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0:00 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
0:50 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,
1:36 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.
2:25 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.
3:13 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,
4:03 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
4:53 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
5:38 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
6:28 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
7:16 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
8:06 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
8:56 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.
9:46 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
10:35 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
11:25 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
12:11 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.
13:01 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
13:46 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
14:31 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.
15:24 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
16:09 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.
