How to Make Your Essay Catchy and Interesting.



Have you ever wondered why students fail English language? The reason is very simple. It is as a result of their boring essays, spiced with wrong grammar and sentence structure.

The essay section of the different examination bodies in Nigeria (WAEC, NECO and NABTEB) carries the highest mark (50 marks). However, it is very difficult to see a candidate score 25 out of the 50 marks awarded to the question. I am not threatening you. It is a fact. I have marked WAEC and NECO twice, and the highest score I recorded was 24. It is very rare, if not impossible, to see candidates score 25 and above. This is really a problem, and I think there is something the English teachers out there are not telling their students. Consequently, I will be teaching you how you can write a very good, catchy and interesting essay.

Every essay consists of four main elements:

1. The title
2. The introduction
3. The body
4. Concluding paragraph/conclusion.

The title

This is the first thing your reader looks at. What are you actually writing on. Every good essay should have a title. e.g., The Effects of Air Pollution on the Masses. Do not underline if the title is written in capital letters.

The introduction/introductory paragraph

The introductory paragraph introduces your topic. It is an important element of any essay as it serves as the pilar of your essay. It determines whether your reader will continue or quit reading your essay. Therefore, your introduction must be catchy and captivating. A catchy introduction piques the interest of your reader or the examiner and hypnotizes him/her with the feeling of reading your essay to the end.

Unfortunately, this is where most persons get it wrong. Most persons skip this part to the body of the essay. My dear, it is very important you introduce the topic you are writing on, and it should be captivating and interesting.

Let's assume I am writing on the topic, "My Most Memorable Day." This is a narrative essay, and I will only make it boring if I fail to give it a captivating and interesting introduction. Therefore, my introduction could be something like this:

Life they say is not a bed of roses as it is spiced with sadness and baked with happiness, thereby creating a balance in the journey through life. The truth is that the sweet experiences will always gladden the heart whereas the bad experiences will wrinkle the face like the skin of an old woman who has lived for one hundred decades. For me, my most memorable day was a day characterized with extraordinary happiness that even caused the leaves in the forest to wave in unison.

The above introduction is interesting and catchy and it will make your reader really want to know what made the leaves in the forest to wave in unison.

What really makes the introduction catchy is the use of figures of speech/figurative language. Can you state the figures of speech in that introduction? Smiles. I leave that to you, but try making your introduction catchy and interesting. One way you can achieve this is through the use of figures of speech.

The Body

After the introductory paragraph comes the body of your essay. This is where you develop the main ideas related to the introduction. It is the lengthiest part and it consists of different paragraphs. A paragraph is a group of related sentences which develops a unit of thought within an essay and is usually set off by indention in the first line. A paragraph could be a single sentence or between eight and ten or more sentences.



The number of paragraphs that constitutes the body of your essay is determined by the number of points you want to explain in the body of your essay. For instance, if you have five points to explain in your essay, you will have to explain these five points in five different paragraphs. This is because a paragraph explains a single thought, which is the topic sentence. The topic sentence usually states the major idea of the paragraph and it can occur anywhere - at the beginning, middle or end. Every other sentence in a paragraph explains the topic sentence.

Please, do not explain different thoughts in a paragraph. For instance, if you are discussing "unwanted pregnancy" in a paragraph as one of the problems of premarital sex, do not discuss "untimely death" (which is another problem of premarital sex) in the same paragraph. "Untimely death" should be explained in a new paragraph.

The Conclusion 

This is the end of your essay. It concludes the main points in the body of the essay. Your essay should always have a conclusion. If there must be an introduction, there must also be a conclusion.

Some of the transitional markers used to show that you are concluding are: "in conclusion", " in sum", "from the aforementioned", "from the foregoing" etc.

If you take the aforementioned points into consideration while writing your essay, you will produce a wonderful essay.

READ A SAMPLE ESSAY HERE

Tamuno Reuben

Those who seek knowledge seek power because the pen is mightier than the sword.

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