Learning how an essay should be structured can sometimes be extremely challenging if you are in the habit of writing informal and semi-structured essays. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that you can’t write the essay at all. The truth is that the only thing that you really need in a structured essay is organisation and management. The main idea behind a structured essay is that the thoughts and ideas need to be connected with each other and not thrown together haphazardly.

Before I begin giving you some simple and easy to follow tips on how to structure your essay, the best thing you can do first is to gather your material and make sure to take notes when you are reading so that you can be sure that everything goes smoothly.

• 1. The first step doesn’t necessarily start from paper but instead from your thoughts. What I mean by this is that you need to decide what message you want to convey in your essay and what you want to say. Remember that doing this is extremely crucial as it will help you from being confused when you finally sit down to write the paper.

• 2. Next, once you have that with you, you need to manage accordingly. Make a semi outline which simply consists of the headings like “starting paragraph or intro”, “body” and “conclusion” etc. Remember that even though the introduction and conclusion are short segments or sections of the essay, you need to add sub headings to the body as this is the area which includes most of the points.

• 3. Now it is time for you to include the information that you have gathered into the half outline that you have made. A major mistake that causes the students to lose their time and energy is when they start concentrating on full sentences as opposed to points in their outlines. Keep in mind that the outline is only meant as a reminder and so you don’t have to make full sentences.

• 4. When you have finally completed the outline, it is time for you to start writing. By the time you start doing this you will notice that writing a structured essay was not all that difficult. As mentioned, the outline is going to help you with the points and you can start expanding and connecting them just as soon as you start to write.