Indicate, in other words, what a reader might learn by exploring the claim with you. State your thesis in a sentence or two, then write another sentence saying why it's important to make that claim.They anticipate the major argumentative moves you expect your essay to make. Essay maps are not concerned with paragraphs so much as with sections of an essay. Such an account will give you a preliminary record of your ideas, and will allow you to remind yourself at every turn of the reader's needs in understanding your idea.Įssay maps ask you to predict where your reader will expect background information, counterargument, close analysis of a primary source, or a turn to secondary source material. The easiest way to do this is to map the essay's ideas via a written narrative. Structuring your essay according to a reader's logic means examining your thesis and anticipating what a reader needs to know, and in what sequence, in order to grasp and be convinced by your argument as it unfolds. If you leave it out, your readers will experience your essay as unfinished-or, worse, as pointless or insular. Although you might gesture at this question in your introduction, the fullest answer to it properly belongs at your essay's end. In answering "why", your essay explains its own significance. It allows your readers to understand your essay within a larger context. "Why?" Your reader will also want to know what's at stake in your claim: Why does your interpretation of a phenomenon matter to anyone beside you? This question addresses the larger implications of your thesis. (Call it "complication" since you're responding to a reader's complicating questions.) This section usually comes after the "what," but keep in mind that an essay may complicate its argument several times depending on its length, and that counterargument alone may appear just about anywhere in an essay. The corresponding question is "how": How does the thesis stand up to the challenge of a counterargument? How does the introduction of new material-a new way of looking at the evidence, another set of sources-affect the claims you're making? Typically, an essay will include at least one "how" section. "How?" A reader will also want to know whether the claims of the thesis are true in all cases. If it does, the essay will lack balance and may read as mere summary or description. But be forewarned: it shouldn't take up much more than a third (often much less) of your finished essay. Since you're essentially reporting what you've observed, this is the part you might have most to say about when you first start writing. This "what" or "demonstration" section comes early in the essay, often directly after the introduction. "What?" The first question to anticipate from a reader is "what": What evidence shows that the phenomenon described by your thesis is true? To answer the question you must examine your evidence, thus demonstrating the truth of your claim. If they don't, your thesis is most likely simply an observation of fact, not an arguable claim.) It's helpful to think of the different essay sections as answering a series of questions your reader might ask when encountering your thesis. Background material (historical context or biographical information, a summary of relevant theory or criticism, the definition of a key term) often appears at the beginning of the essay, between the introduction and the first analytical section, but might also appear near the beginning of the specific section to which it's relevant. Counterargument, for example, may appear within a paragraph, as a free-standing section, as part of the beginning, or before the ending. Introductions and conclusions have fixed places, but other parts don't. Even short essays perform several different operations: introducing the argument, analyzing data, raising counterarguments, concluding. Although there are guidelines for constructing certain classic essay types (e.g., comparative analysis), there are no set formula.Īnswering Questions: The Parts of an EssayĪ typical essay contains many different kinds of information, often located in specialized parts or sections. Thus your essay's structure is necessarily unique to the main claim you're making. It dictates the information readers need to know and the order in which they need to receive it. The focus of such an essay predicts its structure. Successfully structuring an essay means attending to a reader's logic. Because essays are essentially linear-they offer one idea at a time-they must present their ideas in the order that makes most sense to a reader. Writing an academic essay means fashioning a coherent set of ideas into an argument.
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