Various Types of Essays to Choose from: Your Mini-Guide
Essay writing is the most frequent high school and college assignment that allows evaluating student’s skills, knowledge of the particular subject, and valuable life experiences. This task is an integral part of any course, and failing it means reducing your overall GPA.
The fact that several different types of academic essays exist makes it more complicated and confusing to complete this assignment. We recommend reading this short post about the basic types of papers to understand the nature and purposes of each.
4 Different Types of Essays to Focus On
There are four main kinds of essays, and the rest of them are subcategories. You should select the proper format to respond to the prompt properly. For instance, if you have to prove something to your audience, an informative essay won’t work. A persuasive one is the type of paper written to convince the readers. Thus, take a look at the major essay types explaining what each of them serves for.
- Narrative essay
This type of academic writing refers to telling a story. It is the most widespread type of writing as world-known authors choose it to share their stories. The main idea is to retell an episode from real life in an engaging, exciting manner. Students should write about themselves. The main goal is to make your story vivid. It is the only essay except for the application paper that should be written in the first person. You can make it a reflective paper.
- Descriptive essay
This type of paper should offer as many details as possible, so such parts of speech as adjectives and adverbs are the main tools of a writer. You should be able to paint a specific picture in words. Use words instead of colors and other visual elements. It is up to you whether to describe a person, event, object, etc. Through the detailed description, it is possible to communicate a deeper message to the audience. A simple thing like a table can become something more if you explain what role it played when you were a little child.
- Expository essay
A balanced analysis of the chosen topic is the heart of any expository essay. The purpose is to provide useful information on some issue that might be unknown to the reader. You should not involve only general knowledge – use credible sources of information to offer something more. A writer must operate with facts, statistics, and examples to make the topic as clear as possible. You may choose to write a compare and contrast essay where you find differences and similarities between some objects, people, or events. Another option is a cause and effect essay created to provide reasons for something to happen and possible or real consequences. You may also list preventive measures in such type of essay. Finally, you can pick one of the analytical papers like process analysis. It should look like a “how-to guide” so that the readers will be able to repeat an experiment and get the desired outcomes by following your instructions.
- Persuasive essay
A persuasive paper is something more than an argumentative one. You should first state your position regarding the specific problem like you do in argumentative writing, but the primary objective is to convince the audience in the truth of your idea. You should prove that your point of view is the only correct in a particular situation. However, you should still offer the opposing points of view to make your writing sound objective and persuasive.
How about Other Types of Essay Formats?
We have not recalled some other subcategories of academic writing. Some of the youngest students may face writing a definition essay. This one should interpret the specific term using the official definitions from the dictionaries as well as writer’s best guess and examples from real life.
In a synthesis paper, a student should pick a piece of text and provide an in-depth analysis of it based on personal impression and additional materials.
There is also a problem-solution essay. In such type of writing, a student should offer the specific issue that requires immediate solutions. By the end of the text, he or she should offer the ways out as well as some forecasts for the future.
An extended essay is an integral part of the IB diploma. Students who wish to pass IB tests successfully should learn how to write lengthy papers with detailed research and explanation of the problem.
Many other types of academic essays exist. They can be based on the subject that you study (for example, nursing or psychology essay) or specific topic (e.g., “Animal Farm” essay). You should keep in mind one thing: these tasks are all equally important for your development, so try to catch up with all of them! If it seems impossible or overwhelming, you can always count on the professional writing help from our experts, and buy original essays online without any efforts. We have already assisted hundreds of other students and surely can help you out!