Some essays are designed to find out what you’ve learned about a particular aspect of your course. Some are designed to find out what you’ve learned at a particular stage of your course. Others are designed to see how well you understand and can apply key concepts in your subject. Different varieties of essay will require different types of writing and sometimes a single essay will require more than one type of writing. Here’s a guide to some of the most common sorts of writing and ways of organizing essay material. This type of writing makes a detailed examination of something in order to understand its nature and its essential features.

In an english literature essay about thomas hardy’s poetry, it isn’t good enough to say ‘the darkling thrush’ is a powerful poem. You need to say how and why the poem is powerful by looking at its component parts – e.g. Adjectives, images, rhymes – and saying how they work individually and how they work together to achieve particular effects. In a management essay asking you to analyse the relevance of a particular theory to modern organizations, you would need to outline the essential features of the theory and relate them to organizational examples. An obvious place this is used is in history essays but you would also use it in an english literature essay if you need to say briefly what happens in oliver twist or king lear.

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To cite to an example discussed elsewhere in this resource, you would also use it in a psychology essay that asked you to describe the development of scientific paradigms. This type of writing examines two things and the similarities and differences between them. �compare the treatment of love and power in two of the shakespeare plays studied this semester’. Or to use an example closer to home: ‘compare how essay writing skills are taught to new students arriving at universities in the uk and the usa’. This type of writing can involve several of the other types of writing discussed in this section: chronological, descriptive, analytical etc. For example, ‘how are essay writing skills taught to new students arriving at universities?’ this seems like a very straightforward type of writing.

However, you should remember that there may be more than one view or description of a subject and that saying what something is leads inevitably to saying how and why it is i.e. For example: ‘evaluate the effectiveness of how essay writing skills are taught to new students arriving at universities.’ however, in contrast to other sorts of judgement – ‘that meal was fantastic’ or ‘terminator 3 was rubbish’ – you have to say why and back up your judgement with evidence. Evaluative writing can involve several of the other types of writing in this section. For example, you would probably want to compare different ways of teaching essay writing skills and say which worked best. This type of writing gives a brief account of the important features of something.

For example, ‘describe the important features of how essay writing skills are taught to new students arriving at universities.’ you will probably do this sort of writing at least once in every essay you write because university essays are usually designed to assess and test your understanding of a particular topic, writer or concept. Some subjects, such as psychology, will ask students to produce short seminar reports about a particular area of study. You can often spot which type of writing you are being asked to do from the way the essay title is phrased. However, remember that a well written, effective essay will probably use several of these different types of writing. For example, you have to say what something is like – descriptive writing – before you can say whether or not it’s important or valuable – evaluative writing.

How to Write An Essay In Apa Standards

An essay is an opportunity to thoughtfully discuss a topic, however broad or narrow. A descriptive essay may be quite short just three or four paragraphs and in it the student describes the who, what, where, when and why of the topic. This is not a mindless recitation of the facts, however, but an attempt to bring a particular focus or perspective to the topic. A subset is the classification essay, in which things or ideas are separated into categories and each of their characteristics described. In a compare and contrast essay, the student aims to demonstrate that she understands the similarities and differences between two or more things or ideas. Typically, each element is described separately, and then the similarities and differences are explored.

The purpose of this kind of essay is to provide a broader knowledge about the subject. For example, an essay comparing and contrasting the democratic and republican parties might end by drawing conclusions about the nature of politics in the u.s. It differs, however, in that it uses a hypothesis a specific claim or position as its organizing principle. Having researched what scholars say about the topic, the student shows critical thinking by discussing whether the hypothesis is supported or disproved.