Hello my name is Nicholas Morton and in this talk I'm gonna be thinking about
essay structure, how do you make your essays so that they're structured really
well and so that so people can follow very clearly what you're saying, what
you're arguing and they're convinced by it which of course is the point of an
essay. My take on this is that a really well-structured essay, you know it's well
structured if someone can just pick it up, start at page one and by the end they
know exactly what you want to argue, why you've argued that
particular view and even better they might even be convinced by it, if you can
do that you know you've structured it right. So how do you do that? The classic
essay structure is a sort of three-part model: it starts off with an introduction,
then you have your main substantive paragraphs where you work through your
main argument and then your conclusion. So let's focus in on why we have this
structure. The point to having an introduction is it's supposed to get
your reader comfortable, let's say that you're explaining your argument on a
history question, let's say it's "why did the Roman Empire fall?" Let's say you're
explaining that to your friend, your mum, your dad, your uncle, your auntie, whoever it may
be, and you want to explain your take on this and let's say that the person
you're speaking to they're bright but they don't know much about the subject,
the purpose of the introduction is to get the reader comfortable with your
subject area and what you're going to do with the essay question. So it might
start off with a few lines of background just to lay out the basics
so your reader knows where you're going and what the topic is that you're
talking about. You might define any key terms in the title, so for example you
might think about what the fall of the Roman Empire looks like, what has to
happen for a civilisation to fall. Crucially you've also got to signpost
the direction that your argument's going in, this essay is going to
discuss this issue by touching on the following themes, which ultimately will
give your reason why the Empire fell. Now I'm going to go
into how to do introductions in more detail in a later video, but, that's
the basic principle with that. The main body of the essay and the vast majority
of the word count, they will be taken up with your main paragraphs
and the main paragraphs will go through the major argumentative blocks that
prove what you want to say. So let's say you're doing the fall of the Roman
Empire and you want to communicate the idea that as far as you're concerned the
Roman Empire fell through a mixture of factors: in some respects it was to do
with the inability of the Roman Garrisons on the frontier to protect
themselves, in some respect you think it's do with population decline because
of the bubonic plague, in other areas you think it may be
due to a growing super-rich class who managed to get themselves exempt from
taxation and therefore aren't paying into the Roman Empire's coffers, but
actually your real, the real sort of nub of it as far as you're concerned, is a
failing economy: the Roman Empire is simply not producing enough money which
can then produce enough tax to keep all its institutions going. Let's just say
that that's your view, it's a complex argument you have multiple factors you
need to discuss and there are links between them, because not only do you
think that many of these factors are linked to the failing economy, but also
the failing economy means that they, the Roman Empire, are unable to pay for its
troops and that creates problems. You've got to think of a structure that serves
that purpose and the structure serves you, you think of a structure that fits
you there's no preset template you've got to work with. So what you could do is
you could say "okay, ultimately I think the Roman Empire fell because of the
frontier collapse, but..." So we might start with that as factor one
paragraph one, but to explain why the frontier collapsed, then we might have to
explain "well actually part of the reason for that is because the Empire
couldn't afford its soldiers in the same way that it had previously" and so you'd
bring in an economic factor as factor two, but to explain the failures in
the Roman economy, then you go down to the rising super-rich, the impact of the
bubonic plague, to explain why the tax base is actually shrinking. So can you
see what I'm doing there? I've arranged my factors so that as I walk you through
them, they make logical sense, there is a progression to them. Yes, the frontier
collapsed, but that's because the tax base collapsed; yes, the tax base
collapsed, but that's because of these other factors, so there is a logical
progression to the way I'm walking through my paragraphs and each of those
paragraphs then forms the main body of my essay. All this can then be tied
together in the conclusion, where essentially we capitulate what I've
said above and remind my reader once again of how these factors cumulatively
work together to create my model, hopefully persuasive, about why the Roman
Empire fell. So, broadly speaking, that's how an essay is structured: ease your reader
in, with a clear conclusion, work through your substantive paragraphs, showing how they
link together to form an overall argument, and then you tie it together in
the conclusion. Hope this has been useful.