Making Use of an Essay Outline
An Essay Outline Gives Cohesion and Logical Flow to Your Writing
Writing quality essays is important to students as it contributes to their grades and the overall academic career. Hence, learning how to improve ones writing is always in the minds of students. Among useful tools in effective essay writing, using an essay outline is one of the most important and should not be neglected or avoided by essay writers.
Functions of an outline
Immaterial of whether you are writing an evaluation essay, a design essay or a comparative essay, all essays will benefit from an outline. This is because it lends to the cohesive flow of the essay and let the writer organize the thoughts and ideas in a logical fashion. If your outline is structured in the proper manner it will make the paragraphs flow from one to the other smoothly and not have information scattered in the body of the essay in ad-hoc manner. An outline will also ensure that you do not miss out any important information which you should include in your essay.
How to write an outline
1. The first step to take before drawing up the outline will be for you to select the essay topic. Make sure that the essay scope is appropriate. If you are writing a short essay for instance, you will not be able to handle a broad topic.
2. You should have an idea by now what your essay is regarding and how you are going to approach it. Will it be in analytical form or in argumentative form? Otherwise are you planning to write it as an informative essay? Depending on these decisions, your outline will change.
3. The outline will first break the essay in to three key components. This is the same as your essay structure. It will have an introduction, a body and a conclusion. The thesis statement will be in the introduction of your essay.
4. The body paragraphs of your essay will develop the thesis statement. Each paragraph will address the key points of the essay. For instance, if you were evaluating a treatment method in your health essay, then the body will have about 4-5 paragraphs in which you discuss each parameter of evaluation related to the treatment method. May be you will talk about use of inhaler therapy in treatment of Asthma and Allergic coughs. Then your key evaluation points will be
a. Effectiveness of treatment
b. Ease of therapy application
c. Safety and after effects
d. Cost effectiveness
e. Suitability for long term use
5. The last part of your outline will be your conclusion. It will inform the reader that the essay is complete and all the information has been stated.
Method
Write the topic at the top of your page and number your subtopics by using Roman Numerals. Information that you gathered while researching can be arranged according to your wishes, but make sure it makes sense. The use of “jot-notes” is recommended as this will make it easy for some students. This also is up to the students. If you feel more comfortable using longer notes under your sub topics, you should do so. You can use as many sub topics as you wish to make it manageable for you.
An Essay Outline is one of the most effective tools in writing a good essay that is easy to read and logical in its presentation. Incorporate this element in to your writing process and you will find that essay writing is in fact not as tedious as it seems at first. But if you need additional essay help, Essay-writing-service.co.uk is a site dedicated to helping students in writing their essays and coursework. If you need any help formatting, structuring, writing or proofreading, these professionals are simply a key touch away.