Hello, everyone. This is David Taylor, and I am here to talk to you today about this thing right here: The Five-Paragraph Essay. The five-paragraph essay goes by a lot of different names. Some of them you’ve probably heard. Let’s see. You could call it, The Basic Essay. You could call it, The Academic Essay. You could call it, The 1-3-1 Essay. And that 1-3-1 is going to be important for us in just a moment. But no matter what name you call it, no matter what name you’ve heard about it, there’s one name I want you to remember and to use throughout this lesson. And that name is, the EASY essay. Because once I show you these three formulas for this five-paragraph essay, you’re going to know that it is easy for you to write, and easy for you to deploy and use in all your other courses. Not that everything that you write in life is only going to have five paragraphs. That’s not the point. The point is, you’re learning something basic that can be applied in various permutations in a variety of courses. So let’s talk about the five-paragraph essay and the three formulas that I’m going to give to you to produce the five-paragraph essay. And that first formula is the Magic of Three. You know, “three” has an important place in our culture, kind of a magic place in our culture. Whether it’s something like “The Three Little Pigs” or the three wishes that you get from a genie. Or sayings like “third time’s a charm.” “Three strikes you’re out.” “Three seems to have an important place in human memory. And we going to use that important place and the role it plays in human memory to help create our five-paragraph essay. And this is how we’re going to do it. Let’s pretend that you’ve given a general topic like this one: What are the essential characteristics of good parents? OK. Before you do anything else, you apply the magic of three. Boom! One. Two. Three. In other words, you’re going to come with three things and three things only. Sure, there are more than three of good parents. Let’s hope. But the point is, when writing this five-paragraph essay, you’re going to limit yourself to three. And they can be the three that you consider most important. Something like, patience. Something like, respect. Something like, unconditional love. Again, there can be more, but limit yourself to three. Let’s take another kind of topic. Let’s take a more controversial topic. Something like, should women in the military be given frontline combat duties? Very controversial. You’re going to read about it, you’re going to talk about it, you’re going to listen to your professor lecture on it. You’re going to consult sources on it. And after you do all that, you still do one thing and one thing only: One. Two. Three. You come up with a position because you’ve got to have a position. That’s what being in college is all about. You’re able to take a position, state an opinion, and support it in a logical, acceptable way. And we’re going to do it with three main points. Our three main points could be something like: Well, the first reason that women can be assigned to combat is equality. The second reason is their great teamwork. The third reason is their proven courage. Now if you notice something repetitious there, and you’re asking yourself, Wait a minute. Is this repetition good? The answer is yes, it is very good. Because although something might seem repetitious when it’s close together in these sentences, remember. These are your main points. And they are going to be separated by paragraphs. So, by the time your reader looks at them, they’re not going to seem repetitious at all. As a matter of fact, they’re going to seem clever. They’re going to seem like a student who really knows how to organize an essay and, more importantly, use certain kinds of words (first, second, and third) to signal organization to their reader. So, in this case, repetition is a manifestly good thing.
OK. Let’s take one more topic, an academic topic. “Why do so many students fail to complete their college degree?” What are you going to do? Boom. One. Two. Three. And you’re going to use that formula. Something like, “First, students often . . . “ “Second, many students cannot . . .” “Third, students find that . . . “ You see what I’m saying? No matter what the topic is—general, controversial, academic—you’re going to apply One Two Three, and you’re going to apply the repetition of those words to signal your structure. And that’s called the academic expository essay structure. Fill it in with whatever you came up with in your reading, in your thinking, in your discussion, listening to your professor. Fill in with whatever you want to. But use the structure. OK. that’s secret number one. Now let’s go to the next secret, and that secret is, the essay formula for the thesis. Every essay has to have a thesis, and a thesis can be written with a formula. You know, these thesis statements sound kind of intimidating. They go by names like controlling idea, overall point, the position statement. OK, fine. Position statement, fine. But you know what? They’re all the same thing. They’re all your opinion on the topic. Your position on the topic. And more importantly, there’s a very set formula for producing that position on that topic, that thesis statement. Let’s go over that formula. First, you take a topic that we’ve already looked at, that we’ve already seen, then you add to it your position, your opinion. Remember, you’ve got to have one in college and you have to be able to defend it. And then you put those two together and you will get your thesis. Let’s take an example. Let’s take a topic we’ve already used: What are the essential characteristics of a good parent? There is our topic. We know our opinion on that topic. It was: patience, respect, and love. All you have to do is add those two things together and you get your thesis: The essential characteristics of a good parent are patience, respect, and love. You see how simple it is? Add together the words of the topic with the words of your opinion equals your thesis statement. Now here it just so happened that our opinion contained our three main points. And that’s great. When it happens don’t avoid it, don’t resist it, go with it. But there are other ways of doing it. Let’s take a more broad, general way of doing it with this topic. In this topic, we’re going to have, “Should women be assigned combat duties in the military? Again, you do your reading, you do your discussion, you do your note taking, you listen to your professor, and you come up with an opinion. You say, “Yes, they deserve it.” And that’s a position. It’s a great position to have. And that is your opinion. You are allowed your opinion. And now all you have to do is to support it. But before you do that, let’s put together your topic with your position into the thesis statement. And that would be: “Women deserve to be assigned combat duties in the military.” See what you did? The topic: Should women be assigned? Yes, they should, they deserve it. And we add those two together and we got our thesis statement. Now comes those three main points that we came up with earlier. They deserve it because of their equality, because of teamwork, and because of their courage. So that’s how it works for the thesis statement. It’s a simple matter of adding the topic to your position into a single sentence equaling your thesis. Now, one last formula that I want to show you. And that formula is: the 1-3-1 outline. What does the 1-3-1 outline look like? It looks exactly like this. One paragraph for your introduction. Three paragraphs for your body. And remember, you can have more than three sometimes, but we’re just playing with three. And then one paragraph for your conclusion. One, three, one. Looks like we’re doing the YMCA song at a wedding. Now, the main points in the main sentences that we’ve been coming up with go in special places in this outline. The first is the thesis statement. Let’s remind ourselves of our topic: what are the essential characteristics of a good parent? Remember our thesis, and look where we’re going to put that thesis. We’re going to put it as the last sentence of the introduction paragraph. Why? Because it is the purpose of the introduction paragraph to introduce the thesis. Not the entire essay. Most people think that the introduction paragraph introduces the essay. Not really. The introduction paragraph’s purpose is to lead up to, to provide context to, and then provide a position for the thesis statement. And it’s the thesis statement that acts as the umbrella or the introduction to the entire essay. So that’s why you want to put that thesis statement as the last sentence of your introduction or next to the last sentence of your introduction. Now, as far as those three main points, you put those three main points as the three topic sentences or the three first sentences of your three body paragraphs. And there they are: the first, the second, and the third essential characteristics—patience, respect, and love. So, your three main points become your three topic sentences of your three body paragraphs. And then at the end, you’re going to have a conclusion. In your conclusion, you revisit your thesis in a special way, telling the overall importance of what you’ve written. So, those are the three formulas. The magic of three: always come up with three somethings—three reasons, three causes, three effects, three whatevers. The second formula was to produce that thesis statement, combine your topic plus your position on that topic. Combine them into one sentence and it’s your thesis sentence. And the last formula you see is the 1-3-1 outline. And once you’ve got that outline, and you’re got that thesis statement stated in the introduction, you’ve got your three main points in your three body paragraphs, all you’ve got to do is fill it in with your intelligence, your words, your thoughts, your opinions. Follow those three formulas, and you’ll be producing a good, tight, organized essay. OK. Good luck on them and I’ll talk to you later.
