自大學開始，不管是留在國內念大學，或是出國留學深造，大家多少都會開始接觸到英文essay的難題，究竟essay該怎麼寫呢？
對於撰寫一篇essay來說，結構(structure)是非常重要的！
掌握paragraph的技巧後（詳情請見前一篇），就可以來瞭解如何將paragraphs組合成essay囉～
✍Introduction Paragraph
在introduction的部分，我們應該先簡單介紹文章主題(topic)與背景(general background)。Introduction就像是我們與讀者破冰的過程，應盡可能引起讀者的興趣，讓他們有動力往下閱讀我們的作品。開頭的方式有以下幾種：
- Begin with a quotation 引用名言佳句
Ex. "Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul" (11). These opening lines of Lolita reveal the essence of Humbert’s complexity and compulsion, his saving grace and his damning passion.
- Begin with a scenario 以情境開頭
- Begin with an interesting fact or statistic 以有趣的知識或數據開頭
Ex. Joseph Conrad and Vladimir Nabokov — two acknowledged masters of English prose — were not even native speakers of English. Conrad’s native tongue was Polish; Nabokov’s, Russian.
- Begin with a question or a few questions以問句開頭
Ex. Have you ever wondered how much food a person consumes over the course of one year?
- Begin with a definition that is important to your essay 定義重要的名詞
Ex. Every few years the ugly charge of "pornography" is aimed at some novel or movie. Never was the term more inappropriately used than in the case of Lolita, yet the taint of that word still lingers in the minds of many when they hear the book’s title. What exactly is "pornography" that it should stir such feelings and be so hated? The problem, of course, is that no one can agree on what pornography actually is. That it has something to do with sex seems clear; beyond that, there is a chaos of opinion. When the small-minded or special-interest definitions are pushed aside, however, we are left with D.H. Lawrence’s provocative definition: pornography is anything that "does dirt on sex." By that definition, Lolita is the opposite of pornography — it is a celebration of sex and love.
- Begin with an analogy 比喻開頭
Ex. Like a hurricane that brings fear and panic along with its powerful winds, uprooting trees and disrupting belief in an all-merciful God, so the novel Lolita swept across America in the 1950s, bringing fear and panic that pedophilia would be loosed on the land. Instead, the novel, like a hurricane, blew over trees of thought that were not deeply rooted in American experience, exposing their gnarled premises while helping to clear the way for the artistic freedom of the 1960s.
在介紹完主題與背景資訊後，在introduction paragraph後半引出「thesis statement」。thesis statement 是整個文章的總論點，是整個文章要探討的精髓。
✍Main Body Paragraphs
Main Body Paragraphs應視您的thesis statement來分段，thesis statement每有一個重點，就可分成一段，例如：若thesis statement為the pros and cons of death penalty，那麼可以將段落分為pros一段，cons一段。
Body Paragraphs段落的結構可以參考先前提過的paragraph structure。
每一段落的結構為topic sentence、supporting details (evidence/statistics/discussion)、concluding sentence。
✍Conclusion
Conclusion 部分應該對於整篇essay內容做一個總結，並呼應introduction paragraph，試著用不同的語言來複數並整理資訊。結尾可以試著引起讀者針對這個topic做一些深入思考與研究。
✍Appendix/ Reference/ Bibliography
Appendix 即附件，若您有些資料不方便放在正文內，則可放入附件。
Reference 即參考資料，您在文中所有引用的文獻資料，都需要在Reference處清楚列出，並依照學校的要求格式(ex. MLA、APA)。
Bibliography 亦是參考資料，文中沒有直接引用，但卻對你的文章有所幫助的文獻，應該列於此。