SAT Essay – Four Point Plan For Powerful Body Paragraphs
When answering SAT Essay questions keep the following four points in mind:
1. Write a topic sentence that gives a title to your example and explains what about your example will prove your thesis. For example in one sat essay a student wrote “Atticus Finch’s actions in To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee show that to truly know a person’s convictions we must observe his or her actions.”
The thesis was “To truly know a person’s convictions we must observe his or her actions” and this is reflected in this topic sentence. And yes, it’s OK to repeat your thesis in your topic sentence. The student also explained what in the example supports the thesis by saying that it is Atticus’ actions that proves her point.
2. Give the minimum background information needed to support your argument.
For the second sentence the student wrote, “Atticus, a small town lawyer in a racist, white, southern town, was charged with defending Tom Robinson, a black man accused of raping a white woman.” These details are necessary for the logic given in the third sentence below to make sense.
3. Give the evidence and logic that shows how these details prove your thesis.
The student wrote, “Before Atticus took this task he spoke like a person who believed in fairness and equality, after taking on this task, despite ridicule from the people in his town, it was obvious that he believed in the ideals of which he spoke.” In this sentence the logic is very clear and you can see how the background given in the second sentence was necessary for this logic to work.
4. Conclude your paragraph by explaining how the information in the paragraph proved the thesis. The last sentence of this student’s paragraph was a perfect example of this, “So only after Atticus acted on his beliefs despite difficulty could we know his true convictions.” This four point plan for writing good body paragraphs makes it much easier to organize your ideas on test day and answer the SAT Essay prompts. And practicing this technique with sample SAT Essays prompts will allow you to make this thinking process automatic so you can write with ease on test day.