Want to simplify the task of writing essays? Learn how now! It is important to learn this art in order to succeed in school as well as in your career. Whether you are a high school student, attending college, or in the workforce, learning to write an informative essay is paramount. Here are some helpful hints to get you started on your way to creating essays.
Determine Your Audience
All too often we write for ourselves and do not consider who will be reading what we write. The 5 paragraph essay needs to be understood by those who are reading it. The author usually knows the information they are writing about, however their readers may not have any prior knowledge of the topic. Reflecting on your audience will help you to come up with the subject matter for the content of the essay.
Brainstorm
After determining who your audience is, it is imperative that you put your ideas on paper. Think about the topic of the essay and list out everything you can think of about that topic. This list should be a simple bulleted list with just a few words per bullet. Do not get caught up on details as the details will come into play when putting the essay together.
After you feel that you have exhausted all facets of the brainstorming process, you will now need to choose what you want to focus on. Many of the ideas you have put down will coincide with one another and therefore can become part of a paragraph and can be grouped together. Look closely at your groupings now and determine which 3 are the most closely related. You will use these three groupings to start writing your essay.
Writing the Essay
Once you have brainstormed and have your groupings, you can start writing the essay. The most important thing to remember is that you do not start the essay with the first paragraph, but the second instead. As weird as that sounds, this process will work.
Write out your three topics in paragraph form. Be as informative as you are able while being precise in your writing. When writing your paragraphs, make sure that the last sentence of each paragraph will flow into the following paragraph. Read the three paragraphs a few times to make sure that you are satisfied with your work and that you wrote everything that was of importance.
Once you have completed the subject portion of your essay, it is now time to write the introduction and conclusion paragraphs. The introduction paragraph should be an overview of what is to be covered in the rest of the essay, without giving detailed description of the subject matter and should flow into the next paragraph. The conclusion paragraph will simply reiterate the introduction paragraph with a focus on wrapping up the essay. Once these are completed, reread your essay and check for grammar, punctuation, and flow.
This simplified process should help you to get started on becoming proficient at the 5 Paragraph Essay. Use this format for anything from completing and assignment to submitting an essay for a college application to writing reports for work. Once you have mastered this art, you can learn to build on it to creating more in depth reports, which will be useful for such things as writing for assignments in an MBA program or even for your job.
Author Trudy Stapleton is a career counselor who also writes for Human Resources MBA, a site which explores and lists all the best online HR Masters.
