English Essay: How to Write about ANY Essay Topic
Summary
TLDRIn this educational video, Jay introduces a versatile essay structure suitable for high-level English exams like IELTS, PTE, and TOEFL, as well as for high school essays. The structure includes a coherent and logical flow with an introduction that sets the context, body paragraphs that elaborate on the main ideas with reasons and examples, and a conclusion that mirrors the introduction while summarizing the essay's points. Jay emphasizes the importance of answering the essay question, making a quick plan before writing, and maintaining clarity and purpose in each paragraph. The video offers practical tips for crafting an effective essay that can lead to high scores.
Takeaways
- 😀 To achieve a high score on English essays, understand the essay types and question prompts.
- 😀 Always ensure you answer the question directly and comprehensively.
- 😀 The essay structure shared is versatile and can be used for IELTS, PTE, TOEFL, and high school essays.
- 😀 An essay should have a clear introduction, body paragraphs, and a conclusion.
- 😀 In the introduction, provide a broad background statement, rewrite the question prompt in your own words, and include a thesis statement.
- 😀 Body paragraphs should include a topic sentence, reasons or examples, and a summarizing sentence.
- 😀 The conclusion should restate the main ideas discussed and give your personal opinion.
- 😀 Planning is crucial before writing to ensure a coherent and logical essay.
- 😀 Use the structure to ensure each part of your essay is interconnected and stays on topic.
- 😀 Practice the structure to make it second nature for any essay type or question prompt.
Q & A
What is the primary purpose of the video by Jay?
-The primary purpose of the video by Jay is to teach viewers an effective essay structure that can be used for high-level English exams like IELTS, PTE, TOEFL, or even high school essays.
Why is it important to answer the essay question correctly?
-It is important to answer the essay question correctly because fulfilling the requirements of the essay is the first step towards a high score, and it ensures that the essay is on topic and relevant.
What is the basic rule for constructing an essay according to Jay?
-The basic rule for constructing an essay according to Jay is to make sure that each paragraph has a clear purpose: the introduction tells what will be discussed, the body paragraphs discuss it, and the conclusion tells what was discussed.
Why is making a quick plan before starting to write an essay important?
-Making a quick plan before starting to write an essay is important because it helps to set a direction for the essay, prevents wasting time by deleting entire sections, and ensures that the essay flows logically and coherently.
What are the three parts of a three-part introduction as suggested by Jay?
-The three parts of a three-part introduction as suggested by Jay are: a broad background statement, a paraphrased version of the essay prompt, and a thesis statement.
Can you explain the concept of 'mirroring' in the essay structure presented by Jay?
-The concept of 'mirroring' in the essay structure refers to the way the introduction and conclusion reflect each other. The thesis statement in the introduction sets up what will be discussed, and the conclusion reiterates what was discussed, creating a coherent and logical flow.
What is the purpose of the body paragraphs in an essay?
-The purpose of the body paragraphs in an essay is to expand on the main ideas introduced in the thesis statement. Each paragraph should discuss one main idea in detail, providing reasons, examples, and a summary of the idea.
How should the conclusion of an essay be structured?
-The conclusion of an essay should be structured in two parts: the first part reiterates the main ideas discussed in the body paragraphs, and the second part provides the writer's personal opinion or a final thought on the topic.
What is the significance of the thesis statement in an essay?
-The thesis statement is significant because it clearly states the writer's argument or position on the topic. It sets the direction for the entire essay and informs the reader about the main ideas that will be discussed.
How does Jay suggest to create a topic sentence for a body paragraph?
-Jay suggests creating a topic sentence for a body paragraph by explicitly stating the main idea that the paragraph will discuss. This makes it clear to the reader what the focus of the paragraph is and helps maintain coherence.
What advice does Jay give for maintaining a logical flow in an essay?
-Jay advises maintaining a logical flow in an essay by ensuring that each part of the essay is interconnected: the introduction sets up the discussion, the body paragraphs develop the ideas, and the conclusion reflects on what has been discussed, creating a coherent structure.
Outlines
📚 Introduction to High-Scoring English Essays
The video begins with an introduction to writing high-scoring English essays for exams like IELTS, PTE, TOEFL, and high school essays. Jay emphasizes the importance of answering the essay question directly and introduces the idea of using a flexible and powerful essay structure applicable to any essay type. He stresses the need to fulfill the essay's requirements by responding precisely to the question prompt.
✏️ Understanding Essay Structure
Jay outlines a coherent and logical essay structure that is easy to remember and use. He discusses how to write an introduction that connects to the body paragraphs and mirrors the conclusion. The structure helps in creating a clear and interconnected essay, which is essential for scoring well. Jay highlights the importance of making a quick plan before writing to ensure the essay stays on track.
📝 Writing the Introduction
Jay explains how to write a three-part introduction consisting of a broad background statement, a paraphrased question prompt, and a thesis statement. He demonstrates with examples how to set the context, rewrite the essay prompt in your own words, and clearly state the main ideas of the essay. This structure ensures that the reader understands the essay's direction from the beginning.
📖 Crafting Body Paragraphs
Jay details the structure of body paragraphs, which should include a topic sentence, reasons or examples supporting the main idea, and a summarizing sentence. He provides a sample paragraph demonstrating how to connect the introduction to the body paragraphs by elaborating on the main ideas outlined in the thesis statement. This method ensures coherence and clarity in presenting arguments.
🔄 Writing the Conclusion
Jay describes how to write a conclusion that mirrors the introduction and reiterates the main ideas from the body paragraphs. The conclusion consists of two parts: restating the main ideas and providing a personal opinion. This approach reinforces the essay's arguments and provides a strong, logical ending. Jay emphasizes the importance of maintaining a clear and consistent structure throughout the essay.
🔑 Recap of Essay Structure
Jay recaps the key concepts of the essay structure, emphasizing the importance of coherence and staying on topic. He summarizes the purpose of each paragraph: the introduction sets up the essay, the body paragraphs develop the main ideas, and the conclusion reiterates them. Jay encourages practice to master the structure, ensuring it becomes second nature for any essay type.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Essay Structure
💡IELTS
💡Advantages and Disadvantages
💡Introduction
💡Body Paragraphs
💡Conclusion
💡Thesis Statement
💡Topic Sentence
💡Question Prompt
💡Personal Opinion
Highlights
Introduction of an essay structure that works for high-level English exams like IELTS, PTE, or TOEFL, and even for high school essays.
Emphasis on the importance of answering the essay question directly to fulfill the essay requirements.
Explanation of a comparison essay prompt with an example about renting versus buying houses.
Presentation of a powerful and flexible essay structure applicable to any essay question.
Introduction paragraph should include a broad background statement, a paraphrase of the essay prompt, and a thesis statement.
Body paragraphs should include a topic sentence, supporting reasons or examples, and a summary sentence.
Conclusion paragraph should mirror the introduction and reiterate the main ideas from the body paragraphs.
Encouragement to make a quick plan before writing to ensure clear direction and avoid wasting time.
Detailed example of planning an essay about the advantages and disadvantages of renting a house.
Step-by-step guide on writing the introduction, including crafting a broad background statement.
Guidance on paraphrasing the essay prompt in the introduction to set the context.
Instructions on writing a clear and explicit thesis statement to outline the essay's main ideas.
Detailed breakdown of structuring body paragraphs with topic sentences, supporting details, and summary sentences.
Example of writing a body paragraph discussing the flexibility of renting a house.
Explanation of how to write a conclusion that restates the essay's main ideas and provides a personal opinion.
Recap of the key essay structure concepts: introduction, body paragraphs, and conclusion.
Emphasis on the importance of practicing the essay structure for mastery.
Transcripts
Okay, so you need to write an English essay. How do you get a high score? And
what do you write about? If you're asking these questions, this is the video for you.
Hi, my name is Jay and in this video, I'm going to show you an essay structure that
you can use for high level English exams like IELTS, or PTE or TOEFL, or even just for high
school essays. It works in any situation for any essay type, or any question prompt. And speaking
of essay types and question prompts, we need to start there. Essay types and question prompts.
So before I show you that unbelievable essay structure, we first need to make sure that you
fulfil the requirements of the essay you're given. And to do this, you need to do one thing and one
thing only. Answer the question. It sounds simple, but people always seem to screw it up.
If I give you a question prompt like this one that requires you to write a comparison essay
by providing advantages and disadvantages, then just do that. In some countries,
most people prefer to rent their houses rather than buy their houses. What are the advantages and
disadvantages of renting a home? Okay, now that we have gotten that out of the way, we can move on to
a powerful and flexible essay structure that you can use for any essay question. Just before we do,
click that subscribe button for excellent English language videos each and every week.
The essay structure. The essay structure I want to show you looks like this. This is the ultimate
essay structure. Trust me, it's perfectly coherent and logical. And once you learn it,
you'll never forget it. I'm going to teach you how to write an introduction that connects to
both your body paragraphs and mirrors your conclusion paragraph, and I'll show you how
the conclusion paragraph will connect back to the body paragraphs and mirror the introduction.
Honestly, this essay structure is so simple and so powerful that you might end up teaching
the class or you can keep it a secret and get great scores just for yourself, it's up to you.
Feel free to share this video on social media if you want. Let's now look at each part of the
essay and understand why each paragraph exists. Paragraph purposes. So a standard essay will have
four parts, an introduction, some body paragraphs, maybe two, three or more. And
a conclusion. There's actually a very simple and powerful way to understand the purpose
of each paragraph. In the introduction, you simply tell the reader what you're going to
tell them and then in your body paragraphs you tell them. And then in the conclusion,
you tell the reader what you told them. That's it. That's the purpose of each paragraph.
And it gives you some idea of how it's all interconnected. Keep it simple and keep it clear.
Teachers and examiners hate paragraphs and essays that lack purpose. You're not writing a novel or a
poem or a biography, you're answering a question using a specific structure. Make a quick plan.
Just before we start writing, I hate to tell you, but you do need to make a quick
plan. You should never start writing without thinking the question through. If you start
writing without planning, you end up deleting entire sections and wasting heaps of time,
you need to set a direction for your essay. Let's plan my essay, it will only take a few seconds,
and it's going to relate to yours. So my essay prompt says, In some countries,
most people prefer to rent their houses rather than buy their houses. And the question asks,
what is an advantage and a disadvantage of renting a home? So we need to think for a minute here.
In order to write my essay. I need to come up with one advantage of renting a house and
one disadvantage of renting a house. That's what the question asked. So that's what we better do.
Advantage of renting. Well what about; you can move house when you want. Disadvantage
of renting? Well, it's kind of a waste of money because you're not paying off the house.
That was pretty easy. My tip here is to think the question through, relax and come up with the main
idea or ideas. If you can identify the most important idea or ideas, then your essay will come
together and flow much more easily. If you get stuck on minor ideas, it becomes harder to write.
But cool, I have my main ideas. So I'm now ready to write my essay. Ready? The introduction.
Alright, so we're going to write a three part introduction,
not necessarily three sentences, you can write more sentences if you want,
but there needs to be three parts. First, you need to write a broad background statement.
Second, you need to rewrite the question prompt in your own words. Third, you need
to write a thesis statement. Stay with me, this isn't hard, I'll show you how to write mine.
And you can follow along and copy the same structure for your essay at the same time.
So number one, the introduction sentence, where we write a broad background statement. Your
first sentence is very broad, you almost need to pretend that your teacher or examiner or
whoever is going to read your essay has no idea of what you're writing about. And as such,
you need to give them some background information. You can't just jump straight into your arguments,
you need to set the context. So let's look at my question prompt. And let me show you a great first
sentence for your essay. In some countries, most people prefer to rent their houses rather than buy
their houses. Alright, so what's the broad social context here? Every essay has a social context.
Well, this one is about renting versus buying houses. So I'm going to write something like:
For some people, the dream of owning a home is not possible or is unfavourable.
Pretty simple, right? I've written a simple sentence, it's almost obvious. And yours
needs to be obvious as well. Don't make it confusing or profound. I've simply written that
some people can't buy a house or don't want to buy a house. It's actually a great opening sentence.
Remember that essay diagram I showed you earlier? Let's look at it again. So the introduction
is an upside down pyramid and your first sentence, the first sentence of the introduction is broad.
Introduction sentence number two, rewrite the essay prompt in your own words. So the second
sentence of your introduction should simply rewrite the essay prompt in your own words.
Another way to say this is you need to paraphrase the essay prompt. So let's do it to mine. Here's
the prompt. In some countries, most people prefer to rent their houses rather than buy their houses.
Okay, so I'm going to rewrite this essay prompt, not the question, the prompt the first part.
Mine says, In some countries, many people decide that renting their home is preferable to buying
it. Notice how some words and phrases are exactly the same. That's fine. Notice how
some words are the same, but I've changed the word forms like prefer and preferable.
And notice that I've used some synonyms, different words that have very similar or the same meaning.
And I've also used a pronoun instead of a noun there as well. So far, so good. We've started
broad and now we're tightening our essay, we're focusing in. Your teacher or examiner so far,
we'll be super impressed. Who's this wonderful student they'll ask? Introduction sentence
number three, write your thesis statement, tell the reader what you will write about.
So a thesis just means an argument or your position or what you think. Okay, so here we
tell the reader, your teacher or examiner, our two ideas from our plan. Let me show you mine.
My thesis statement says, In this essay, I will discuss why renting can allow for a more
flexible lifestyle, but why it can eventually be financially disadvantageous. Can you see the
two ideas from my plan in here? And can you see how explicit I'm being, I will discuss or you
can write, I will compare or I will argue, or I will show and then simply write your two ideas.
Let's now continue on to the body paragraphs. And remember to subscribe for more videos on English
grammar and vocab that's going to help your essay writing improve fast. The body paragraphs.
So in the introduction, we told the reader what we'll tell them and now we need to tell them. Your
body paragraphs are where you take the two ideas from your plan and you write a paragraph about
each of them. This is the meat in your sandwich. Now your body paragraphs also have a structure.
Each body paragraph will have four parts not necessarily four sentences, you can write more,
but four underlying parts. First a topic sentence where you introduce your main idea. Second,
a sentence where you give a reason or an example. Third, a sentence where you give another reason
or example. And fourth, and finally, a sentence where you summarise your idea. This is the broad
structure, and you can leave out a reason if you want to or add two examples. It's up to you.
Let's go through each part of the body paragraph sentence by sentence now,
so you're 100% Clear. And so your body paragraph matches up with your introduction.
So remember, in your thesis statement, the third part of your introduction you said in this essay,
I will. I said in this essay, I will discuss why renting can allow for a more flexible lifestyle.
I now need to write my paragraph about that. By doing that we're connecting our introduction
to our body paragraph like this. So here's my first body paragraph. The main benefit of renting
a house rather than buying one is because you can move at any time. If you change jobs, for example,
and your new office is far away, then you can rent a house closer to work, which will save you lots
of time commuting or for whatever reason crime becomes an issue in your local neighbourhood,
you can pack up your belongings and move. Clearly there are advantages to renting a home.
Let's unpack it. Here is my topic sentence where I make it very clear what the paragraph
is about. It's not a mystery story, I make it explicit. The main benefit of renting a house
rather than buying one is because you can move at any time. Great. Now I need a reason or an example
to back up that main idea. If you change jobs, for example, or your new office is far away, then you
can rent a house closer to work, which will save you lots of time commuting. Now I need another
reason or another example to give my main idea even more support. Or for whatever reason, crime
becomes an issue in your local neighbourhood, you can pack up your belongings and move.
And finally, I now need to summarise my main idea in a short little wrap up sentence. Clearly
being able to move is a key advantage of renting. Can you see how the final wrap up sentence also
connects back to the essay question prompt. It's very clever. Now for your second body paragraph.
Just repeat that structure again with your second idea. Simple, powerful. By now you're well on your
way to an a plus or a top score. Now we're going to put it all together and write a conclusion that
mirrors the introduction and re-iterates the main ideas mentioned in our body paragraph one and two,
the conclusion. The conclusion is simple to write. You're not writing anything creative,
and you're not adding new ideas. In the conclusion you're simply repeating or
reiterating what you've already said. Remember the paragraph purposes we discussed earlier.
In the introduction, you tell the reader what you will tell them. In your body paragraphs
you tell them and in the conclusion, you tell the reader what you told them.
Easy. So our conclusion will have two parts, not necessarily two sentences, but two parts.
In the first part of the conclusion, you will write, this essay discussed or argued or compared
or showed and then you'll express main idea one and main idea two. And in the second
part of your conclusion, you'll give your opinion. Notice how that first sentence of
the conclusion almost perfectly mirrors the final sentence of the introduction that we saw earlier.
The thesis statement of the introduction, the final sentence of the introduction said
in this essay I will and the first sentence of the conclusion says in this essay I did
I argued I discussed I showed. This is how you create that powerful, coherent and logical flow.
And the final sentence, the in my opinion part, that's easy.
You just give your opinion. Here's my conclusion. In this essay, I argue that
renting provides greater flexibility while owning results in greater financial reward.
Personally, I prefer to rent so that I can live a more flexible lifestyle. Can you see how I've
repeated my main idea one and my main idea two in the first sentence of the conclusion? And you can
you see how I've given my opinion in the second sentence to finish the entire essay? Recap.
So today, we've learned an essay structure that you can use for the rest of your life. It works
for every essay type, and every question prompt in any situation. It's powerful, because it's
interconnected, and it keeps you on topic. Th e logic and coherence of this structure is powerful,
but you need to practice it. Once you do that, you can't forget it, it just makes perfect sense.
Let's just recap the key concepts one more time. So in an essay, you need to tell the reader what
you will tell them, in the introduction, then you tell them, in the body paragraphs, then you tell
them what you told them in the conclusion. Your introduction starts broad, paraphrases the essay
prompt and finishes with your thesis statement. This essay will... Your body paragraphs have an
opening or topic sentence where you introduce the main idea, give reasons and examples
and then wrap up with a final sentence. Then, in your conclusion, you mirror your introduction
and you write, In this essay I, whatever, argued disgust showed etc. And you simply
finish with your personal opinion. Job done. Cool. Hopefully that clarifies what an essay is and how
to write it. Now you can get started just before you do that though. Remember to click like on this
video, leave a comment and subscribe to this YouTube channel. My name is Jay See you soon.
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