Which paragraph should be the strongest

As you progress through school, you will be required to write essays. An essay is a written composition in which you express a certain idea and back it up with statements that support the idea. Most frequently, you will be required to write your essay in a five paragraph essay format. As its name implies, a five paragraph essay consists of five paragraphs.

However, the essay itself consists of three parts: an introduction , a body , and a conclusion. The first paragraph of a five paragraph essay is the introduction. You should begin this paragraph with a statement that captures the reader's interest so that the reader will want to continue to read your entire essay. Make your first sentence as interesting as possible.

Follow with several sentences that clarify your opening statement. Conclude the paragraph with a thesis statement in which you present what you believe and intend to prove. A good thesis statement takes a stand and is very specific. The body of a five paragraph essay consists of three paragraphs.

Start the paragraph out by stating the supporting idea. Then follow up with additional sentences that contain supporting information, facts, evidence or examples — as shown in your diagram or outline. The concluding sentence should sum up what you've discussed in the paragraph.

The second body paragraph will follow the same format as the first body paragraph. This paragraph should put forth your second strongest argument supporting your thesis statement. Likewise, the third and fourth body paragraphs, like the first and second, will contain your third and fourth strongest arguments supporting your thesis statement.

Again, the last sentence of both the third and fourth paragraphs should sum up what you've discussed in each paragraph and indicate to the reader that the paragraph contains the final supporting argument.

The final paragraph of the essay provides the conclusion. This paragraph should restate your thesis statement using slightly different wording than employed in your introduction. The paragraph should summarize the arguments presented in the body of the essay. The last sentence in the conclusion paragraph should communicate that your essay has come to an end. Your concluding paragraph should communicate to the reader that you're confident that you've proven the idea as set forth in your thesis statement.

Having the ability to write effective essays will become increasingly important as you progress through high school and into college. If you'll internalize the format presented above, you'll develop the ability to write clear and compelling essays. Below we'll explore the basics of writing an essay. Select a Topic When you first start writing essays in school, it's not uncommon to have a topic assigned to you.

There are three basic types of essay papers: Analytical - An analytical essay paper breaks down an idea or issue into its key components. Expository - Also known as explanatory essays, expositories provide explanations of something.

Argumentative - These types of essays, also known as persuasive essays, make a specific claim about a topic and then provide evidence and arguments to support the claim. The claim set forth in argumentative persuasive essays may be an opinion, an evaluation, an interpretation, cause-effect statement or a policy proposal. The purpose of argumentative essays is to convince or persuade the reader that a claim is valid.

Diagram The following are useful steps for developing a diagram to organize ideas for your essay. Get started by drawing a circle in the middle of a paper just big enough to write in. Inside your circle, write your essay topic. Now draw three or four lines out from your circle. At the end of each of lines, draw another circle just slightly smaller than the circle in the middle of the page. In each smaller circle, write a main idea about your topic, or point you want to make. If this is a persuasive argumentative essay, then write down your arguments.

If the object of the essay is to explain a process expository , then write down a step in each circle. If your essay is intended to be informative or explain analytical , write the major categories into which information can be divided. Now draw three more lines out from each circle containing a main idea. At the end of each of these lines, draw another circle.

Finally, in each of these circles write down facts or information that help support the main idea. Take a page of paper and write your topic at the top.

Next to each Roman numeral, write the main points, or ideas, about your essay topic. If this is a persuasive essay, write your arguments. Each paragraph should stay focused on the topic or task identified for that paragraph.

The introduction introduces, the body paragraphs develop one point as identified in the topic sentence, and the conclusion concludes, providing a wrap-up of the overall conversation. The great thing about the five paragraph essay format is that it is easy to modify for longer projects — just add in additional body paragraphs as needed! You are commenting using your WordPress.

You are commenting using your Google account. You are commenting using your Twitter account. You are commenting using your Facebook account. Notify me of new comments via email. Notify me of new posts via email. The five paragraph essay format includes: An introduction Three focused body paragraphs A conclusion Imagine, for example, that you are asked to write an argument essay where, in two pages, you must present your argument with three supporting points.

Here, you can work on getting your reader interested in the topic by beginning generally and then transition them into your specific argument by moving them into a strong thesis statement. In this case, we would use this paragraph to discuss and develop the strongest point in support of our argument.