Types of Academic Essays
An essay is, as the name suggests, a literary composition that outlines the author’s argument, but in essay terminology the definition has become a bit vague, and is overlapping with the definition of a newspaper article as well as a novel, book, and even the short story. Essays historically have been classed as formal and academic depending on their intended use. For essays written for a classroom at a university, for example the tone is one of sophistication and intelligence while an article in a pulp magazine tends to be one of fun and whimsy. The challenge of writing essays is in determining a clear theme and then developing this theme sufficiently within the essay to make it easy to read and suitable to a broad range of readers.
One of the most important aspects of an essay is its structure. Each paragraph must be able to support the main idea or thesis and have a well-thought-out conclusion. A well-structured essay will have four major sections: introduction, body to body, conclusion, and conclusion. The introduction is often the most important portion of the essay since it gives the reader the necessary information to start reading. The body of an essay is where you present the thesis or topic of the essay. This is where the writer can draw upon any issues raised throughout the essay and build arguments that are fully developed.
The body of the essay must be a development of the argumentative theme under discussion. This is where a writer can develop both an argument and a story, especially if they are using personal experiences, like in a case study, or research reports, such as in a research essay. The argumentative essay, also referred to as a thesis statement, is the most well-known form of argumentative essays. This is a piece of writing that brings together all the views or perspectives that the writer has and combines them into a single rational perspective. Based on the topic the thesis statement may vary greatly from one author to the next.
The introduction is where the writer begins their essay. The introduction is where the reader first comes across the ideas in the body of the essay. There are a variety of ways to begin an essay. The traditional method for introducing an essay is to briefly talk about the subject. Modern ways to introduce the topic include some sort of discussion between the writer and the reader at the beginning of the essay.
One of the most popular ways to begin an essay is to begin with an analysis of the thesis statement or central argument. The context of the essay is often used to develop the thesis statement. If the essay is concerned with personal experiences, for example an introduction could discuss how the essay came to be written, what the viewpoint of the writer is, and what assumptions he makes and how those assumptions are related to their own personal experiences. In a research essay for instance the thesis could outline an investigation conducted by the writer, and might discuss the factors that influenced the study’s data and the results of the study.
A discussion of the thesis statement is an additional method to start an essay. This can be done within the body of the essay such as in the case of an introduction, or it could be done with the reader’s mind as in the case of a narrative essay. A narrative essay contains, at its core, a story or set of stories. The main subject of the story is the main character. The events of the plot help to develop the perspective of the protagonist throughout the essay. Narrative essays permit the writer to fully develop the primary idea of the essay.
The third kind of how to begin writing an academic research journal paper essay – the expository essay is focused on descriptive essay content. The purpose of an expository essay is to provide new and relevant information about the topic of the essay. If the essay is about Shakespeare and his work, the argument could highlight that Shakespeare wrote to Elizabeth, his wife, when she was in exile in the West Indies. In this way, the writer draws the reader into a detailed sketch of the character, and into the character of the writer that aren’t seen in his literature.
Essays are written to convince readers to convince them with your arguments, and to engage them with your writing. Academic essays are written to get the reader to take a look at what you wrote and draw a conclusion. It is crucial to keep these three aspects in mind when writing your essay, and you will find that your essay will not only be more intriguing, but also more useful to the reader.