Basic Five-Paragraph Essay: Three Formulas for Success

hello everyone this is David Taylor and I'm 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 131 essay and that 131 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 that 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's something that 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 talk about 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 saying like three times of charm or three strikes you're out three seems to have an important place in human memory and we're 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're given oh a general topic like this one what are the essential characteristics of a good parent okay before you do anything else you apply the magic of three boom one two three in other words you're going to come up with three things and three things only sure there are more than three characteristics 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 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 um should women be G 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 an a position State an opinion and then 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 would be women can be assigned to combat is equality the second reason is their great teamwork or 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 is good the answer is yes it is very good because although something might seem repetitious when it's closed together in these sentences remember these are your main points and they're 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 or organization to their reader so in this case repetition is a manifest good thing okay let's take uh 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 that's something like well first students often second many students cannot third hm 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 and listening to your professor fill in with whatever you want to but use the structure okay 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 okay 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 your topic that thesis statement let's go over that Formula First you take a topic that we've already looking at that we've already seen then you add to it your position or your opinion remember you 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 characteristic of a good parent there's our topic we know our opinion on 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 all 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 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 a more broad General way of doing it with this topic let's say in this topic we're going to have should uh 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 that's a position and that's a great position to have and that is your opinion and now and you're allowed your opinion and now all you have to do is support it but before you do that let's put together the top IPC with your position into the thesis statement thesis in that would be women deserve Frontline combat duties in the military see see what you did the topic should women be assigned yes they should they deserve it and we added those two together and we got our thesis statement now comes those three main points

that we came up with with earlier they deserve it because of equality because of teamwork and because of their courage so that's how it works now 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 131 outline what does the 131 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 31 look like we're doing the ym ca song at a at at a wedding now the main points and 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 one of the one of the central characteristics of a good parot remember our thesis look where we're going to put that thesis we're going to put it as the last sentence of that introduction paragraph why because it is the

purpose of the introduction paragraph to introduce the thesis not the entire essay most people think the introduction paragraph introduces the essay not really the introduction paragraph's purpose is to lead up 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 near 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 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 main topic sentences of your three body paragraphs and then at the end you're going to have a conclusion conclusion you revisit your thesis in a special way kind of telling the overall importance of of what you've written so those are the three formulas the magic of three always come up with three something 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 then the last formula you see the 131 outline and once you've got that outline and once you've got the 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

okay good luck on them and I'll talk to you later