A Guide To Learn English Language

In this post we shall con­tinue with our dis­cus­sion of struc­tur­ing essays. Here we would pri­mar­ily focus on organ­is­ing and draft­ing our ideas.

Organ­is­ing Ideas

Mind

• We need to organ­ise the enor­mous data we col­lected in pre­vi­ous step. This not only reduces the redun­dancy of data, but also it helps in set­ting the flow of essay.
Start with the cen­tral idea of your essay. Write down the main idea at the cen­tre of the page. Now sur­round this with the imme­di­ate ideas which would help you reach at the main idea. If the tone of your essay is per­sua­sive, you should come up with con­vinc­ing data. If you are explain­ing a process, you can list out all the steps that need to be fol­lowed. Be care­ful to cat­e­gorise your essay into begin­ning, mid­dle and end.Work out­wards till you exhaust all your col­lected infor­ma­tion. The con­nec­tions between the var­i­ous ideas should link up and result in the main idea. The resul­tant pic­ture is called a mind-map. Now, you should be able to recount all the data you want to be present in your essay only by read­ing the mind-map. If you are miss­ing some­thing, then prob­a­bly you need to re-draw the mind-map.

Draft­ing

Now we are ready to write. We will divide our essay in three basic parts-introduction, body and con­clu­sion. They are not just the tags asso­ci­ated to an essay. They form the basic con­cep­tual frame­work of the essay. The intro­duc­tion more or less reflects your under­stand­ing of the prob­lem, which is crit­i­cal from exams per­spec­tive.
Intro­duc­tion
An intro­duc­tion is the begin­ning of the jour­ney. It is almost like brief overview of what is going to come in the essay. An intro­duc­tion hence is almost syn­ony­mous to the ques­tions what/why/how. Intro­duc­tion is the place, where you are actu­ally judged for your under­stand­ing of the prob­lem state­ment. Try ask­ing the ques­tions what/why/how. This shall tell you what to include in the intro­duc­tion. Make sure you let the reader know how you are going to take up the prob­lem in sub­se­quent paragraphs.

Main Body

In the main body of the essay you would be con­cen­trat­ing on the cen­tre of the mind-map you have already devel­oped. You look to build what you sug­gested in the intro­duc­tion. Make sure you don’t skip ideas. The ideas should link up smoothly lead­ing to your main idea. Refer to the mind-map you have already cre­ated. The mind-map should help you to start and move towards your goal.

Con­clu­sion

The con­clu­sion should typ­i­cally remind the reader of all the impor­tant points of the essay. You should sum­marise the main points of the argu­ment. It is always advis­able to remind the reader of the meth­ods you employed to reach to the main idea. Do not intro­duce new ideas in the con­clu­sion para­graph. This para­graph is meant to end the argu­ment so do not start with new ques­tions.
In the next part we would look to com­pact our essay.