Planning A Five-Paragraph Essay: Things You Should Know

When writing academic papers it is a good idea to plan the work before you start writing. In fact, some of the best plans will include various details to help you organise how you not only write the work, but how you research it as well.

Of course, there are many different types of academic paper and, therefore, the amount of planning required will vary tremendously depending upon the actual requirements of the work. For example, a dissertation is a major piece of work that can require many hours of research, as well as several thousand words of text. On the other hand, there are far less in-depth papers, such as five paragraph essays, which will potentially require far less research, and will almost certainly be much smaller in length.

In fact, a five paragraph essay can be particularly useful when it comes to developing your academic writing skills. Whilst it may not necessarily be very long, the basic structure of the paper is something that you should be aware of for all future academic papers that you write. Essentially, you will need to include an introduction, a body section, and a conclusion. The middle three paragraphs will be used for the body section, whilst the opening and closing paragraphs will be used for the introduction and the conclusion, respectively. Ultimately, whilst more in-depth papers may also include various other sections, the general structure will be similar in many ways.

Creating the introduction

For your introduction, you should include details about the topic that you are discussing at a relatively early point. Furthermore, you should include any important details that will help the reader to understand the aims of your paper. For example, if you are writing an argumentative paper then you may wish to describe a particular issue relating to the topic that you are discussing, as well as the point of view that you will be arguing for.

The body section

As mentioned, the middle three paragraphs will be used for the body section of your paper. It is in the body section that you will go into more detail about the topic that you are discussing. For example, with an argumentative paper you would use each paragraph to outline a particular argument that you wish to use to back up any point of view that you are taking.

The conclusion

The final part of your paper is the conclusion, which will address any points that you have previously made, so as to finalise what you have written.