Essay map definition

A clearly written thesis statement and essay map provide a skeletal outline for the sequence of paragraphs. The Campus Bookstore is a bad place to buy texts for three reasons. The reasons are high prices, unqualified employees, and book shortages.

The essay map, basically an outline, helps focus what you are writing about and develops the piece from beginning to end. The map consists of the introduction, supporting statements (or arguments) to the introduction, then the conclusion that ties it all together.

Create a new mind map for each source (book, article, essay) you read and take notes in this mind map while you work through the text. Alternatively, you can use one single map where you list all your sources and create branches for every page/paragraph/quote you want to use in your paper.

Here’s another example of a research map. This is the map we used to take notes while reading Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, the subject of our paper. As you can see, we created branches for each of the text passages we wanted to analyze in the essay.