5-paragraph essay

Introductory Paragraph
Introductory sentence or hook
Thesis statement
Supporting Paragraph #1
Topic sentence
Supporting Paragraph #2
Topic sentence
Supporting Paragraph #3
Topic sentence
Concluding Paragraph
Concluding Sentence
Writing a Five-Paragraph Essay
Thesis Statements:
The thesis statement is that sentence or two in your text that contains the focus of your essay and
tells your reader what the essay is going to be about. Although it is certainly possible to write a
good essay without a thesis statement (many narrative essays, for example, contain only an
implied thesis statement), the lack of a thesis statement may well be a symptom of an essay beset
by a lack of focus. Many writers think of a thesis statement as an umbrella: everything that you
carry along in your essay has to fit under this umbrella, and if you try to take on packages that don't
fit, you will either have to get a bigger umbrella or something's going to get wet.
http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/composition/thesis.htm
Things NOT to do in an introductory paragraph:
• Apologize. Never suggest that you don't know what you're talking about or that you're
not enough of an expert in this matter that your opinion would matter. Your reader will
quickly turn to something else. Avoid phrases like the following:
In my [humble] opinion . . .
I'm not sure about this, but . . .
• Announce your intentions. Do not flatly announce what you are about to do in an essay.
In this paper I will . . .
The purpose of this essay is to . . .
• Get into the topic and let your reader perceive your purpose in the topic sentence of your
beginning paragraph.
• Use a dictionary or encyclopedia definition.
According to Merriam-Webster's Dictionary,
a widget is . . . Although definitions are extremely useful and it might serve your purpose to
devise your own definition(s) later in the essay, you want to avoid using this hackneyed beginning
to an essay.
• Dilly-dally. Get to it. Move confidently into your essay. Many writers find it useful to write
a warm-up paragraph (or two, even) to get them into the essay, to sharpen their own idea
of what they're up to, and then they go back and delete the running start.
http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/intros.htm
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Writing Strong Body/Supporting Paragraphs:
How do writers support their thesis statements? How do they organize their evidence? How do they
know when to change paragraphs, and what information should go into which paragraph? This is
where the phrase AXES can help.
AXES stands for a series of tasks (not necessarily “just a sentence” each), that all strong body
paragraphs possess.
A
X
E
S
Assertion
Example
Explanation
Significance
Assertion
Make a Claim about your Topic
An assertion is another word for “claim,” and it is often called a topic sentence. Yet, for many
students, the phrase “topic sentence” can be confusing, as the term topic sentence is often confused
with simply announcing the topic. However, just as a good thesis statement reveals your overall
stance in the essay, a good assertion (topic sentence) will reveal your overall stance on the
paragraph’s topic. Using the word Assertion instead of topic sentence can help remind you that a
good lead sentence will make a claim about the topic, not just an announcement.
EXample
Prove Your Claim
Whenever a claim is made, evidence or proof is required to support that claim. Example, the X of
AXES, is that proof. Your example(s) could be in the form of textual evidence, quotations, facts,
statistics, percentages, scenarios, or anecdotes, but the goal of the example is to support or “back
up” your assertion. This is your “proof” section of the paragraph.
Explanation
Explain your Proof
A good Explanation connects your example(s) to your assertion, demonstrating WHY your
examples make your assertion true. For this reason, it is one of the most important aspects of a
strong body paragraph. Although you might think your examples “obviously” prove you assertions
to be true, this is not always the case. Think of the explanation as the sentence or sentences that
“spell” out for the reader why your examples make your assertion valid.
Significance
So What?: Connect your Paragraph to your Thesis
Significance is another word for importance, or “consequence” and this is exactly what this portion
of a good/strong body paragraph tells its readers. Every paragraph should include a statement that
relates why your assertion is important, why it matters. Significance will tell the reader how your
assertion connects to your paper’s overall thesis, or to tell the real-life consequences of the topic.
Concluding Paragraph:
Your conclusion is your opportunity to wrap up your essay in a tidy package and bring it home for
your reader. It is a good idea to recapitulate what you said in your Thesis Statement in order to
suggest to your reader that you have accomplished what you set out to accomplish. It is also
important to judge for yourself that you have, in fact, done so. If you find that your thesis statement
now sounds hollow or irrelevant — that you haven't done what you set out to do — then you need
either to revise your argument or to redefine your thesis statement. Don't worry about that; it
happens to writers all the time. They have argued themselves into a position that they might not
have thought of when they began their writing. Writing, just as much as reading, is a process of self
discovery. Do not, in any case, simply restate your thesis statement in your final paragraph, as
that would be redundant. Having read your essay, we should understand this main thought with
fresh and deeper understanding, and your conclusion wants to reflect what we have learned.
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There are some cautions we want to keep in mind as we fashion our final utterance. First, we don't
want to finish with a sentimental flourish that shows we're trying to do too much. It's probably
enough that our essay on recycling will slow the growth of the landfill in Hartford's North
Meadows. We don't need to claim that recycling our soda bottles is going to save the world for our
children's children. (That may be true, in fact, but it's better to claim too little than too much;
otherwise, our readers are going to be left with that feeling of "Who's he/she kidding?") The
conclusion should contain a definite, positive statement or call to action, but that statement needs
to be based on what we have provided in the essay.
Second, the conclusion is no place to bring up new ideas. If a brilliant idea tries to sneak into our
final paragraph, we must pluck it out and let it have its own paragraph earlier in the essay. If it
doesn't fit the structure or argument of the essay, we will leave it out altogether and let it have its
own essay later on. The last thing we want in our conclusion is an excuse for our readers' minds
wandering off into some new field. Allowing a peer editor or friend to reread our essay before we
hand it in is one way to check this impulse before it ruins our good intentions and hard work.
Never apologize for or otherwise undercut the argument you've made or leave your readers with
the sense that "this is just little ol' me talking." Leave your readers with the sense that they've been
in the company of someone who knows what he or she is doing. Also, if you promised in the
introduction that you were going to cover four points and you covered only two (because you
couldn't find enough information or you took too long with the first two or you got tired), don't try
to cram those last two points into your final paragraph. The "rush job" will be all too apparent.
Instead, revise your introduction or take the time to do justice to these other points.
Here is a brief list of things that you might accomplish in your concluding paragraph(s).* There are
certainly other things that you can do, and you certainly don't want to do all these things. They're
only suggestions:
• include a brief summary of the paper's main points.
• ask a provocative question.
• use a quotation.
• evoke a vivid image.
• call for some sort of action.
• end with a warning.
• universalize (compare to other situations).
• suggest results or consequences.
http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/composition/endings.htm
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