term "five paragraph essay" comes from.

The narrative essay

Instead of nine supporting pieces of evidence, the narrative essay uses just a single, true story, told either in first-person or third person, to persuade readers to accept the thesis.

The writing process for essays

What is called the writing process is really a hodgepodge of processes for a variety of genres of writing. You will find teaching essay writing easier if you teach a writing process for producing the the persuasive-pattern (thesis + support) essays.

Skilled writers can use the same pattern in preparing to write, flexing the basic structure in various ways so that their essays don't look at all like the much maligned five-paragraph essay pattern.

You can teach students about how essays are put together in a single period, but teaching them to apply essay format in their work will take months.

Special SiteSell Promotion
Linda Aragoni  says

Writing process tips or troubles?

Share your insights and teaching challenges with your peers in the teachers' writing process forum.

Linda

Linda Aragoni

 

Photo Credit:
Class Room
by Cobrasoft

 

Published 11-Aug-2008; updated 15-Jun-2010

FREE E-ZINE

Subscribe now!


Email

First name

Then


Your e-mail address is totally secure.
I promise to use it only to send you Writing Points.


Not yet a subscriber?

See what you've been missing.


Comments by visitors to you-can-teach-writing.com

Good fit for career-minded

Just found your site and was so impressed that I signed up for your ezine and forwarded the link to every writing teacher on campus. Your pragmatic approach is well-suited to our career-minded students, many of whom dread their required composition courses. Thanks for making this available.

~ Cecelia

To get your own Writing Points subscription, click here.