An essay as an educational work enables a student to express his own thoughts more fully, to reflect his personal thoughts and ideas about the world – even if only others’ works, and not individual experience, are their source. It is good when a topic given by a teacher finds a response in the soul (or an essay on a free topic is given), but this is not always the case – and then there are problems when writing an essay. This article will tell you how to write an essay.

Essay structure

The essay is not quite a standard structure. It should not contain a table of contents, a list of references and, at times, even a title page. This is a free genre, which can be expressed by the author as he wants. The only condition that determines the structure of an essay is logic. Everything should be built according to the laws of logic. The scheme of writing an essay practically does not change regardless of its size and is maintained even in a mini essay. Despite the fact that the essay has a free form, its structural features are present. First of all, they are due to the requirements of this genre:

• All thoughts of the author should be stated thesis.
• Each thesis must be supported by arguments.

Arguments in this case are concrete well-known facts, events, phenomena, objects, scientifically proven facts, and the like. The phrase of the author cannot be considered an argument: “My grandmother told me about it.”

The average essay usually has a small size, starts with a problem, then goes a few (usually three) abstracts and 2-3 arguments to these abstracts. It ends with a common conclusion.

Plan of essay

Those who are wondering where to start writing an essay can be recommended first of all to make a plan for writing an essay. The drafted plan reflects the future structure of the essay; the plan determines how to make an essay, is his frame. It is impossible to understand how to write an essay without first making a plan. Although the plan may change (and quite significantly) during the course of work, it is necessary to write a plan before writing an essay. To make a plan, you need to explore the topic. After you are well versed, you need to review the literature that is relevant to the topic. Only after that you need to think over theses and arguments that you just need to display in the plan.

An example of how a social science essay plan is written:

• Introduction (it is possible to substantiate the relevance of the topic, indicate the most pressing issues).
• The main part of the essay – in fact, theses and arguments, which are the main content of the essay. How to write them in the plan – the author himself decides: you can use affirmative or interrogative sentences. Variants of the same item of the plan in different formulations: “Internet functions” or “What functions does the Internet perform in our life?”.
• Findings.

Essay writing technique

One of the main tasks of writing an essay can be considered the conviction or motivation of the reader. When the author decides to sit down for an essay, this means that he wants to either raise some problem or show that the solution proposed by him is the right one. Even if this essay is not an impulse of soul, but the task of a teacher, in any case, everything comes down to these tasks.

The question of where to start writing an essay has a clear answer: a plan. Suppose that a plan has already been drawn up – then a new difficulty arises: how to start writing the text of the essay itself, with which words to start the essay.

Preparations for introducing problems when writing an essay do not end. After the introduction, it is necessary to formulate theses and choose the arguments for the main part.

Tips for writing a good essay:

• Do not hurry.
• Brainstorm. Just write down on a sheet of paper all the ideas about your essay.
• Sample. Now take up your written sheet and pick out the arguments that you will use.
• Structuring. Usually the main idea of each item is one thesis, which is revealed and confirmed.
• Documentary. If possible, use official documents or articles confirming your point of view.
• Try to make the last sentence of each paragraph go to the new argument.

These essay writing rules are most general, applicable to essays that affect any problems.

The final part should summarize the essay written in the main part. How to write conclusions:

• Conclusions should relate to the issues outlined in the introductory part.
• Conclusions should be based on theses considered in the main part. It is not necessary to introduce new, unproved theses in the conclusions.
• Conclusions should be brief.
• Conclusions should not literally repeat the sentences of the main part.
• The essay is more artistic in nature than other types of student work, so you should not use template phrases (such as “I came to the following conclusions”, “Based on the foregoing, the following conclusions can be drawn”).