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easy outline essay writing

Method 1 Preparing to Outline a Paper 1Edit step Read the assignment guidelines carefully. Highlight or underline important words and phrases in the instructions. Make sure that you fully understand what the instructor is asking you to do before you begin your outline. Ask for clarification if anything seems vague or confusing. Develop a topic. Although outlining a paper can help you to develop and organize your ideas, you may need to do some other prewriting exercises to get started.[1] There are many useful prewriting strategies that can help you to generate ideas for your paper. List all the ideas that come to mind (good or bad) and then look over the list you have made and group similar ideas together. Expand those lists by adding onto the list or by using another prewriting activity. [2] Freewriting. Write nonstop for about 5-10 minutes. Write whatever comes to mind and don’t edit yourself. When you are done, review what you have written and highlight or underline the most useful information. Repeat the freewriting exercise using this information as a starting point. You can repeat this exercise multiple times to continue to refine and develop your ideas. [3] Clustering. Write your subject down on the center of a piece of paper and circle it. Then draw three or more lines extending from the circle. At the end of each of the lines you have drawn, write down a new idea that corresponds to your main idea. Then draw three or more lines from each of those new ideas, and write ideas that corresponds to those ideas. Continue developing your cluster until you feel that you have explored as many connections as you can. [4] Questioning. On a piece of paper, write out “Who? What? When? Where? Why? How?” Space the questions about two or three lines apart so that you can write your answers on these lines. Respond to each questions in as much detail as you can. This exercise.
How to Write a 5-Paragraph Essay Outline Have you ever made an awesome chocolate cake without looking at a recipe first? Unless you are an extremely talented baker, most likely the answer is “no.” Just one cup of flour too many and your chocolate dessert will be a chocolate mess! The same goes for writing a 5-paragraph essay. If you are an extremely talented writer, you may be able to intuitively create a compelling essay with all the components needed to be both persuasive and easy to swallow or follow. However, if writing doesn’t come easily to you, you can benefit from creating a 5-paragraph essay outline before jumping into your writing assignment. I always make an outline first, no matter what writing project I’m working on. There are endless, different ways to write a compelling essay. But, if your teacher is demanding that you sum up your argument in five succinct paragraphs, follow this easy tutorial on how to create a 5-paragraph essay outline. Structure of the 5-Paragraph Essay Outline The 5-paragraph essay is made of you guessed it five paragraphs. Each paragraph serves a specific purpose: Paragraph 1: Amazing introduction (hook) and the all-important thesis statement Paragraph 2: Argument A and supporting facts or quotes Paragraph 3: Argument B and supporting facts or quotes Paragraph 4: Argument C and supporting facts or quotes Paragraph 5: Conclusion, made up of your restated thesis and the broader significance of your argument Here’s how this outline would look if you sketched it out: A Note on Formatting Your 5-Paragraph Essay Outline Now, I’m not saying that you must put your outline into a diagram like the one above—using a simple pen and paper or word processor will suffice. If you like technology though, there are several fun, online outline generators that can help you out—some of them more sophisticated and user-friendly than others. The one I.
Writing is easier if you start with an outline You've come up with the perfect thesis or essay topic—you've done plenty of research and know everything that there is to know about your topic—and yet, you can't seem to put pen to paper. You have plenty of thoughts and ideas about where you want your essay to go, but what you really need is a plan of action. This is where an outline comes in. An outline is simply a general plan of the material you want to discuss in your paper, broken down in a clear and concise manner. An outline is a great tool to organize your thoughts, find the most logical order to present your material, and connect your ideas to one another. Believe it or not, spending an extra 20 or 30 minutes creating an outline will enhance your understanding of the topic and make the essay writing process much easier. Outlines are so helpful in fact, that you may even find some professors require an outline to be turned in and graded before you can submit your completed paper. Outlining the outline Let's start by looking at the outline in a little more detail. Students submit dozens of outlines to us every week, and while there are several different types of outlines, the format of choice is the alphanumeric outline. In this type of outline, you subdivide your categories in the following way: I. Roman numerals A. Capitalized letters 1. Arabic numerals a) Lowercase letters (1) Arabic numerals inside parentheses (a) Lowercase letters inside parentheses Generally, in this type of outline, each category is a single word or a brief phrase describing that particular idea. This format is also sometimes called a topic outline. The decimal outline is quite similar, but it only uses numbers, which gives it the advantage of clearly showing how each category and subcategory are related: 1. Main topic 1.1. Subtopic 1.1.1. Detail 1.2. Subtopic 1.2.1. Detail 1.2.1.1.