Essay Skills

Organizing and Developing Your Essay

A thesis or statement of main idea explains in one concise sentence what the reader can expect to learn from reading the essay. Since the thesis is the most important sentence in an essay, treat it accordingly.

Three elements of the thesis statement are:

• Select a clear description of the restricted subject for this essay. For example, an essay on study skills may be restricted to a college student preparing for a test.

• Connect your subject to the specific ideas you plan to develop in the paragraphs of the essay by an active voice verb. For the example of a college student preparing for a test, the verb "needs" might fulfill this requirement.

• List the information regarding each of the developmental paragraphs you will use in your essay.

For the example of a college student preparing for a test, the three steps shown above might result in the writing of the following thesis statement.