A lot of students in the past have asked me how to structure HSC
® Exam English essays. This could mean anything from how many paragraphs to write, to how to balance textual analysis with evaluation, to basically how to just write the essay. Here, I will be debunking one of the most common misconceptions students may have about HSC
® Exam essays that can get in the way of great writing; your number of paragraphs.
There is no set amount of paragraphs you should be writing for a HSC
® Exam English essay. A lot of students think that there’s a golden number of paragraphs that you should have in order to get the highest marks – this simply isn’t true. Unless your teacher has specifically asked for a certain number of paragraphs; in which case this is just their personal preference; you have free reign.
This being said, every essay needs an introduction and conclusion paragraph. What really tends to be the hurdle is the mysterious, elusive world of the body paragraphs. There are tonnes of ways you can structure your body paragraphs; you could go by theme, you could alternate texts within that theme, you could even do one text at a time. Here are the most common structures in English essays.
- Intro, Text 1, Text 2, Text 1, Text 2, Conclusion.
- Intro, Text 1, Text 2, Conclusion.
- Intro, Theme A Text 1, Theme A Text 2, Conclusion.
- Intro, Theme A Character A, Theme A Character B, Theme A Character C, Conclusion.
- Intro, Text 1 Character A, Text 2 Character A, Text 1 Character B, Text 2 Character B, Conclusion.
As you can see, all these examples vary in their number of body paragraphs, yet all of them have potential to be high scoring essays. What really matters is what you are writing, and whether your writing is clear and consistent. As a general guide, you can almost gauge the number of paragraphs you would need just by reading the essay question. For instance, if they essay question is centred on a specific theme, it might be best to have that themes incorporated into your thesis, and then discuss how that theme shows up in your texts. Or, if you have an essay question about characteristics and values within a text, if might be best to alternate your paragraphs based on text, and character. These are just suggestions, however; the point is, that there is no set number of body paragraphs for you to write. What matters is whether you have written a sophisticated essay, with clear, mature insights.
In saying this, however, you should be mindful of the length of your paragraphs. It’s probably not best to have an introduction, one giant body paragraph, and then conclusion. It makes it difficult for your markers to read, and this in itself isn’t particularly structured. Especially since you will be writing essays that involve more than one text, there needs to be some distinction when you jump from one point to the next. You also don’t want to steer over to far to the opposite side of the spectrum and have too many paragraphs. One sentence is not a paragraph. If you end up having 17 body paragraphs, you might want to revisit your work and do some editing. You want to be getting a point across in each essay, thoroughly, but with brevity. It’s a fine balance to achieve, but once you are confident in this, you’re on your way to writing great, well – structured English essays.
