How do native speakers structure their essays?

Question

When analyzing Chinese speeches or essays, I often have difficulty understanding how their the authors organized their ideas.

In North America, for example, a common template for writing an essay is the five-paragraph essay. This organizes the paragraphs and the sentences within each paragraph. Most English-language writing in academia follows a somewhat similar structure to this.

Do Chinese follow any particular structures when planning their speeches or essays? Are there any ancient scholars who heavily influenced this structure?

Answer 1

In university I had to write quite a few essays in Chinese, they follow the same basic structure of introduction, point 1, point 2, point... conculusion.

I have also spent time correcting thesis and academic writing and it's pretty much identical to in the West.

One point about learning to write better in Chinese that my wife taught me; don't get hung up on how to write something properly in Chinese. Thing about exactly what you want to say in your native tongue (English etc.) and then think about how to translate that into Chinese rather than going for the tricky approach of trying to get your point across in Chinese.