What is paragraph structure?
Alongside making a structure for the overall essay, it can be useful to use a structure for individual paragraphs. The PEECL structure is a structure that can help you to demonstrate the skills needed to hit marking criteria including critical analysis, showing understanding and wider reading. Unlike structure for a whole assignment, the PEECL structure should be repeated for each paragraph.
What is the PEECL structure?
Point
The first part of the paragraph is your point. Here you explicitly explain in one or two sentences what the paragraph will find. The rest of the paragraph will be used to justify this point.
To create flow you should use the key words from the introduction and the essay question as this links the paragraph to the rest of the essay.
Evidence
After stating your point, you should add evidence to support the point. This evidence is usually from an academic source or data. Use this evidence to justify your point.
After adding evidence in, the next step is explaining how that evidence justifies your point. This part is crucial, it may seem, on face value, that the evidence speaks for itself however, you should ensure that you say quite clearly, how that evidence backs up the point you have made.
Criticise
The next step is where you add critical analysis to your work. At this point you ask questions of your evidence and can make counter arguments against it. You can back your evidence up with further evidence, or can contrast it with other evidence and lines of thinking. This is a good opportunity to apply theories and principles to your argument.
To find out more information about how to add critical analysis to your work, see our critical analysis skills guide
Link
Finally, you should link back your point to the overall question, stating explicitly how this paragraph has answered or impacted the overall essay question. This acts as a micro conclusion for the paragraph. You can also use this final sentence to link to the next paragraph. This helps to create flow within your argument.
Further resources
See the resources section of this guide for more information on structuring your essay, including useful books, a link to online skills eBooks and a video explaining PEECL with an applied example of the structure.
This structure focuses on individual paragraphs, for information about how to structure your overall essay, see the essay structure guide.