At some point, almost everyone will be required to write a five paragraph essay for school. They are often required in standardized tests when students have to respond to a writing prompt or question. Five paragraph essays can be very useful as they help to construct a complete response that clearly brings across your point. The essay includes an introduction, three main body paragraphs, and a conclusion. Even though writing a five paragraph essay might seem challenging at first, if you know how to structure the essay properly, it will not be a problem. The next few paragraphs will explain how to write a good five paragraph essay, and give an example paragraph for each part.

 

     1. Introduction paragraph

The introduction is extremely important, because it provides the basis for the rest of the essay, sets the tone and tries to grab the reader's attention. If the introduction is not written well, the reader will not want to read the rest of the essay. The paragraph should start with a general discussion of your topic and mention a few interesting facts that act as an attention grabber. Afterward, you have to make a main claim, or thesis statement, which will be the main point that you will try to support throughout the rest of the essay. The last thing that your introduction paragraph needs to include is a brief statement of each of the three main points that will be made in the body paragraphs. Below is an example of how you could write an introductory paragraph if your essay question is: To what extent do prejudice and discrimination have negative consequences?

 

Almost everyone is prejudiced to some degree. Even though many people might not want to admit it, this is inevitably true. Lots of people are also prejudiced without being aware of it themselves. It is important that we realize this prejudice, because the effects can have a large influence over the people who are being faced with it.Prejudice and discrimination has lots of negative consequences and can negatively influence the lives of those affected by it to a large extent. Even though there are many more, some of the most important consequences of discrimination include poor performances, mental health problems as well as physical health problems, and these aspects will be discussed in the course of this essay.

 

     2. Main body paragraphs

The body paragraphs are supposed to prove the point that you made in the introduction and they provide details such as facts, quotes, examples and concrete statistics to support your claim. Each body paragraph will focus on one specific idea which is expressed through the topic because this is the clearest way to order your information. First, each body paragraph will start off by stating the topic sentence which is similar to a mini-thesis statement. Then, you should include details and specific examples in order to make your arguments clearer and more convincing. Every body paragraph should finish off by shortly summarizing the claim made in the paragraph. An example of a good body paragraph addressing the poor performances that are caused by discrimination could look like this:

 

One of the biggest negative effects that discrimination has on its victims, is that those who are faced with discrimination tend to live up to these stereotypes, which often leads to poor performance. These poor performances can be explained through a concept called “stereotype threat”. Stereotype threat describes the occurrence that when a person from a minority group is reminded of a stereotype of this group, they are more likely to underperform. A study which proves the stereotype threat was conducted by Claude Steele and Joshua Aronson in 1995. In the study, they observed the performance of black and white students on academic tests. The study confirmed their hypothesis of the stereotype threat, as it turned out that when the test instructors emphasized the role of race before the test, the black students performed worse than the white students. In opposition, when the instructors did not emphasize race before the test, black and white students scored equally well. Sometimes, stereotype threat is so strong that minorities do not even need to be reminded of a stereotype. Simply drawing attention to group membership (by asking them to check a box regarding race or gender for example) can trigger stereotype threat. Poor performances are only one of the consequence of prejudice and discrimination that can negatively affect the opportunities that people faced with discrimination have.

 

     3. Conclusion paragraph

Finally, the conclusion should basically summarize the whole essay and wrap everything up properly. It should start with a restatement of the main point, but be careful to not copy the thesis word for word, simply paraphrase it. Also restate some of the more important specific points made in your body paragraphs, along with a few sentences explaining the significance of the topic. The final sentence is supposed to uphold the main idea and be clear and compelling, possibly including a call for action or leaving the reader with something to think about. Also be careful to not present any new information in the conclusion.

The numerous effects that victims of discrimination have to face can negatively affect them to a large extent and in many different ways. The negative consequences of poor performances, mental health problems, and physical health problems which were discussed in this essay are not the only negative consequences of discrimination, which makes the problem even worse. As discrimination is unfortunately so prevalent in our society, and the consequences can negatively affect the lives of the victims to such a large extent, it is obvious that we have to do something about the problem. As a start, we should try to be honest and reflect on how we are prejudiced ourselves so that we can avoid this thinking in the future, and all help to make the world a slightly better place.