Definition of 5 Paragraph Essay and Tips for Writing

Writing 5 Paragraph Essay: Guidelines and Tips

Every student and freshmen should learn how to write academic essays and to perform at the highest level. They can get useful insight by discovering examples of the expert in the writing field. One of the most common and important for training skills is the 5-paragraph essay. As we can conclude from the name, it consists of 5 parts – paragraphs – that allow disclosing the topic in the best way. The writer should introduce the topic and gradually open its meaning using at least 2-3 arguments to support the point of view. The last part – conclusion – serves for summing up all the thoughts from the essay. Let’s take a closer look at each of the paragraphs and discover how to write this essay properly.

The most common problem that students face is the lack of understanding of how to approach writing a 5-paragraph essay. In some cases, the teachers do not explain the task without taking into consideration students’ lack of experience. The best option for saving time and nerves is to ask for professional assistance and address your request to the special service with experienced writers and editors.

5-Paragraph Essay: The Definition

As we already stated, this type of academic writing consists of 5 parts, each of which serves a particular purpose on the way to disclosing the topic. This is the basic task every student should know as it is used almost in every academic field. Teachers use this assignment to check students’ skills, knowledge and way of thinking. For a particular subject, it serves as a test of student’s understanding of the material and also stimulates conducting researches and supporting the point of view with decent arguments. The conclusion part teaches students to analyze and summarize the written content.

This is the typical task for students in colleges, universities and even in high schools. From the period students master their critical thinking, they are asked to analyze and support particular views and facts.

Since high school teachers try to train this skill in their students as they know this task will follow them during upcoming tests. Additional tests like TOEFL, IELTS, SAT etc. also require this skill. Keep reading this article if you want to know more about the 5-paragraph essay and discover good examples.

5-Paragraph Essays: Types

This type of academic writing has its own types that define the method you should use for disclosing the topic:

These are the basic ones, especially the first five of them. They differ in some aspects and purposes, but they all have a similar structure and you should write a pretty typical outline for each of them as they have the same structure.

5 Paragraph Essay: How to Write It

Now we take a closer look at the creating process. The first part of five is the introduction where you should state the main thesis. Then you move to the next three paragraphs of the body part where you disclose your statements. And then you wrap up the whole idea of the essay in the conclusion part. Each paragraph of the body should begin with the strong argument supporting or declaiming the main idea.

We strongly recommend using at least three powerful points in your essay. Whether you want to support or deny the thesis, you should make it with the help of clear and strong arguments. Your essay and thoughts should be persuasive in the first place. So the deep research and analysis of the topic is a must.

5 Paragraph Essay: Step-by-Step Outlining

As soon as you define the topic for your essay, you should write an outline. This is a guiding plan for your further work. It helps to keep on track and work gradually on each paragraph. Then start working on the first paragraph considering the requirements of the assigned format. The first element is an introduction. This is a part of the requirements of the APA format. This abstract will be the summary of your essay.

The significance of the outline is great. It makes it possible to write a coherent essay in accordance with the academic writing standards. Discover the info on each paragraph:

1. Introduction. Here you should introduce the topic and main parts of your essay. Start with stating the idea of the paper to attract the reader and set the right mood for further reading. Your task here is to hook the audience. Disclose the importance of the topic and the main problems you are about to discuss. This info is important for understanding the next points of the essay.

2. Topic statement. By naming the topic of your essay you sum up the idea and the purpose of your writing.

3. Supporting thoughts. Here you provide facts and ideas that will support your claims and signal about your deep research of the topic.

4. Comments. These are your personal statements that reveal your attitude to the topic, facts etc.

5. Concluding thoughts. This sentence collects all the info and outlines the thesis of the essay.

6. Use these steps for creating the next paragraphs to complete the body part of your essay.

7. General conclusion. Here you should again mention all the arguments and their correlation with the thesis. Summarize the ideas of each paragraph and write a few sentences that contain the motivation for the readers.

Below we will learn more tips for writing an essay of this type and how to get the highest attention of the teacher and classmates.

3 Paragraph Essay: How to Write It

You do not have to worry much about the requirements for this type of academic writing as it is pretty rare in today’s educational institutions. But let’s take a short look at its basic structure as well:

intro;
the topic statement supported by arguments and explanations;
conclusion;
list of references.

If you need to use words of other people, you should use the special formatting for citation and create a list of references. As you use any sources of info, you should inform your teaches about it in your reference page. It is important to use reliable sources of info to support your own statements. The additional tip for you: use the sources that are relevant and up-to-date. Make sure that books, magazines and other resources are no older than five years. This will raise the chances your arguments will be correct and understandable to the reader.

Without considering the number of body paragraphs in your essay, you should start it with the intro part and end up with a conclusion.

5 Paragraph Essay: Intro

This part in any type of academic writing serves the same purpose: to hook the reader and to introduce the topic and the direction of your essay. It should include their main parts:

hook;
short intro of the further thoughts;
the main statement.

With the first sentence, you should attract the reader and motivate to keep reading your essay. It can be a joke, a provocative phrase, a fact or a question. You can define your own approach but the task is clear here. The entire paragraph should help in focusing the reader on the topic, main idea and the purpose of your essay. Introducing the thoughts of your writing you outline the next parts of the essay. And finally, you add the main idea of your work.

Why the intro part is important? You should hook your audience to make them want to know more about your vision of the topic as this is the main purpose of writing anything at all. For instance, if you want to open the topic about how regular citizens can beat wide-spreading corruption. You can start with facts or statistics that will demonstrate its impact on people’s lives. Real facts are impressive as they make readers feel that the topic is relevant to their lives and general human issues. The same effect may have the quote of the famous person.

Important: Professional Advice!

When you stated the hooking sentence, move to the explanation of the relevance of the problem. Mention the current or well-known events in the industry that is familiar to the reader. Then move to the powerful statement. Here is an example of this approach: “The level of corruption has reached the shocking level and during the last 3 month it increased by 17% according to [relevant source]. This fact signals that we need to attract the attention of the government to this problem. But every person in our country should make his/her own contribution in solving the problem.”

5 Paragraph Essay: Conclusion

Before writing a conclusion you should reread the paragraphs of the body part. While writing them you have used the arguments, facts and other info you have found during your research. It means you have come up with some conclusions in each paragraph. So you should reflect them in your final paragraph. Analyze the examples and statements. Define the main ideas of them and the results of your research and outline the strongest supporting points.

Transitional words will help you to move gradually to the general conclusion. Restate the thesis if your essay and summarize the ideas of each part. Write an explanation of why the used facts and ideas are connected and how they refer to the topic. Explain how they help you to come up with the main conclusion of your writing. You can also add some motivation or suggestions for the readers to improve the current situation etc.

The Example of General Grading System for 5 Paragraph Essay

Estimation of the essay is not an abstract notion. In various educational institutions, there are their own approaches to grading. But in general, they are pretty the same. They are based on five parameters that should be checked and estimated:

Focus. This means the coherence between the thesis and the arguments and how well you use them to support your point of view.
Structure. On this level the teacher checks how well you follow the requirements to the structure of the text; what transitional words do you use and whether you follow the definite pre-written outline.
Grammar. This is an obvious point as your essay should not contain any grammar, spelling or punctuation mistakes. Academic writing should not contain any flaws considering this aspect.
Style. What words and sentence structures did you use to convey your thoughts? Does your essay have the required 5-paragraph structure? Is it original and plagiarism free?
Content. This aspect refers to the arguments you use and whether they are strong and relevant enough to prove your point and disclose the topic.

You should study the examples of the essays for most popular topics to define the key points of successful writing.

30 Great Topics to Consider

It is a great opportunity to master your research skills if you did not get the pre-assigned topic for your essay. But student often is afraid of such cases and they find it difficult to choose the proper option. To help you with this task, we have prepared a few questions that will guide you:

Can you find supporting points for the selected topic?
Can you come up with a few strong arguments to maintain your ideas?
Can you create the hooking intro for the reader considering the opened problem?
Can you create a powerful thesis to end the first paragraph with?
Is the subject of the topic interesting to you or your audience? Can you analyze it and design some suggestions etc.?

Discover some topic ideas from the list below. These topics were selected among examples of the best students’ works and approved by professors and other academic experts.

Middle School Topic Ideas

1. Measures humanity should take to protect endangered species.

2. Reasons why it should be allowed to use mobile devices in schools.

3. Why it is inappropriate to wear makeup at school.

4. Special tests for teachers to check their professional competence and the ability to work with children.

5. Obesity among the young generation and the fast-food industry.

6. Reasons why soccer is not popular in the USA.

7. The salary level for the professional sportsmen and its reasonability.

8. Why we should turn to use e-books in today’s educational process?

9. The salary level for the politicians and its reasonability.

10. Searches for role models for the young generation.

11. One day with a particular person: why should I choose him/her?

12. Why it is important to study Math at schools for every child?

13. The drastic significance of learning English in classes.

14. Why is it wrong to make a school uniform obligatory?

15. Is the higher education the key to a successful career in the future?

High School Topic Ideas

16. Why the top-paid jobs in most countries are occupied by men?

17. Similarities between school bullying and dictatorship.

18. What new subject should be added to the traditional school curriculum?

19. Do the Hollywood stars deserve the adoration of the public?

20. Is it reasonable to maintain the death penalty policy in the USA?

21. Students need more freedom in schools.

22. Separate studying at schools: do same-sex schools work?

23. My attitude toward nuclear power usage.

24. Why we should stop animal testing?

25. When it is appropriate for young people to start dating?

26. How can we improve the social situation today?

27. Why we should work on developing the e-learning schemes of education?

28. Charity as the way rich and successful people invest in social evolution.

29. Why we should omit fashion when it comes to defining the personality?

30. Improvements to the today school grading system.

These ideas may help you in finding your own unique topic idea. But if you still have difficulties with this task, you can always address your request to our experts and we will provide you with a great essay to help you to meet deadlines.