10 Easy Steps to Write an Essay
Write an Essay in 10 Easy Steps
I’ve sat in on countless staff meetings encouraging teachers to get their students writing. The problem was that there was not a simple procedure to explain how to create essays correctly. Now that I am a private teacher to my own children and others, I make it a point to teach and offer ample opportunity for students to practice writing essays correctly. Once they learn my formula, everyone agrees that writing essays is easy!
Steps:
- Choose a topic and title your essay (Sometimes we think of titles after we’ve written the essay – but be thinking.)
- Write one first sentence (thesis sentence) that generically describes the topic you will be writing about.
- Think about 3-5 details to write about your topic
- Write one sentence per detail (3-5) without going into detail after your first sentence.
- Reword your first sentence differently. You have just written your introduction paragraph!
- Rewrite the second sentence (Detail 1) of your first paragraph.
- Write 3-5 sentences detailing and explaining or giving examples of Detail 1
- Reword your first sentence of this paragraph. Second paragraph complete!
- Repeat steps 6-8 for all the details listed in your first paragraph.
- Write your final paragraph beginning with “In Conclusion,” “As you can see,” or similar transition phrase and reword your first paragraph.
This easy essay method may seem simplistic, but it is a format colleges and even newspaper editors are looking for when essays are submitted. I have used this formula when I didn’t feel like writing or wasn’t particularly motivated by the topic and was able to plow through anyway. I’ve won contests, scholarships, and my entire Masters degree (free of charge) through the use of this easy essay formula.
Of course, while this formula is useful for the actual writing of an essay, there are many pre-writing methods (to brainstorm ideas and plan writing). In addition, tudents should also be instructed in how to edit and prepare a final draft.
I hope you find this simple and straight forward approach to be helpful to your students. Please note that the youngest writers would probably stick to three paragraphs. Further, college level papers will be more complicated with expanding details and proper source citation but the original formula will still hold true.
Lisa Blauvelt (with her family and three dogs, two cats, a horse, pony, donkey, two red eared turtles, a fluctuating number of tadpoles and baby fish, and various other creatures collected by her adventurous boys) puts her education degrees to work at her home in the Deep South. There she teaches not only her own children, but others who come to her home to learn. Her decade long experience in teaching children to read will soon be published as a 476 page guide for parents.
