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An Introduction to Writing an Essay
1 Select the topic of your essay.2 Choose the central idea, or
thesis, of your essay. For example:
George Orwell's Animal Farm provides a fascinating allegory of
life in a totalitariansociety.
3 Outline your essay into introductory, body and summary
paragraphs.4 The introductory paragraph begins with an interesting
sentence. For example:
The idyllic setting of life on the farm provides little clue of
the harsh realities George
Orwell portrays in Animal Farm.
5 After this first sentence, add your thesis statement from
above.
6 Use one sentence to introduce every body paragraph to follow.
For example:
Orwell's choice of pigs as the leaders of the farm can hardly be
incidental.
7 Finish the introductory paragraph with a short summary or goal
statement. Forexample:
George Orwell's Animal Farm fascinates the reader through its
extreme contrast between
the idyllic and brutally realistic.
8 In each of the body paragraphs (usually two or three) the
ideas first presented in
the introductory paragraph are developed.9 Develop your body
paragraphs by giving detailed information and examples. For
example:
The struggle between the two leading pigs, Napoleon and
Snowball, with its
consequences felt by the population of the farm clearly
illustrates how totalitarian leaderswill put their own
confrontations ahead of the population they are supposedly
leading.
10 Body paragraphs should develop the central idea and finish
with a summary ofthat idea. There should be at least two examples
or facts in each body paragraph to
support the central idea.
11 The summary paragraph summarizes your essay and is often a
reverse of the ofthe introductory paragraph.
12 Begin the summary paragraph by quickly restating the
principal ideas of your
body paragraphs. For example:
Through the use of symbolism in the portrayal of characters,
setting and style, George
Orwell's Animal Farm delivers a harsh criticism of totalitarian
society.
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13 The penultimate sentence should restate your basic thesis of
the essay. For
example:
Animal Farm is a deceivingly simple allegory presenting
totalitarian society in all its
grimmest aspects.
14 Your final statement can be a future prediction based on what
you have shown in
the essay. For example:
Considering the vast changes in the global political structure
of the last twenty years, one
can only hope that mankind has learned the lessons so elegantly
told in George Orwell'sAnimal Farm.
Outline Questionnaire
This essay is about:
__________________________________________
The essay is introduced by the following interesting
statement:
__________________________________________
This essay is introduced with the following idea:
__________________________________________
The essay will illustrate the above idea by showing that: (main
point of paragraph 1)
__________________________________________
This is shown by:
__________________________________________
__________________________________________
__________________________________________
(main point of paragraph 2)
__________________________________________
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This is shown by:
__________________________________________
__________________________________________
__________________________________________
(main point of paragraph 3)
__________________________________________
This is shown by:
__________________________________________
__________________________________________
__________________________________________
To summarize, this essay has shown that:
__________________________________________
The lessons that can be learned are:
__________________________________________
__________________________________________
