3 paragraph expository essay outline
When printing this page, you must include the entire legal notice. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, reproduced, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without permission. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our terms and conditions of fair use. The expository essay is a genre of essay that requires the student to investigate an idea, evaluate evidence, expound on the idea, and set forth an argument concerning that idea in a clear and concise manner. This can be accomplished through comparison and contrast, definition, example, the analysis of cause and effect, etc.
Writing a Three-Paragraph Essay
Your prewriting activities and readings have helped you gather information for your assignment. The more you sort through the pieces of information you found, the more you will begin to see the connections between them. Patterns and gaps may begin to stand out. But only when you start to organize your ideas will you be able to translate your raw insights into a form that will communicate meaning to your audience.
Longer papers require more reading and planning than shorter papers do. Most writers discover that the more they know about a topic, the more they can write about it with intelligence and interest.
When you write, you need to organize your ideas in an order that makes sense. The writing you complete in all your courses exposes how analytically and critically your mind works.
In some courses, the only direct contact you may have with your instructor is through the assignments you write for the course. You can make a good impression by spending time ordering your ideas. Order refers to your choice of what to present first, second, third, and so on in your writing.
The order you pick closely relates to your purpose for writing that particular assignment. For example, when telling a story, it may be important to first describe the background for the action. Or you may need to first describe a 3-D movie projector or a television studio to help readers visualize the setting and scene.
You may want to group your support effectively to convince readers that your point of view on an issue is well reasoned and worthy of belief. In longer pieces of writing, you may organize different parts in different ways so that your purpose stands out clearly and all parts of the paper work together to consistently develop your main point.
The three common methods of organizing writing are chronological order , spatial order , and order of importance. An outline is a written plan that serves as a skeleton for the paragraphs you write. When you write, your goal is not only to complete an assignment but also to write for a specific purpose—perhaps to inform, to explain, to persuade, or for a combination of these purposes. Your purpose for writing should always be in the back of your mind, because it will help you decide which pieces of information belong together and how you will order them.
In other words, choose the order that will most effectively fit your purpose and support your main point. Every nonfiction writing task—from the short essay to the ten-page term paper to the lengthy senior thesis—needs a big idea, or a controlling idea, as the spine for the work. The controlling idea is the main idea that you want to present and develop. For a longer piece of writing, the main idea should be broader than the main idea for a shorter piece of writing. Be sure to frame a main idea that is appropriate for the length of the assignment.
Then expand or trim it to fit the required length. The big idea, or controlling idea, you want to present in an essay is expressed in a thesis statement. A thesis statement is often one sentence long, and it states your point of view. The thesis statement is not the topic of the piece of writing but rather what you have to say about that topic and what is important to tell readers. The first thesis statement you write will be a preliminary thesis statement, or a working thesis statement. You will need it when you begin to outline your assignment as a way to organize it.
As you continue to develop the arrangement, you can limit your working thesis statement if it is too broad or expand it if it proves too narrow for what you want to say. You will make several attempts before you devise a working thesis statement that you think is effective. Each draft of the thesis statement will bring you closer to the wording that expresses your meaning exactly.
For an essay question on a test or a brief oral presentation in class, all you may need to prepare is a short, informal outline in which you jot down key ideas in the order you will present them.
This kind of outline reminds you to stay focused in a stressful situation and to include all the good ideas that help you explain or prove your point. For a longer assignment, like an essay or a research paper, many college instructors require students to submit a formal outline before writing a major paper as a way to be sure you are on the right track and are working in an organized manner. A formal outline is a detailed guide that shows how all your supporting ideas relate to each other.
It helps you distinguish between ideas that are of equal importance and ones that are of lesser importance. You build your paper based on the framework created by the outline.
Instructors may also require you to submit an outline with your final draft to check the direction of the assignment and the logic of your final draft. If you are required to submit an outline with the final draft of a paper, remember to revise the outline to reflect any changes you made while writing the paper. There are two types of formal outlines: the topic outline and the sentence outline.
You format both types of formal outlines in the same way. Here is what the skeleton of a traditional formal outline looks like. The indention helps clarify how the ideas are related. In an outline, any supporting detail can be developed with subpoints. For simplicity, the model shows them only under the first main point. Formal outlines are often quite rigid in their organization.
As many instructors will specify, you cannot subdivide one point if it is only one part. For example, for every roman numeral I, there must be a For every A, there must be a B. For every arabic numeral 1, there must be a 2. See for yourself on the sample outlines that follow. A topic outline is the same as a sentence outline except you use words or phrases instead of complete sentences.
Words and phrases keep the outline short and easier to comprehend. All the headings, however, must be written in parallel structure. Here is the topic outline that Mariah constructed for the essay she is developing. Her purpose is to inform, and her audience is a general audience of her fellow college students. Notice how Mariah begins with her thesis statement. She then arranges her main points and supporting details in outline form using short phrases in parallel grammatical structure.
This checklist can help you write an effective topic outline for your assignment. It will also help you discover where you may need to do additional reading or prewriting. Word processing programs generally have an automatic numbering feature that can be used to prepare outlines. This feature automatically sets indents and lets you use the tab key to arrange information just as you would in an outline. Although in business this style might be acceptable, in college your instructor might have different requirements.
A sentence outline is the same as a topic outline except you use complete sentences instead of words or phrases. Complete sentences create clarity and can advance you one step closer to a draft in the writing process. The information compiled under each roman numeral will become a paragraph in your final paper. In the previous example, the outline follows the standard five-paragraph essay arrangement, but longer essays will require more paragraphs and thus more roman numerals.
If you think that a paragraph might become too long or stringy, add an additional paragraph to your outline, renumbering the main points appropriately.
PowerPoint presentations, used both in schools and in the workplace, are organized in a way very similar to formal outlines. PowerPoint presentations often contain information in the form of talking points that the presenter develops with more details and examples than are contained on the PowerPoint slide.
On a sheet of paper, write your working thesis statement. Be sure to observe correct outline form, including correct indentions and the use of Roman and arabic numerals and capital letters. Please share with a classmate and compare your outline. Point out areas of interest from their outline and what you would like to learn more about. In this outline, be sure to include multiple supporting points for your main topic even if your topic outline does not contain them.
Skip to main content. City Spaces. Search for:. Construct a topic outline and a sentence outline. Tip Longer papers require more reading and planning than shorter papers do.
Organizing Ideas When you write, you need to organize your ideas in an order that makes sense. Methods of Organizing Writing The three common methods of organizing writing are chronological order , spatial order , and order of importance.
Table 7. Tip For a longer piece of writing, the main idea should be broader than the main idea for a shorter piece of writing. The number of consumer choices available in media gear Everyone wants the newest and the best digital technology, but the choices are extensive, and the specifications are often confusing.
E-books and online newspapers increasing their share of the market E-books and online newspapers will bring an end to print media as we know it. Online education and the new media Someday, students and teachers will send avatars to their online classrooms. Tip You will make several attempts before you devise a working thesis statement that you think is effective.
Tip Instructors may also require you to submit an outline with your final draft to check the direction of the assignment and the logic of your final draft. Tip In an outline, any supporting detail can be developed with subpoints. Tip Formal outlines are often quite rigid in their organization. Constructing Topic Outlines A topic outline is the same as a sentence outline except you use words or phrases instead of complete sentences. Checklist Writing an Effective Topic Outline This checklist can help you write an effective topic outline for your assignment.
Do I have a controlling idea that guides the development of the entire piece of writing? Do I have three or more main points that I want to make in this piece of writing?
Does each main point connect to my controlling idea? Is my outline in the best order—chronological order, spatial order, or order of importance—for me to present my main points?
because_____. III. Body Paragraph: Evidence/Support/Warrant (3 points). A. Include a topic sentence. As with most essays, the three-paragraph essay has three parts: an or writing an outline, students can move right into composing the essay.
Fine, you can do that if a low grade is okay for you to get. Sure enough, you can write an essay without outlining it. But it will be challenging to do.
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How to Write an Expository Essay
Your prewriting activities and readings have helped you gather information for your assignment. The more you sort through the pieces of information you found, the more you will begin to see the connections between them. Patterns and gaps may begin to stand out. But only when you start to organize your ideas will you be able to translate your raw insights into a form that will communicate meaning to your audience. Longer papers require more reading and planning than shorter papers do.
How to Write a Perfect Essay Outline
An essay outline will help you organize your main ideas and determine the order in which you are going to write about them. Writing an outline is a very effective way to think through how you will organize and present the information in your essay. Introduce the subject of your narrative essay using a thesis statement and a plan of development POD. Thesis: The first time I participated in a competitive swim meet, I finished in last place. With more focused training and coaching, I was able to finish 2nd in the State Championship meet. This helped me swim better and faster, which helped me to greatly improve my results. Conclude the essay with a recap of the events described or a reflection on the lesson learned in the story. Introduce the subject of your descriptive essay with a thesis statement covering the person, place, object, etc. Thesis: The Hockey Hall of Fame is full of sights, sounds, and experiences that will delight hockey fans of all ages. Conclude the essay with a paragraph that restates the thesis and recaps the descriptive and sensory details.
If you have an expository essay prompt, first of all, get ready to spend a while finding all types of information sources and conducting in-depth research.
Just like there is more than one way to skin a cat or so they say , there is more than one way to write an essay. One is not required to produce a perfectly formatted five-paragraph essay every time one composes a piece of writing. There is another type of essay you can write that may just be simpler than the traditional style: the three-paragraph essay.
