Topic Sentences for Essay Questions

Learning to write an essay is like walking in the jungle at night. There is a lot of danger you can fall into. 

The first danger for international students is the essay question. If you don’t answer correctly, you’ll get two red letters on your essay: Off Topic. If you’re lucky, you’ll be allowed to try again. However, at universities in Canada – and in high school writing tests – you fail!

Here is the secret to avoid this danger:

Take time to understand the question

Think of an appropriate answer

Use keywords from the question to write a topic sentence

For instance, if asked: What serious challenge faces humankind today?, you need to find one challenge and use keywords from the question. For instance: Climate change is a serious challenge facing humankind today. This becomes your topic sentence – the most important sentence in your essay. 

If the question changes to: What serious challenges face humankind in the 21st century?, you’ll need more than one challenge. However, you can’t just write all the challenges in the topic sentence or it will become too long and unclear. Instead, you need to generalize your ideas and capture them in one sentence, for instance: Many serious challenges face humankind in the 21st century. 

Correctly navigate the essay question, and you’ll travel safely through the essay jungle.

If you are interested in learning how to write an essay in English, give me a shout!