The first thing that comes to mind whenever you intend to start your essay is “What is the topic of the essay?” Well, selecting an appropriate topic goes a long way in defining the scope and relevance of the essay. It must be done according to University instructions or guidelines.
Remember a few things while selecting the topic. They are:
The beginning of an essay is often the most crucial as it provides direction to the idea and establishes the writer’s authority on the topic. It removes the gap and apprises the readers of the background of the topic and provides a roadmap of the literary piece.
HOW TO START AN ESSAY: THE HOOK OR AN INTRODUCTORY LINE
Even before you set the context or background for essay, you have to start the essay with a hook or a grabbing opening line. Here are some engaging hooks that you can use to begin your essay:
Ex: Did you know that the amount of money loaned out to students in the US for education is more than 1 trillion USD?
Or, something like this:
It has been proven that 70% of crime inmates in the US can’t read, leave alone write.
Ex: How many billionaires are there who didn’t receive any college education?
Ex: Last summer, almost 300 students couldn’t take admission in their desired colleges owing to high tuition fees.
Ex: He was crying. Half of his money went into paying the bills. So even after getting good grades, he missed the Ivy league. That was what happened to one of my friends from high school.
In this approach, you are piquing the readers’ interest and then suddenly bringing the central issue of essay in focus.
Ex: An investment in knowledge pays the best interest- Benjamin Franklin
HOW TO START AN ESSAY: THE CONTEXT OF THE ESSAY
Creating the background or context for your essay is the most important thing that should be done after the introductory line. Consider the W's while creating the setting for your essay. The W’s are:
What involves the purpose of the essay or the issue that you want to address. For a topic like “College Education should be free for everyone”, you need to explain the current state of education, the cost of educationfor college students in specific, etc. Here you also need to outline what scope of the topic you will be addressing.
You need to define your audience clearly in this portion of the essay. While establishing the essay’s context, you are limiting its audience and the topic’s scope of discussion. You need to create the context for your specific audience according to your levels of study. In the above topic, if you are dealing with the cost of education for graduate students, you should be establishing context for the same by weeding out the information for school goers.
So, your essay introduction may start like:
Over the years, college education has seen x% rise in tuition fees. Combined with boarding facilities, the cost has jumped to y%….
You also need to explain why you have chosen the topic and why it seemed more meaningful and relevant to you as compared to the other issues. Add a few justifying lines in the introduction to address the Why of the essay topic.
For example, you can write:
Employment opportunities, opportunities for research, and creating future work skilled workforce for the economy, all depends upon education. Hence, making education free for everyone would be the rightmost step for any society which aims to touch skies.
Now, it is vital to establish the time context of your topic.You may be discussing education scenario a few years ago or a few decades ago comparing it with present state. Or why making college education free is more valid in current times than previously. Your readers are fully entitled to know the concurrency of your studies.
You need to briefly describe the place that serves as the setting for your essay. As college education cannot be made free all over the world, you need to describe the issue’s place of occurrence.
Ex: The cost of affording college education in the US has quadrupled in the past 20 years.
So, these 5 W’s provide an effective framework for creating the context or background and letting you know how to start an essay.The context can be either historical, geographical, social etc.
A good introduction will narrow down the topic, eliminate other approaches and focus it on the central issue. It is just like securing the perimeter of your property, bringing in bricks, mortar and creating the architectural framework with steel and rods, before you raise the building in the body paragraphs.
HOW TO WRITE A THESIS STATEMENT?
To narrow down an essay and focus the readers on what itintends to discuss, we use a thesis statement at the end of the introductory paragraph. It provides an orientation to your readers so that they do not get lost in the discussion and can’t understand which way they are moving.
The thesis statement should be of one or two sentencesand must sumup the focus and the central argument.
Endnote:
While starting an essay, you first need to search for an apt topic and introduce the topic briefly with the help of the 5W framework to establish context or background for discussion on the topic. You also must outline the key ideas to ensure that the readers’ focus is on the essay statement, question or issue in the topic. This is what has to be done in the introduction of the essay. After knowing the fundamental rules of how to start an essay, framing essays would be easier