Notes

The Five Paragraph College Essay:

I. Introduction: The purpose of the introduction is to state the topic, give some brief information about the topic and state the thesis.

a) Significant statement: Some refer to the opening sentence of an essay as the attention grabber or opening statement. The purpose of the first sentence is get the reader’s attention in some significant way. There are several ways to grab the reader’s attention 1) Fact or statistic: Essays that describe a current social problem or scientific issue, might begin with an interesting or startling statistic or fact. 2) Humorous anecdote: An anecdote is a brief story used to make a point. 3) Rhetorical question: Asking a provocative question that does not require an answer is an effective way to keep a reader’s attention.

b) The thesis statement: Perhaps the most important sentence in the essay, the thesis statement contains the main idea of the essay and states the direction the essay will take. 1) The three part thesis: In five paragraph essays, the three middle paragraphs draw their topics from the three part thesis. For example, in an essay on declining manatee populations, the thesis might be:

There are several reasons why manatee populations have declined recently, most significantly, habitat loss, water pollution and accidents with outboard motors.

II. Body Paragraphs: To use the above example, the first body paragraph after the introduction will start with a topic sentence about habitat loss, since that was the first item listed in the thesis statement.

1) Topic sentence: The first sentence of the body paragraph should define and limit the topic of the paragraph. 2) Supporting details and illustrations: Most of the body paragraph should be facts and specific references to support the topic sentence and the thesis statement. 3) Tie up sentence: The concluding sentence of a body paragraph should tie up the topic of the paragraph and transition to the next paragraph. Transition sentences which mention the topic of both the preceding and next paragraph give the essay cohesion and smoothness.

III and IV Body Paragraphs: Following the same three steps as previous body paragraph, paragraph III would be about water pollution and paragraph IV would be about the dangers of human activity to manatees.

V The Conclusion: The conclusion of the essay should not be any less than four sentences. For the essay to be effective and provoke the reader to further thought, it is necessary to restate the thesis, but don’t repeat it word for word. Remind the reader why this is an important topic or why the topic deserves consideration by the reader. It is always effective to finish the essay with a provocative idea.