What is an Essay?
An essay is a piece of writing with several paragraphs. It contains
about one topic, just as a paragraph does. However, if the topic of an essay is
too complex to be discussed in one paragraph, you need to divide it into
several paragraphs, one major point for each paragraph. Then you need to connect
the paragraphs together by adding an introduction and a conclusion. Writing an
essay is comparable to writing a paragraph except that an essay is longer. They
bear the same principles of organization, so if you can write a good paragraph,
you can write a good essay.
Three parts of an essay
An essay has three main parts: an introduction (introductory
paragraph), a body (at least one, but usually two or more paragraphs), and a
conclusion (concluding paragraph).
An essay introduction consists of two parts: a few general
statements to draw your reader's attention and a thesis statement to state the
main idea of the essay. A thesis statement for an essay is like a topic
sentence for a paragraph: It names the specific topic and gives the reader a
general idea of the contents of the essay. The body consists of one or more
paragraphs. Each paragraph develops a subdivision of the topic, so the number of
paragraphs in the body will vary based on the number of subdivisions or
subtopics. The conclusion, like the concluding sentence in a paragraph, is a
summary or review of the main points discussed in the body.
An essay has unity and coherence, just as a paragraph does.
Transition signals and the repetition of key nouns link the paragraphs into a
cohesive whole.
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