How do I structure a paragraph for an exam essay?

The ability to structure paragraphs is a quality that many students worry they do not possess. Fortunately, this is an easy and effective skill to master: once you crack the formula, your essays will appear clearer, more logical and of a higher quality!

In your GCSE English exam, a paragraph should contain a single idea. Once this idea is clear in your mind, it can be broken down into three constituent parts. Firstly, point - this is perhaps the most important part of your paragraph. Begin with one or two sentences explaining to the reader what your argument or observation is. Writing your point clearly and at the beginning of the paragraph gives focus and provides a framework for your argument. Secondly, evidence - the part of your paragraph in which your argument is backed up by a quotation from the text you're talking about (this can be either primary, ie. from the novel, poem or play, or from a secondary, critical source). Thirdly and finally, explanation - this is probably going to be the longest part of the paragraph. Your explanation will consist of a few sentences that analyse parts of the quotation you have used to explain your initial point. In this section, it is sometimes useful to bring in some contextual information. So there you have it, three easy steps:

Point
Evidence
Explanation

Here's an example paragraph to give you an idea of the formula in practice:

(P) In Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway (1925), marriage is presented as a loss of identity. (E) As she walks through London, we are told how Clarissa 'had the oddest sense of being herself invisible; unseen; unknown...this being Mrs. Dalloway; not even Clarissa any more; this being Mrs Richard Dalloway'. (E) In this section, the tricolon of adjectives 'invisible; unseen; unknown' reiterates the sense of meaninglessness in Clarissa's life. Her sense of invisibility is heightened by her setting in the middle of Bond Street: the size of the city crowd diminishes here own individual identity. However, it is her marriage that most greatly affects her sense of individuality. Twice she is stated as 'Mrs Dalloway', framing Clarissa as the possession of her husband, a fact emphasised by her assumption of his first name, Richard. Clarissa's realisation of her own loss of identity through the title 'Mrs Dalloway' asks the reader to question the institution of marriage and throws the very title of the novel into a sense of ironic doubt.