Why is a three-part essay structure so noteworthy?

The thesis-and-support
essay is the formula that almost all college instructors expect when they assign
essays, research papers, or term papers. While other forms of essays exist, the
ability to write a well-structured thesis-and-support essay shows your professors
that you have not only learned the content expressed in the paper, but you have
mastered it well enough to state the ideas in a clear, organized, appropriate
manner. Thus, writing a thesis-and-support essay is a skill you need to succeed
in college.

First, what is an essay? According to William Harmon and C. Hugh Holman in A

Handbook to Literature, an essay is a "moderately brief prose discussion of a
restricted topic" (197). "Moderately brief" means that it is longer than a
paragraph, but shorter than a book. Most essays run from between 450 and 1000
words. "Prose" means writing that is not poetry. "A restricted topic" means that
the content is limited to one subject, and the subject is narrowly focused. You will
read more about restricting a topic later in this lesson's lectures.

Do not feel that you are tied to the five-paragraph essay for your college writing,
though. While it is acceptable, the percentages also allow for six-paragraph
essays and seven-paragraph essays, which are valid choices for college essays.
Obviously, if you are assigned a ten-page paper, you will need to expand the
introduction and conclusion as well as adding body paragraphs to make the
percentages work. But even if an essay contains three introductory paragraphs,
fifteen body paragraphs, and three concluding paragraphs, it may still a well-
balanced thesis-and-support essay.
The first part of the thesis-and-support essay, the introduction, may be divided
into two parts: the lead-in and the thesis statement. Obviously, a thesis-and-
support essay gets its name partially from the thesis statement. The purpose of
the thesis statement is to give the essay's restricted topic and its debatable main
point, and the purpose of the lead-in is to capture the readers' attention. Because
the writer should have the readers' attention before hitting them with the thesis
statementthe most important sentence in the essaythe lead-in should come
first. For this reason, the classic position for the thesis statement is at the end of
the introduction.
Once you have captured the readers' attention, the readers are ready for the key
sentence of the essay: the thesis statement. A thesis statement is one
sentence that tells the essay's restricted topic and its debatable main point.
The restricted topic is the particular part of the subject that the essay discusses.
For example, suppose that you are assigned to write an essay about a day that
made a difference. This topic is the general subjectthe one that all students in
the class must tackle. When you decide to write about the first day of your
college career, that day is the restricted topic. The thesis statement does not
need to mention the general subject ("a day that made a difference"), but it
should mention the day you attended your first college class. Here is one
possible thesis statement:

I gained confidence in my ability to reach my goal of becoming a petroleum

engineer while attending my first day of class at Tarrant County College.

One commonbut not essentialfeature of an introduction is an essay map. An

essay map is a brief preview of the points that will be developed in the essay's
body. Sometimes the essay map is included in the thesis statement, sometimes it
appears elsewhere in the introduction, and sometimes it is missing altogether.
The main advantage of an essay map (and it is a considerable advantage) is that
it helps the reader to follow your thoughts as you move from one point in the
body to the next. Here is one example of a thesis statement containing an essay
map:

I gained confidence in my ability to reach my goal of becoming a petroleum

engineer while attending my first day of class at Tarrant County College by
meeting my professors, reading my syllabi, and finding the Math Lab and
the Writers' Corner.

The reader then expects that the first point in the body will involve meeting
professors, the second will explain what is on the syllabi, and the third will show
what the Math Lab and Writers' Corner are like. Each of these paragraphs, then,
should tie back to the thesis statement's debatable main point by spelling out
how these events built your confidence.

On the other hand, if you are having problems making an essay map fit into your
introduction smoothly, do not feel bad if you must delete it. If your essay's body
contains sufficient transitions and the ideas are logically organized, the reader
should still be able to follow your thoughts. Thus, a restricted topic and a
debatable point are mandatory parts of a thesis statement, but an essay map is
optional.

Students who write weak thesis statements commonly make one of three
mistakes. Instead of writing a true thesis statement, they tend to write
announcements, overly broad statements, or factual statements.

An announcement is a sentence that overtly tells the writer's intentions, such as

"In this paper, I will discuss . . ." or "This essay will explain. . . ." Announcements
are generally considered poor style. Try to state your restricted topic and
debatable point without stating that you are stating them.

Likewise, overly broad statements make poor thesis statement. An overly

broad statement is a thesis statement that includes a debatable point, but does
not restrict the topic. For example, I could write, "Today's high schools are bad."
Clearly the sentence gives an opinion, but its topic is too general. Will the essay
apply to all high schools everywhere, or only those in the U.S.? Or Texas? Or
North Texas? Am I going to write about the faults of high school instruction,
administration, athletics, buildings, students, or social life? And what do I mean
by "bad"? The reader cannot tell from an overly broad thesis statement. Here is a
better, more specific thesis statement:

The social life at Hoover High School can be painful for students who do
not fit into one of the established cliques.
The restricted topic is "the social life at Hoover High School," and the debatable
point is that it "can be painful for students who do not fit into one of the
established cliques."

Facts are excellent additions to most essays. You have already read that striking
facts can make an effective lead-in, and they can also support an opinion in the
body or strengthen a conclusion. The one function that facts cannot perform is to
provide a thesis statement. A fact is a statement that can be proven true or
false. For example, if I wrote that the room is cold, I would be writing my opinion.
If I wrote that the room is sixty degrees, I would be writing a fact because this
idea could be proven with a thermometer. The fact is useful for supporting my
opinion that the room is cold, but it is useless as a thesis statement because it
does not give an opinion or a special insightthe debatable point.
A Good Thesis Statement Must . . .

1. be a declarative sentence (not a fragment, title, question, or command).

2. contain the argument that will be supported by the rest of the paper (not a
fact or facts, not a announcement of the writer's intent, not a restatement of
the assignment).
3. be specific.
4. be academically worthy (not obvious or simplistic, not tasteless or
immature, not a clich).
5. be concise.
6. give the title of the literary work being analyzed if the paper's subject is a
piece of literature.
7. contain no first- or second-person pronouns--unless, of course, the essay
is mostly about you, not about a different subject.
8. be the last sentence in the introduction.
9. provide direction and focus for both the writer and the reader.
The purpose of the body of the essay is to support the main point in the thesis
statement. In other words, the body makes the opinion or the special insight
believable. It includes any of the modes of rhetoric, facts, statistics, quotations,
experts' opinionsanything that helps the reader understand the writer's
viewpoint expressed in the thesis statement.
The third part of a thesis-and-support essay is the conclusion. Its purpose is
mostly stylistic. Instead of bringing up new information to support the thesis, it
exists to make the paper feel finished. Writers often feel challenged by the
task of designing an interesting conclusion, but fortunately, some strategies
have been shown to be effective time and time again.

When you were in the lower grades, you were probably encouraged to
summarize the points from the essay's body in every conclusion. By
summarizing the points, I mean that if the essay's body covers Topic A, Topic B,
and Topic C with some detail, then the conclusion briefly mentions Topic A,
Topic B, and Topic C with less detail in the conclusion. This technique is
commonly used in the lower grades because

it provides an acceptable way to bring an essay to an end,

summarizing is a useful writing skill, and
young writers can usually master it.
By the time students reach college, however, they should acquire the skill to
move beyond the simple summary as a concluding technique.

Notice that summaries are not recommended for short essays such as those
you are writing for this course . In fact, for college essays, summarizing the
points in the essay's body can be dangerous because

it provides an overused and predictable way to bring an essay to an end,

summarizing suggests that the writer may not have cared enough to make
a memorable impression on the reader, and
college-level writers have generally moved beyond techniques that most
children can master.
While a summary may be acceptable for some long essayssay, a twelve-page
essay or more--with short essays such as the ones assigned in this class,
readers do not have the chance to have forgotten the points in the body, and
repeating these points is boring.

Finally, don't forget the fourth part of a thesis-and-support essay. The fourth part
of a thesis-and-support essay is the title, and unlike paragraphs, essays need
titles. A title may not be the name of the assignment, such as "The Day that
Made a Difference." An average but dull title labels the essay's content, such as
"My First Day of College." Better titles pique the reader's curiosity and make the
reader want to find out more. The best titles are often two-part titles that use both
a label and an attention-getter separated by a colon: "Step Out to Step Up: My
First Day of College."

If you are having trouble coming up with an effective title, click here for some
ideas from the Sweetland Center for Writing from the University of
Michigan:http://www.lsa.umich.edu/UMICH/sweetland/Home/Undergraduate/Writi
ng%20Guides/HowDoIWriteaGreatTitle.pdf

So now you know the four parts of a thesis-and-support essay: introduction,

body, conclusion, and title. You also know that the introduction needs a lead-in
and a thesis statement. The body must support the thesis, and the conclusion
should make the essay feel finished without summarizing the body points (unless
the essay is longer than seven paragraphs or so). Your challenge throughout the
rest of this course and beyond is to make the information you write fit into this
structure. Are you up to it?