Exam-writing techniques: Skills Hub: University of Sussex.
The most basic skill that is needed in academic life is that of writing a good essay and a fundamental part of that is essay structure.Yet, despite the importance of writing an essay that is clear, well-argued and strongly structured, very little time is spent on assisting students to structure an essay.This brief guide to how to structure an essay aims to help with that so read on and find.
Essays. An essay is a piece of academic writing which makes an evidenced argument in response to a question or series of questions. Some essays aim to prove something by developing a case, by reasoning, using examples and by taking a position.
This section takes you through some advice about how to structure your arguments when writing an essay: Planning your essay: the importance of this stage for arranging and rearranging your argument and a basis for reflecting on what you know and what you have read Balancing your essay: making sure your essay balances knowledge and deployment of that knowledge to create a strong argument.
Essay Structure Writing an academic essay means fashioning a coherent set of ideas into an argument. 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.
Essays are usually written in continuous, flowing, paragraphed text and don’t use section headings. This may seem unstructured at first, but good essays are carefully structured. How your assignment content is structured is your choice. Use the basic pattern below to get started. Essay structure.
Basic essay structure. Structure of an essay. Most essays have the basic structure of introduction, main body and conclusion. Introduction. The introduction should cover two main themes: Any background information the reader will need to make sense of your essay.
Here is a selection of tips from our Learning Advisers on the topic of essay writing. For further practical help and in-depth advice on this topic, see our Writing essays study guide. Share this page.