Life With English
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Basic Essay Writing Skills
The basic format for writing an essay is the five paragraph essay. The five paragraph essay is not a rule, but a guideline for the writers. The five paragraph essay consists of an introduction paragraph, at least three content paragraph and lastly, a concluding paragraph.
Basically, there are three stages of the writing process, which is : planning, writing and publishing.
Planning
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before you write an essay, you need to do research on the topic of your writing.
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then, you need to make an outline for your writing. By providing an outline, it will make your writing process much easier and organised.
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there are several ways you can develop an outline: brainstorming, idea mapping, listing
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Brainstorming : how to use brainstorming technique?
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​First, read your essay prompt or question. Focus on the keyword. For example, 'What are the different types of pollution?' The keywords here are "different types" and "pollution".
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Second, write down anything and everything that comes into your mind when you read these keywords.
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Third, see what you wrote down and choose the ideas that are suitable to put into your essay.
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Idea mapping : how to use idea mapping technique?
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​First, choose a topic for your essay and write it at the center of your drafting paper. For example, 'How to take care of your health?'
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Second, create subtopics to support your main idea. For example, to take care of your health, there are several subtopics that you can include in your essay, which are "sleep", "exercise" and "diet".
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Third, rearrange your subtopics until you have the structure of the essay that you wanted.
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Listing : how to use listing technique?
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​First, create a main idea that you would like to write about. For example, 'Saving money for the future.'
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Second, list down everything that comes into your mind about the main idea. Don't worry about the order of items on the list. For example:
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​save a part of your allowance
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make a shopping list
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investment
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don't eat out
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think before you buy
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use public transport
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keep every change you have
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Third, after you make a list, review and look for items that are related and cluster them together. For example, 'make a shopping list' and 'think before you buy' can be clustered together because both items have basically the same idea.
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Writing
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This process involves with writing the thesis statement, topic sentences and supporting details.
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Thesis statement:
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represents the main idea of the whole essay
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usually written in one sentence & placed in the introduction
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helps writer to have a clear, practical essay
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guides the writer when they write
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helps writer to present their points clearly and effectively
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Topic sentence:
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often written as the first sentence in the content paragraph
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gives the reader the main idea of the paragraph
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supports the thesis statement
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Supporting details:
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give additional information to the topic sentence
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gives definition and prove your idea
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make the main idea stronger
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Publishing is the final step in writing. You can publish or submit your essay after you re-check and re-edit your work when you finally satisfied with your essay.