Writing an essay is one of the most common college assignment because it can show your comprehension of a certain topic as well as your ability to express yourself clearly and coherently. However, before you learn how to develop top-notch writing skills, you need to be familiar with the main types of essays that exist out there. Here are six basic essay types every student needs to know.
Narrative Essay
This is the type of an essay that doesn’t require much analysis but still prompts you to describe an event or a story eloquently. The trick to a successful narrative essay lies in logical chronology. When planning your essay, write down all things you want to include and put them in the right order to give the reader a chance to follow the narrative. At the end, don’t forget that even a narrative essay needs to have practical value and you must mention the significance of the described story.
Expository Essay
This kind of writing is usually short and straight to the point. You can encounter it during tests so you don’t have much time to form complex ideas, you just need to analyzed given concepts. One of the approaches you might use is stating the importance of the certain thing in its field of usage. You might enumerate pros and cons of the product and mention its role in the society.
Descriptive Essay
Descriptive essays are among the student favorites because they don’t require much analysis or imagination, you just need to describe people, events or objects in a clear way. When it comes to descriptions, adjectives are your main weapon so make sure you have a good dictionary and thesaurus for synonyms. Also, don’t forget to describe things in terms of different senses, like smell, touch, sight etc.
Argumentative essays
Also known as persuasive essays, this type of assignment is the pinnacle of short academic writing. Unlike expository essays, argumentative essays require a thorough research and dedication. You first need to describe your topic in general and then introduce controversial points of view in the thesis statement. In the body part you need to support your points with logical arguments and at the same time dispel the ideas you disagree with.
Classification Essay
This essay usually describes different concepts that in the end can be categorized in one group. For example, you need to write about different war strategies, which eventually can still be united by the title warfare. When writing such essay, make sure you mention the general term in the thesis and then deliberate about specific ones in the body paragraphs.
Compare and Contrast Essay
As it’s obvious from the name, in these assignments you need to compare two different concepts and highlight their differences or similarities. These essays are usually fan to work on because you can incorporate mind maps and make lists. Just make sure in the thesis you mention what you want to focus on, differences or similarities.
We hope this list gave you a clear idea about types of essays and prepared you to work on them all.