أكورا بريس welcome to the never stop learning video lesson introduction to essay writing this video will focus on the specifics of developing an essay for a college freshman English Composition course however if you are a high school student who would like to take your essay writing to the next level you have come to the right place as well an essay is a way of conveying an idea when you first contemplate your essay you will need to consider what you want to say what idea you want to present and how you want to say it this planning stage is crucial so don’t skip it when assessing just what you want to say you may have a great deal of choice in your topic or your topic might be assigned to you in either case it’s an imperative that you feel passionately about the topic of your writing since you’ll be spending a lot of time developing an argument around a thesis and cultivating evidence that supports your argument so here’s a little tip if you don’t get to choose your own topic at least work to develop a thesis that you feel strongly about now even before you begin your essay writing you’ll want to decide how you want to say what it is that you’ll be arguing in your essay there are several things to consider here first of all just who is the audience that you are writing this essay for you need to be able to articulate who you imagine will be reading this essay now if you’re writing it as a class assignment of course your teacher will be reading it but your teacher should not be the only audience you consider here the audience should be a group of people with a vested interest in your topic this is an audience that you’re hoping to persuade and with your topic in mind and your audience in mind next you will want to choose a rhetorical mode now this was referred to in high school in middle school as a text structure but they are basically narration description example definition process analysis division and classification comparison and contrast cause-effect and problem and solution now in more sophisticated essays you’ll probably even employ more than one rhetorical mode now the tone shows the author’s attitude toward the topic it can be skeptical humorous compassionate etc etc the tone is conveyed to the reader through specific word choices otherwise referred to as diction the words the author chooses to use in arguing her thesis have a great impact on the reader so you see imagining the audience first is important in helping you choose the tone you want to adopt in writing the essay with all those preliminaries taken care of next you need to focus on developing the thesis for your essay your thesis is an argument it’s not a scientific fact but rather it’s an arguable statement that you wish to present and support in your essay with the hope of convincing your audience of its merit all thesis statements are answers to questions who what where when why and how questions about the topic that you will then answer as your thesis so your thesis is an answer to a question about your topic and it’s not just a surface level type of a question it’s a deep question that you can delve into that again is arguable now your thesis will then guide the development of your essay your essay introduces the topic then you propose the thesis you explain and support the thesis throughout the essay the body of the essay and at the same time you’re offering evidence and reasoning about this thesis and it should persuade the reader that the thesis is important to the audience you want them to agree with your stance once your thesis statement is firmly hashed out you want to develop an outline for your essay that briefly previews the information in rhetorical mode that you want to use as you develop your text here is a sample problem and solution outline the introduction includes a hook or a grabber background information on your topic and your thesis statement it’s important and your thesis in your introductory outline section to write your thesis out word-for-word the outline also has information you’re going to include in your body the problem and solution both thoroughly explained plus you’re going to need to acknowledge possible opposition to your thesis next outline your conclusion you restate your thesis you’re going to provide some compelling final thoughts and again a final explanation of why the thesis should matter to that off to that audience now be mindful of these things while you develop revise and edit your essay overall paper documentation style how the page looks in terms of numberings headings and so on maintaining a consistent point of view developing strong paragraphs balancing rhetorical devices logos ethos pathos use of transitional phrases and words specific vocabulary appropriate tone varying sentence structure avoiding common writing errors because correctness is so important you don’t want to detract from your message with a bunch of errors so work to develop your essay it’s so important to revise it’s so important to edit and if you do all these things your essay will persuade your reader you
