5.a.

Structuring Your Essay

• INTRODUCTION
• Introduce the problem
• Define key terms
• State the thesis
• Stems from good question
• Tentative answer is "hypothesis"
• Refine hypothesis into thesis
• THE BODY
• How is the paper organized?
• Paragraphs
• Topic sentence (mini-thesis)
• Argument supporting topic sentence
• Transition to next mini-thesis
• Arguing in paragraphs
• Mini-thesis
• Evidence
• Analysis (what does evidence support?)
• CONCLUSION
• Re-state the thesis
• Significance of thesis (why should we care about the problem?)