My essay has an interesting and informative title.


Sometimes the subject matter of your essay is assigned to you, sometimes it’s not. Either way, you have to decide what you want to say. Start by brainstorming some ideas, writing down any thoughts you have about the subject. Then read over everything you’ve come up with and consider which idea you think is the strongest. Ask yourself what you want to write about the most. Keep in mind the goal of your essay. Can you achieve the goal of the assignment with this topic? If so, you’re good to go.
Once you have a good topic sentence, you then need to support that main idea with more detailed information, facts, thoughts, and examples. These supporting points answer one question about your topic sentence—“Why?” This is where research and perhaps more brainstorming come in. Then organize these points in the way you think makes the most sense, probably in order of importance. Now you have an outline for your essay. Follow your outline, using each of your supporting points as the topic sentence of its own paragraph. Use descriptive words to get your ideas across to the reader. Go into detail, using specific information to tell your story or make your point. Stay on track, making sure that everything you include is somehow related to the main idea of your essay. Use transitions to make your writing flow. Need to write an essay? Does the assignment feel as big as climbing Mount Everest? Fear not. You’re up to the challenge! The following step-by step tips from the will help you with this monumental task. Check for errors in spelling, capitalization, punctuation, and grammar. Look for ways to make your writing clear, understandable, and interesting. Use descriptive verbs, adjectives, or adverbs when possible. It also helps to have someone else read your work to point out things you might have missed. Then make the necessary corrections and changes in a second draft. Repeat this revision process once more to make your final draft as good as you can. Essay writing is a key component to academic success at every level. It is, essentially, the way in which people within the academic community communicate with each other. Thus, there are fundamental ways in which academics structure their work and formal ways of communicating what they have to say. Writing essays is not simply a hoop for students to jump through. The vast majority of instructors and professors also write essays at a professional level, and they do not ask of their students anything less than the standard that is asked of them. Writing an essay can be problematic for students because the requirements of colleges are often different from school ones. However, knowing the structure of writing helps you a lot because you already know about the foundation. Taking the first step will be much easier. Step by step, following each session, you will be able to overcome this task yourself.

Download this page as a PDF for your essay structure revision notes

Essays are a means for individuals to convey detailed ideas to others. Essays usually convey a particular perspective on the issue or idea being discussed. Because of how human beings process information, we tend to apply universal conventions and structures to essays – as we do to speeches – so that our audience can understand and retain the ideas and arguments they contain.

Short videos to support your essay writing skills

In Part 5 of our Beginner’s Guide to Acing HSC English, we’ll give you a step-by-step process for producing those strong essay responses you’ve been struggling to write. Knowing how to write an essay is one of the most important skills you will need to master as an English Student. In this section, we focus on how to plan and structure an essay.

Tips on writing longer pieces of work

Once you’ve done your prep, you need to know how to write an essay to refine your ideas. But how do you actually do that? Before we show you how to write an essay you need to know how it should work and what its different parts are.

Strong paragraphs are essential to a well-written essay.

Do you struggle to get started when writing essays? Are you ensure of how to structure an essay? In this article, we’ll show you how to plan and structure an essay so you give markers what they want.

This resource covers key considerations when writing an essay.

Essays do differ in their requirements. However, most essays require you to put forward an argument, provide evidence to support that argument, and then conclude your key points. As such, most essays will be loosely based upon the following structure:

So … what are those structures? And how do they influence your topic?

A common question students ask is, should I use sub-headings in my essays? Unfortunately, there is no straightforward answer to this question. Some tutors do appreciate sub-headings, though others abhor them. So, it’s best to take guidance from your tutor.