Easy Cheaters Guide to Writing an Essay Fast

Most people hate writing an essay - however this quick guide will show you how to do it with the least work possible and still get a good mark!

Few people can live their whole lives without having to write at least a few essays. Once highschool starts and especially in the last few years of high school, most people have to write at least 10-12 essays per year.

Many people dread essays - teachers may try to help but they don't always explain the whole process very well. The following information is based on a method I was taught in high school and that has helped me with every essay I've done since.

This is a guide to writing an essay using just five basic sentences for a three paragraph essay. Sound too good to be true? It's not. Yes you'll need to fill in some parts and it can vary depending on the length, but I'm going to show you how those five sentences can provide a great structure for your essay.

First Sentence - Thesis Statement

This is the most important sentence in your essay. If you have a poor choice of thesis statement a wonderful essay can become just a mediocre essay. Basically your thesis statement needs to give an overview of your whole essay, grab the reader's attention and be short and succinct as well.

Second Sentence - Most Important Essay Subtopic

It's important to have your three topics ready when you start your essay. You need to prioritise your topics so that your most important sub topic makes up your first essay paragraph (after your introduction paragraph.) For instance in an essay about dogs, it's probably more important to write about how many different breeds there are before you write about how many different types of ears dogs have.

Third Sentence - Second Most Important Essay Subtopic

This is for the topic that isn't quite as important but still provides important information to your reader.

Fourth Sentence - Third Most Important Essay Subtopic

This is the sentence about the least important information in the essay. Dispensable information that isn't as important to proving your thesis statement and wouldn't hurt the essay too much if it was removed.

Fifth Sentence - Conclusion

This is a sentence that's very similar to your thesis statement. However, unlike your thesis statement this sentence needs to sum up your main idea as well as helping the reader review what you've written in the whole essay.

Spinning a Sentence

When writing an essay one important thing you need to learn is how to "spin" your words. Basically by that I mean say the same thing but in a slightly different way or with a slightly different view or added detail. An example is from the following essay about a newspaper called The Australian:

Sentence: The news media in Australia serves a crucial watchdog role by closely monitoring current events.

Spun sentence: However, overall, The Australian does an important job by helping to play a watchdog role in the political arena.

Writing can be quite tedious when you...

Caitlinator on Flickr

Putting the Sentences into an Essay

The following is how you should set out your essay based on your five sentences. Of course you'll have to expand it for larger or more complex essays, but the same rules apply.

Introduction => Sentence one.Sentence two. Sentence three.Sentence four. Repeat sentence one & spin.

First paragraph => Sentence two. Expanding on sentence two. Reference sentence. Expanding on reference. Repeat sentence two and spin.

Second paragraph => Sentence three. Expanding on sentence three. Reference sentence. Expanding on reference. Repeat sentence three and spin.

Third paragraph => Sentence four. Expanding on sentence four. Reference sentence. Expanding on reference. Repeat sentence four and spin.

Conclusion paragraph => Sentence five. Repeat sentence two and spin. Repeat sentence three and spin. Repeat sentence four and spin. Repeat sentence five and spin.

And to conclude...

This isn't a guide to choosing and using your sources. It's just a basic guide to getting your information in order and into an essay. However as long as you have strong sentences to start with, the rest will fall into place.

Updated: 06/01/2011, wrylilt

Thank you! Would you like to post a comment now?