How to Write an Essay Example for Different Purposes
Some people read essays with pleasure. Others glance over and do not remember what they have read. The reason is not just in the talent of the author; much depends on what topic you uncover and to whom you write.
There are many categories of essays. For example, there are philosophical, social, historical, religious, and literature essays. According to the method of presentation, they can also be of the following types: descriptive, narrative, analytical, critical, argumentative, definition, compare and contrast, and others.
How to Write an Essay Example: Descriptive Essay
The main task of the descriptive essay is to recreate a certain image in the imagination of the reader. A descriptive essay should create a vivid picture in the mind of the reader.
Usually, students are given one of the following tasks to write about in a descriptive essay:
- description of a picture
- description of a person’s appearance (portrait)
- description of a person’s character (characteristic)
- description of an interior
- description of an area
Writing a descriptive essay is an excellent creative exercise. When writing such a paper, you have a specific reason for this description. Linking to this cause can help you focus your description and fill your essay with emotional weight or a particular point of view.
Example: Imagine that you want to write an essay describing your grandfather. You decide to write about your grandfather’s appearance and how he interacts with people. However, instead of giving a general description of these aspects, you want to express your admiration for the strength of his character and kindness. This is the reason for writing a descriptive essay. To achieve this, you can focus the attention of your readers on the description of the roughness of his hands, caused by labor throughout his life, but you can also describe how he gently holds your hands with his rough hands when talking to you or during a walk. In this way, you are showing that he is very wise and intelligent. He has weathered many hardships of life, but at the same time, knows how to be kind, considerate, and tender.
How to Write an Essay Example: Narrative Essay
A narration is a story about events, incidents, and actions. The expressive power of narration lies primarily in the depiction of events, of phenomena, in a visual representation of the actions taking place in time and space.
The purpose of the narrative essay is to tell a story by developing events and portraying a particular experience that the narrator or protagonist went through. When working on this type of essay, the author must answer the following questions: Who? What was done? Where? When? How?
The main role in the narrative is played by the verb forms, as they provide the unfolding of the narration and clearly represent the alternating actions and flow of events according to a particular point of view. When writing a narrative essay, particular preference should be given to the past tense verbs of the perfect form. But if we are talking not about a particular time, but about repetitive actions, they use imperfectly past tense verbs. Verbs in the form of the future tense reflect a quick change of events, the suddenness of an action. To show the sequence of actions, such words as “first,” “then,” “again,” “more,” and “already” are commonly used.
The narration can be conducted in the first person (in it, the narrator is named or indicated by the pronoun “I” (or “we”), or in the third person, which is the so-called author’s narration (the narrator is not a character in the story).
A narrative essay plan
- Introduction (place and time of action).
- First body paragraph (the beginning of the action and its development).
- Second body paragraph (the culmination of the action – the most intense moment of the plot).
- Third body paragraph (denouement).
- Conclusion.
How to Write an Essay Example: Argumentative Essay
An argumentative essay sets forth thoughts in accordance with logic, supported by evidence, and connected through a chain of arguments which develop into convincing conclusions.
An argumentative essay reveals and describes the causes and the relationship of any phenomena. In the beginning, as a rule, the thesis statement is placed, the truth of which must be proved with the help of strong and convincing arguments. An essay can be based both on reasoned statements (proving the presented thesis) and on reasoned refutations (disproving the presented position). The writer is given the opportunity to use not only direct facts, but also evidence from the opposite views. Building the evidence, the author of the essay can rely on personal experience, newspaper and magazine publications, films, and examples from life and literature.
Argumentative essay plan
- Introduction with thesis statement.
- Main body, consisting of arguments, evidence, explanations, rationale, examples, cases, facts, numbers, opinions of authoritative people, statements, and quotes.
- Conclusion.
An introduction to the argumentative essay is a presentation of the topic. It can be formulated as a question or contain a quote. The proposed thesis statement will be the starting point for subsequent reasoning, and the majority of the essay will consist of arguments for at least two-thirds of the entire text. It is believed that the optimal number of arguments for an argumentative essay is three.
Arguments may be:
- historical facts
- statistical data
- episodes, story lines of literary works, a confirmation of a proven idea
- proverbs, sayings, aphorisms
- opinions of authoritative people
The last argument should be, in your opinion, the most convincing.
How to Write an Essay Example: Compare and Contrast Essay
In order to write an outstanding compare and contrast essay, you need to start with identifying two objects that have enough common features and differences to build a meaningful comparison. An example would be two teams or two government systems. Then, you need to find at least two or three points by which you can compare them using research, facts, and well-formed paragraphs. This will help to impress and captivate your readers. Writing a compare and contrast essay is an important skill that will continue to be useful to you in your academic career.
Steps
- Carefully analyze the issue. You may have great ideas for writing in your head, but if they don’t exactly fit the given topic, you will not get a good grade. Look at the leading questions and underline the key phrases. Keep a list of them in front of you throughout the work. What are the limitations of the topic? What exactly does the teacher want to see in your essay?
- Examine the items being compared. Although it is tempting to delve into the details of the items being compared, it is important to provide no more details than the format of the task requires. Compare several aspects in each of the topics instead of trying to cover both topics entirely.
- Write the essay out of order. Perhaps you were taught to sit down and start writing a paper from beginning to end, but this is not only more difficult, but also, your ideas will be incoherent.
Instead, do this:
– First, write the main part. Work through all the information that you have and see what story it tells you. Only when you process your data will you know which point of your work will be the most voluminous.
– The second stage is the conclusion. Now that you have coped with the most difficult task, the basic idea of your essay is clearly presented to you.
– At the end, write the introduction. In general, this is the reorganization/rephrasing of your conclusion. Be careful not to use the same words and phrases.
Of course, there are even more types of essays. In short, we want to mention them as well.
- Definition essay
A definition essay has one goal – to reveal a particular concept. For this, you can use elements of narration, descriptions, illustrations, and analysis.
- Classification essay
While writing a classification essay, we take the concept, isolate any principle, and create a classification. By doing this, we look at the subject more deeply.
- Cause and effect essay
Cause → effect. This can be built into your essay. You no longer simply bring the facts, but analyze and build them into a logical chain.
As you can see, an essay can have different structures and different goals. The choice in favor of a particular genre or mode of presentation depends on the goals. By acquainting yourself with different methods and genres, you can begin to understand how to write an essay. However, if you can’t write your essay on your own, you can always buy college essay on EssayBulls.com!
