Draft

Academic writing is a required skill for all the university students. As a student majoring in English Literature, I'm supposed to write critiques of novels and short stories in form of essays; therefore I studied the essay structure: the introduction, body paragraphs and the conclusion.

It was obvious for me that the information should be organized. First of all I include the thesis statement in the introduction. To achieve this goal, I focused on what the entire essay is about. I also knew that an introduction requires a statement engaging the reader's attention which is called the hook.The hook must be followed by supporting sentences which are called background information. Background information give a broader picture of the subject to our audience.

The next step for organizing the information is the body paragraphs. Each body paragraph must have a topic sentence. The topic sentence states the contents of each paragraph by controlling our thesis statement. We can have one or two body paragraphs in short essays and three body paragraphs in five paragraph essays.

My last focus was on bringing the essay to a close.This is possible in the conclusion. It is necessary that we restate the thesis of the introduction in other words in our conclusion . We should remember that the conclusion provide new insights or it gives us advices or warnings that the writer has stated.

Academic writing is not just about this three basic parts. It requires coherence and unity as well as the introduction, body paragraphs and the conclusion.