This course guides beginning and intermediate writers through elements of how to write a personal essay, helping them identify values expressed in their stories and to bring readers into the experiences described. Writers learn how to avoid the dreaded responses of "so what?" and "I guess you had to be there" by utilizing sensory details, learning to trust their writing intuitions, and developing a skilled internal editor to help with revision.
The nice thing about step four is that you should already know which ideas to put into each paragraph. Now, it's just a matter of filling in the blanks and providing the supporting information that you should have on hand from step two (your research).
In most cases, you're probably writing this essay for a class or contest. If you've gone through the previous six steps, you should have a pretty strong essay. Congratulations and good luck!
Believe it or not, the five-paragraph essay can be a relatively easy project once you understand how to break it down into pieces. Let's jump into that now.
Step 6: Edit and proofread your essay.
You may have a list of subjects already provided. But if you have to choose your topic, pick one that can support a guiding thesis with three supporting pieces of information that can each support their own paragraphs. For instance, you might think the United States will take home the most medals at the next Summer Olympics. Can you identify three main ideas to support that claim? Or you might want to write a compare-and-contrast essay on why one restaurant is a more family-friendly spot than another. Again, can you identify three main reasons to support your thesis?
- For the introductory paragraph, try hooking the reader with a provocative sentence followed by a supporting idea or two that leads into the concluding sentence that more times than not will be your thesis.
- For the three body paragraphs, pick one main idea for each that will be your opening sentence followed by supporting evidence, examples, and explanation. Then, conclude each paragraph in a way that helps transition to your next paragraph all the way to the conclusion.
- For the conclusion paragraph, connect the dots from the previous body paragraphs to end on a strong note that makes it clear that you've proven your opening thesis, whether you're making a persuasive argument or just explaining the positives and negatives of a certain activity—and letting your readers draw their own conclusions based off their preferences.
This step is so important to writing essays that I continue to use outlines to this day for articles and blog posts, which are usually a lot more complicated than five-paragraph essays. But for your five-paragraph essay, here's a good outline to complete:
(Note: This final paragraph does not present new ideas. Rather, it ties everything before it together into one nicely formed essay.)
This course guides beginning and intermediate writers through elements of how to write a personal essay, helping them identify values expressed in their stories and to bring readers into the experiences described. Writers learn how to avoid the dreaded responses of "so what?" and "I guess you had to be there" by utilizing sensory details, learning to trust their writing intuitions, and developing a skilled internal editor to help with revision.
The nice thing about step four is that you should already know which ideas to put into each paragraph. Now, it's just a matter of filling in the blanks and providing the supporting information that you should have on hand from step two (your research).
In most cases, you're probably writing this essay for a class or contest. If you've gone through the previous six steps, you should have a pretty strong essay. Congratulations and good luck!
Believe it or not, the five-paragraph essay can be a relatively easy project once you understand how to break it down into pieces. Let's jump into that now.
Step 6: Edit and proofread your essay.
You may have a list of subjects already provided. But if you have to choose your topic, pick one that can support a guiding thesis with three supporting pieces of information that can each support their own paragraphs. For instance, you might think the United States will take home the most medals at the next Summer Olympics. Can you identify three main ideas to support that claim? Or you might want to write a compare-and-contrast essay on why one restaurant is a more family-friendly spot than another. Again, can you identify three main reasons to support your thesis?
- For the introductory paragraph, try hooking the reader with a provocative sentence followed by a supporting idea or two that leads into the concluding sentence that more times than not will be your thesis.
- For the three body paragraphs, pick one main idea for each that will be your opening sentence followed by supporting evidence, examples, and explanation. Then, conclude each paragraph in a way that helps transition to your next paragraph all the way to the conclusion.
- For the conclusion paragraph, connect the dots from the previous body paragraphs to end on a strong note that makes it clear that you've proven your opening thesis, whether you're making a persuasive argument or just explaining the positives and negatives of a certain activity—and letting your readers draw their own conclusions based off their preferences.
This step is so important to writing essays that I continue to use outlines to this day for articles and blog posts, which are usually a lot more complicated than five-paragraph essays. But for your five-paragraph essay, here's a good outline to complete:
(Note: This final paragraph does not present new ideas. Rather, it ties everything before it together into one nicely formed essay.)
While sometimes it is enough to answer a question, in other cases, a student has to conduct in-depth research and offer more solutions to the problems discussed.
The most challenging assignment is the one written during a standardized test. The type of essay may define the topic and the thesis. It means that some essays are better off with narrow and serious topics, while other essays are better suited to students who might write creative stories full of jokes. The various types of essays include:
- Definition — adds a personal interpretation of the term or phrase, along with the official one paraphrased from the dictionary.
- Descriptive — adds as many details as possible to illustrate the research problem.
- Narrative — tells a story with vivid examples.
- Argumentative & persuasive — the difference between these academic projects is that the writer only has to mention and explain his or her personal position towards the analyzed problem in an argumentative essay. While in a persuasive essay, it is also important to defend your position and convince readers of your truth.
- Compare & contrast — shows the differences & similarities between several subjects.
- Cause & effect — explains the reasons for something to happen and the consequences of these actions.
- Literary analysis — picks the specific literary text like a poem or essay and evaluates/criticizes it.
The 5 paragraph essay format is the most common essay a student can be faced with. The name is a result of the five paragraph structure: one introductory paragraph, three body paragraphs, and a concluding paragraph. Because of the layered structure, you might have also heard this type of essay being called a hamburger essay, one three one, or a three-tier essay.
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How many words is a 5 paragraph essay you may wonder? Typically, they are around 250 to 500 words long. The format’s plasticity allows students to experiment with various essay styles. Persuasive, Arguntative, Expository, Narrative, and Cause and Effect essays can all be written in this format.
It is used in most exams, such as the TOEFL, IELTS, and SAT. Since most of these exams limit students’ time on the "Writing" section of an exam, students are trained to memorize this format. This allows students to answer the exam prompt quickly and efficiently.
The 5 paragraph essay is considered to be the standard essay writing assignment. Once you have learned how to write it, you are prepared to tackle any other one. Keep reading the detailed guide from the EssayPro team to perfect your writing skills to the level of an experienced essay writer.
The key to success with 5 paragraph essay is keeping proper structure and other writing requirements. So you should use the following structure:
When your aim is to give a clear answer to the exact question in your paper, then 5 paragraph essay is the best option. Students often get such task in college and university, because professors can easily check their skills in a topic. Such writing format looks very simple because it includes several parts and only 1-2 pages.
The amount of sentences is not as important, as the amount of paragraphs. But usually, each section includes 2-5 sentences, where the author should seesaw between long and short sentences. It helps to keep the rhythm of the text.
Five paragraph essay is a unique format in writing, but it also requires an outline. Such blueprint is very useful because it allows the writer to make a relevant plan and keep it the proper way.
How Do You Write A Good 5 Paragraph Essay?
But don’t be misunderstood. No matter its size such a task requires even more efforts than a traditional essay. The point is you have to work hard on the exact sentence because each one is under the spotlight. Besides, according to its small length, the author must create a proper structure and make a lot of edits. Sometimes editing requires much more time than writing.
- introduction for 1 paragraph. It starts with a hook sentence that can catch people’s attention. Of course, your professor will read the paper even of your introduction doesn’t encourage him to do it, but such a mistake will definitely decrease your chances for the high mark. Besides hook information like statistics, facts and quotes, you can add a thesis statement to demonstrate the aim of the whole essay. Try to describe your purposes and topic briefly, but in detail
- Create the first catchy sentence. Such a hook is great for introducing your topic and encouraging readers for further content. You can use questions, quotes, comparisons, interesting facts, statistics, and other brilliant information for this part. Besides, you may add a hook sentence in the conclusion too
You can begin your paper only with an introduction. This is an obvious part for your five paragraph essay no matter what. Write short, logic, interesting section to ensure readers in its high quality.
Once you have a thesis, first ask yourself what points you need to make in order to convince your reader that the thesis is true. Each of those points will be a “section” of your essay’s body consisting of one or more paragraphs.
Here we explain why the five-paragraph essay formula is problematic and argue instead that the number of paragraphs in any document—including the argumentative essay—depends on the content the writer is trying to convey. (Scroll down to the bottom of this article for a video version of this article.)
Drafting is a recursive process: writers must go back and forth, fine-tuning the thesis and the support of that thesis until they work successfully together to produce a unified, coherent piece of writing in which every word contributes meaningfully to the message and in which the organization of paragraphs and sentences flows logically.
The five-paragraph myth also assumes that an essay always needs a conclusion paragraph. While we typically do need a separate introductory paragraph, sometimes we don’t really need a separate conclusion.
What Is the Appropriate Number of Paragraphs?
In an effort to help beginning writers, many teachers encourage the five-paragraph essay template. Starting with a simplistic format is not inherently a bad idea, but often students aren’t told the “rest of the story”: The five-paragraph essay model is certainly one possible structure for conveying ideas, but it is not the only one. Often it is not the best option, and at other times, it doesn’t work at all.
Maybe you will find that one of the points you thought you could make doesn’t work after all. Maybe in the process of writing about one point, you’ll think of another one. Maybe a point you thought could be developed in two paragraphs really needs three or more—or only one.
In most writing situations, the five-paragraph essay simply does not work.
We say that writing is discovery because the act of writing often helps us figure out what we know and don’t know.
- Create the first catchy sentence. Such a hook is great for introducing your topic and encouraging readers for further content. You can use questions, quotes, comparisons, interesting facts, statistics, and other brilliant information for this part. Besides, you may add a hook sentence in the conclusion too