How to Write an Argumentative Essay — Thesis Statements and Paragraphs

we’ve looked at a hamburger essay format and planning now we’re going to write the thesis statement and topic sentences and learn how to structure a paragraph properly now let’s look closer at your thesis statement your thesis statement is made up of your opinion and three main ideas that illustrate this we put the thesis statement in the introduction so the reader knows straight away what the writers opinion is and what will be explored in the essay it’s important to have a strong structure when you build a house an essay is the same without a good thesis statement and topic sentences that answer the question the argument could collapse you need a clear thesis statement which tells the reader what the essay is about keep your thesis as specific as you can it also needs to be arguable so make sure it’s not too broad or general it should refer to the three point you’re going to make in your body paragraphs let’s move on to paragraphing why is this important one idea per paragraph is a world standard it is a method for organizing your ideas and it helps your reader to follow your argument easily remember that you are normally awarded marks for coherence and cohesion by an examiner in each paragraph you need to show progression from a general statement called your topic sentence to more specific information about the same topic followed by an example then you finish by linking back to your thesis statement your paragraph should be about four or five sentences long a really simple way of doing this is to follow the Peale structure P this is your topic sentence a general statement that summarizes the main idea of the paragraph II this is additional information you give to support the topic sentence it should explain why the topic sentence is relevant to the essay question II this is your evidence to support your topic sentence this could be one or two examples and is usually a fact a personal experience or a physical description of something this might be two sentences long if you have more than one example l this is your link back to a topic sentence and shows how your point answers the question you can use transition words or phrases for your link such as this shows us that this helps to answer the question because you can swap the elaboration and example sentences around then the example sentence would be evidence to support the topic sentence and the elaboration sentence would explain how the example supports your topic sentence don’t try to be creative here make sure you follow this structure for each paragraph and don’t miss out one of the stages or use an example as a point finally we use linking devices in essay writing to connect ideas in several ways to link clauses in sentences using words like and so but and because to link topic sentences and the thesis statement to link the introduction to the conclusion chilling paragraphs using words such as furthermore to add information however or nevertheless to introduce contrasting ideas and in conclusion to summarize what you have said before we use linkers or conjunctions to make sure that our ideas gel together to answer the essay question remember that words such as and so because tend to go in the middle of sentences not the start in this section we have looked at thesis statements and topic sentences paragraphing peel and linking don’t forget to make sure your thesis statement is not too broad or too general and make sure it is arguable right about one idea per paragraph use the peel structure writing four or five sentences for each paragraph and use linkers to connect your ideas together don’t just make a series of points one after the other make one and then expand on that point with your elaboration and example for more advice visitors at learn English teens and for more information on our courses visitors at the British Council website our next video in the series is about how to write your introduction and conclusion