how to write an essay

               How do you write an essay you ask?  Well I am here to enlighten you.  There are a couple of guidelines/steps to writing an essay.  Typically you start out with some prewriting techniques which I will explain in further detail later.  Then you jot down your introduction paragraph which contains your thesis and some hints at the supporting paragraphs.  Speaking of which, the supporting paragraphs are next closely followed by the concluding paragraph. The concluding paragraph is the easiest because you basically just sum up the gist of the supporting paragraphs with an affirmation of your thesis.

               So now let’s dive into the prewriting ideas that I mentioned earlier.  Now for some of us we could go almost our entire educational career without using these but they are definitely helpful.  The first idea is brainstorming. You need to ask yourself a couple of questions so as to know what the flow of your essay is going to take.  What is the target demographic?  What do you hope to achieve with your essay?  Now that you have those answers in mind you need to develop your thesis statement.  Notice that it is called a thesis statement.  That means that it should not be a question and should be very direct and to the point.  An example is the one I used in our writing strategies lesson “Fast food will be the downfall of America” the thesis was that fast food is unhealthy.  I followed this thesis statement with some supporting facts to include referencing a health professional’s article.  Now that lesson only required a paragraph but I could have easily followed it with some supporting paragraphs and ended it with a conclusion. another useful tool would be to use an outline which you can use to guide yourself in the general flow of the paper.  There you go you now know the basics of writing an essay.  Good luck.