If you’re taking an English exam such as IELTS, TOEFL or the Trinity or Cambridge exams, writing an English exam essay is an essential skill. The structure of that is very important. Here David Heath offers some advice on the main body of the essay.
In some languages (e.g. Italian), essays are written in a somewhat freeform manner – the inclusion of paragraphs is optional and there is subjective interpretation as to how to structure your writing. The situation is notably different in English-language essays, where both macro-level and micro-level structure is essential and, furthermore, the structure should be objectively recognisable.
Writing an essay is a compulsory task in most English-language exams (e.g. IELTS, Trinity, Cambridge) and so it is in a student’s interest to be confident about essay writing. In this blog post, I will explore the classic PEEL structure of an essay’s main body paragraph. (How to structure an introduction and conclusion will be covered in my next blog post.)
The Question
This is a typical essay question that might appear in the Cambridge C1 ‘Advanced’ exam:
Write an essay on how to promote greater contact among neighbours.
Here is one of the main-body paragraphs a student has written in response to this essay question:
‘One possible solution is publishing a monthly neighbourhood newsletter. If this solution were approved, articles, notices, messages and advertisements could be written by local residents as a way to reach out to one another. Such a newsletter could help inform local people about what their neighbours are doing and what they think about various topics; this could help improve community cohesion. The drawback, however, is that not everyone is confident about writing something for publication; so, the number of people involved in such a project could be limited. This first solution therefore has both pros and cons.’
Structure of the essay body
Let’s analyse this paragraph, sentence by sentence, using the PEEL structure:
‘One possible solution is publishing a monthly neighbourhood newsletter.’ The student presents the main point of the paragraph. This is called the topic sentence. (P)
‘If this solution were approved, articles, notices, messages and advertisements could be written by local residents as a way to reach out to one another.’ The student elaborates by explaining with examples how the idea would work. The student has provided some evidence for their point. (E)
‘Such a newsletter could help inform local people about what their neighbours are doing and what they think about various topics; this could help improve community cohesion. The drawback, however, is that not everyone is confident about writing something for publication; so, the number of people involved in such a project could be limited.’ The student makes a positive evaluation of the idea, followed by a negative evaluation. (E)
‘This first solution therefore has both pros and cons.’ The student finishes the paragraph with a linking sentence back to the main point of the topic sentence. (L)
By using the PEEL structure, the student has remembered to include the key ingredients of an essay main-body paragraph and organised them in a clear way. The examiner grading this student’s writing would be impressed.
To learn more about the PEEL structure and how to use it in your own writing, contact David to book a lesson.
