What Does It Look Like?

Select the video below to see a presentation which will provide you with a basic outline for developing a process essay.

Video Transcript
Outline for a Five Paragraph Process Essay

In a basic five paragraph process essay, you will follow a traditional structure common to most academic essays. You will have an introduction, plus body paragraphs, plus your conclusion.

In this example outline for a process essay, we will use the topic Process Related to Online Education.

Remember, a good thesis in a traditional essay, even in a process essay, always makes some kind of assertion. A good thesis that might work well within this topic would be: By following the steps outlining how to post to a discussion board in an online course, you will learn a valuable skill all online students must know.

Now we will take a look at how we could outline our introduction using our thesis with the goal of writing a process essay. A good introduction provides background on a topic, transitions to the thesis, and then presents the thesis.

In this example, we would first provide some context by explaining there are certain skills needed for online courses and then transitioning to our specific topic of discussion board posts. We would then briefly explain the benefits of good discussion posts and transition to our thesis.

When writing a process essay, remember to be clear about each step of the process for your audience.

The body paragraphs in a process essay will focus on key steps of the overall process. Here, we will provide directions for preparing a discussion post, reviewing a discussion post, and finally posting a comment to a discussion board.

Think about the background knowledge of your audience when you write a process essay. How much context and explanation should you give?

A good conclusion will generally reinforce information from the body of the essay and remind readers of the thesis. In the outline for our conclusion, we will summarize the value of our essay, emphasizing the benefits of good discussion posts.

We will then briefly summarize the most basic steps and then remind our audience of our thesis.

Remember, you should not repeat the exact words of your thesis in your conclusion, but you should emphasize the main point.

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