BB 11: Ch.

8 Organizing & Drafting

Organization is one of most important elements of an essay that is often disregarded or
neglected by writers and researchers. An organized essay is clear, focused, logical, and effective;
it makes it easier to understand the thesis or main idea of the essay. In order to achieve a well
written essay, our essays must be organized and this can be done by using the strategies involved
in organizing an essay; defining a research question and hypothesis; developing a method for
answering the research question; gathering results; discussing those results; drawing conclusion
and/or recommendations. However, the most common strategies involved in organizational
features of an essay are introduction, body, and conclusion.
The introduction of an essay presents the main idea of the essay. The purpose of the
introduction is to set a context for the body of the document. It usually tells readers the topic,
purpose, and thesis statement. A good opening paragraph captures the interest of the readers and
tells why the topic is important and as such, why the readers would love to continue reading the
essay. When students begin a new school year and get new professors, the professors introduce
themselves to the students and alert them of what that class and/or the course is about and what
they will be doing in the class, as well as the importance of the class. In this case, the professors
have helped the students to get a clear idea about what will be going in that class. Therefore, the
students prepare themselves for whatever the professor will ask them to do. If the little example
given were an essay, the introduction would be what the professors had told the students at the
beginning of the class.
The supporting sentences make up the body of a paragraph, just as the supporting
paragraphs make up the body of an essay. The body presents the content of the document.
While the topic sentence of a paragraph is general assertion, its support consists of more specific
information that shows, explains, or proves the topic sentence idea. Essentially, the body

provides the facts, reasoning, examples, quotations, data, and anything else needed to support or
prove the documents thesis statement and achieve its purpose. The body of an essay is basically
meant to explain and give evidences of claims and arguments made by the writer. Evidences that
can be used to support or prove the points of the writer include facts, statistics, examples, and
more. These help make the readers understand the main idea that the writer stated in the
introduction.
Restating the thesis statement of the essay is what the conclusion is about or made of. The
conclusion reestablishes the context of the document usually with more emphasis, restating why
the topic is important to the readers, and offering a look to the future. In addition, concluding an
essay can be involved in comparing and contrasting the claims and arguments from the body of
the essay, as well as the examples and explanations that were use. In case sources were used to
back up claims arguments in the essay, they can also be compared and contrasted in the
conclusion of the essay, especially if it is an argumentative essay in order for the readers to know
where they stand. Concluding an essay should be as brief as possible, from one small paragraph
to a few paragraphs at most.
Just like the Rhetoric and Writing Studies in English Research and Critical Writing
Course book says, To help you remember this three-part pattern, sometimes it helps to keep the
time-tested speechwriters pattern in mind: Tell them what youre going to tell them. Tell them.
Then tell them what you told them.