Different Types of Essays with Examples - Ultimate Guide To Master Essay Writing

Admission/Application Essay

Among all types of essays, you should treat common application essay as the most important paper ever written in your life. The more samples you study, the easier it will be to write your own admission essay. Since it influences your future college entrance and the choice of your major subject, you have to know all the details beforehand. So, here are a few steps to create a perfect admission essay.

• Study examples of common application essays.
• Gather prompts from the colleges you apply.
• Make a draft to each prompt.
• Do not just try to rewrite examples of college admission essays.
• Make it personal, about yourself.
• Relate to some experience or event in your life that influenced your decision to get a degree.
• Allocate as much time to write a rough draft and study more college admission essay examples.

Scholarship Essay

Imagine that only a few paragraphs of right words can provide you with a grant you’ve craved in your mind for almost a year. There’s no more impactful and life-changing paper as a scholarship essay. As well as an admission essay, it must be about you. Hence, you should first begin with examining scholarship essay examples. Then you’d better make these steps to deliver a scholarship committee an eye-catching essay. Your paper can be winning only if retains in the officer’s memory after a hundred of similar works. Achieve it with the following steps:

• Brainstorm ideas to match the topic of a scholarship essay. Try to define the main purpose of an award. This helps find and interesting aspect of your life that matches the particular scholarship committee’s requirements.
• Write a list of your accomplishments. Do not limit with academic achievements only. Consider all the skills you’ve acquired since your early childhood. Also, include your strengths and weaknesses, any obstacles that have helped you to learn something, become stronger or wiser.
• Organize all your ideas and thoughts into a rough draft of an outline.
• Divide your essay into 3 parts: an introduction with a strong thesis statement, the main body with logically tied arguments and a conclusion with an accurate summary.
• Build your essays on stories, anecdotes or any specific examples that personalize your essay. Check out as many examples of scholarship essays to submit the most impressive piece of writing.

Argumentative Essay

The argument essay is a type of writing that requires you to express your opinion on a particular topic. The topic often has a form of a controversial statement, and your task is to write whether you agree with it or you don’t. The work must meet the following requirements:

• It must be well researched. To figure out all the pros and cons of the suggested topic, you need to collect proper data and facts. The more facts you engage to your argumentation, the more convincing it looks.
• It must be well structured. Good examples of argumentative essays often follow the 5-paragraph-scheme:
  • - the first paragraph introduces the context of the topic and states your opinion;
  • - three next paragraphs present reasonable arguments to defend your position;
  • - the last paragraph concludes your arguments and restates your point of view in a light of the considered arguments.

This structure is not the only option for writing your paper, but to have a structure as such is obligatory.

• Your paper must be convincing. Some writing coaches suggest supporting not your own opinion, but the position that is easier to defend. It means that your priority is to give a strong argumentation no matter which of the views it advocates. Along with the facts, a good life example will add points to your essay.

Persuasive Essay

A persuasive essay is quite similar to argumentative type, but it doesn’t require a mass of facts and evidence. In this essay, you appeal rather to emotions than to the rational thinking. Your goal here is to convince the reader of your simple and clear idea.

The topics of a persuasive essay are usually provocative and simply structured. For example, you need to persuade the reader to watch your favorite movie or not to use phones while driving.

To write a good example of a persuasive essay you should practice creative writing. Being not so formal as other types of academic papers, a persuasive essay proves your free manner of writing and inventiveness. You can engage personal examples, tell a touching story or even illustrate your opinion with a joke.

You appeal to the reader’s feelings, but you still need to build a logical narrative. As with other kinds of essays, your key to success here is a good structure and proper examples.

Writing of this kind of an essay requires a lot of preparation. Even experienced students often get baffled by the persuasive essay task. An important starting point is reading of good samples. You need to get used to the form of this work and to draw up a comfortable algorithm for it.

Narrative Essay

Usually, students are required to submit a personal narrative essay. It is all about your own experience or an event from your past. It might seem that to tell your own story is simple. However, not every writer can create an emotional impact, refer to sensory perceptions, and use imagery to express one’s thoughts. It’s the most creative type of an academic paper. Hence, you will need the following steps to accomplish:

• Check out various examples of narrative essays.
• Find different prompts if you are required to come out with your own topic.
• Divide your essay into six meaningful parts: the intro, the plot, the characters, the setting, the climax, and finally, the conclusion.
• Clarify whether your narrative essay should be actually a story. It might be an informative narrative once you are required to submit a book report.
• Find the main purpose of your essay before you begin penning it.
• Choose the point of view: from your author’s standpoint or an authorial perspective.
• Do not overuse figurative speech to affect particular emotions and senses of your reader.
• Write it from the first person but avoid being too personal. Leave some place for the reader’s imagination.
• Check out a good sample of a narrative essay to make sure your Reference page is immaculate, and the required style is properly used.

Descriptive Essay

Like a persuasive type, a descriptive essay examines your creativity and ingenuity. You’re supposed to choose an object by your own and write a description of it. It can be a person, a novel character, a film scene or the house, in which you have grown up. In other words, you need to choose a person, an object, a place or a situation. It can be either an object from your experience or an imaginary one.

This kind of an essay doesn’t require engaging statistics, facts or dictionary definitions. Here you describe your personal experience in terms you think are adequate for it.

In the first paragraph you write why you are choosing this particular object (person). Why it is important and which special associations it evokes.

Then you come to a description. You should mention not only the physical characteristics of an object, but its symbolic meaning and emotions it evokes in you. Don’t hesitate to be subjective here, share your feelings in a free and precise way.

In the conclusion, point out why the object (person, situation) is special for you and what meaning it implies.

Remember to check out examples of descriptive essays, so you could get a sense of a good composition for it.

Expository Essay

An expository essay is a customary form of an academic writing for high school students. In this kind of an essay, you need to present the idea/event in a comprehensive and logical way. You need to make a research and to explain context and nature of the events. A good sample of this essay type proves your research and analytical abilities.

This essay task seems close to exploratory or cause and effect types of essays. Yet it has its own peculiarities. In an explanatory essay, you need to give an explanation of a phenomenon. In other words, you need to clarify its complicated aspects. In an expository essay, you need to scrutinize the crucial elements of it, not just explain its difficulties. You emphasize the crucial aspects of the problem, present it in the fullest possible way.

For both of these essays, you need to be objective and unbiased, supporting your points by facts. Include to your sample the references to the authoritative sources and quote the most valuable arguments. You must stick to a neutral tone, avoiding vagueness in your statements. Write in clear and concise manner.

You can use the usual 5-paragraphs scheme to write it, but it is not the only possible structure for it. Anyway, you must write a well-thought conclusion. You should not only restate your main thesis but present it in a new light of the arguments exposed above.

Proposal Essay

If you’ve received a task on a proposal essay, you must get ready to three phases. These are preparation, writing process and reviewing.

At the preparatory stage

You should get to know the audience that will approve or reject your proposal. Hence, if it is a Thesis Committee, you must study all the provided requirements and try to match their expectations. Another step is to conduct a deep research on your topic. This is the flesh of your work. Therefore, the more relevant data you include into your proposal report the better claims you’ll formulate. Get as many interviews with experts as needed so that you could include their experience or make insights from already acquired results. Scan as many high-quality examples and topics of proposal essays as possible to understand how to develop your own proposal.

At the writing stage

A good proposal consists of the following parts:

• Introduction. Generally, you must present a topic and a problem your proposal can solve. However, it’s also important to say the audience why they should care about a particular topic.
• Proposal. Make it short and concise to deliver your proposition within several sentences. In this part, it requires only brief explanation of what is proposed.
• An action plan. Describe in detail how you will achieve what you have proposed. Start with conviction. It is your own credentials which should prove that you have a right to research a topic.
• Proceed with the description of the process how you’ll conduct the actual research. The last thing to do is to foresee possible milestones while seeking for particular solutions.
• The viability of your proposal. Explain how a proposal will work. Show its viability and importance compared to the past studies.
• Desired goals. Dwell on the outcomes you expect to achieve with the research.
• Resources. Include into this list all the items and devices you’ll need to deliver a dissertation.
• Preparations. Describe what you have prepared beforehand to deliver a proposal report.
• Conclusion. Do not repeat a mistake of many students who just restate an introduction. It’s far better to dwell on all parts of your proposal.
• Works cited or consulted? If you use quotes in your proposal, then take the headline “Works cited”. Yet if you do not use word for word citations, it’s better to write “Works consulted”.

At the revision stage

After you write the whole proposal, make a thorough proofreading. The next day (if it isn’t your submit deadline) check it one more time and ask your friend or a professional editor to review your work.

Problem Solution Essay

This kind of essay is popular as an in-class task, for instance, it is usual for IELTS or for college exams. It shows your ability to define significant issues and problem-solving skills. You need to be attentive to the assignment formulation – it already contains clues to the task. It can either suggest considering a particular problem or ask you to articulate a problem of your own. If you need to come up with the problem by yourself you should appeal to the issues that concern you. If not, you should illustrate the given issue with the examples from your experience.

There are two basic schemes for writing problem and solution essay:

• Block structure means that first you list all the problems and then come to the solutions.
• For the chain scheme you pair the problems with fitting solutions, so they can form links of a chain.

Either way, you should build your essay according to the formula: situation-issue-solutions-evaluation. In the beginning of your essay you give a context of the problem, describe a situation in which it occurs. Then you give a clear formulation of the problem. These two parts you place in the first paragraph.

Next two-three paragraphs you dedicate to the solutions. Support them with facts and illustrate with examples.

The last paragraph is the conclusion, which should include the evaluation of the mentioned solutions.

Remember: the best way to work through the structure of any essay type is to write as many samples as you can.

Informative Essay

The task to write the informative essay seems not very difficult to fulfill. It doesn’t require imagination whatsoever, but it asks you to give enough information about some object. No time to relax, since the assignment can turn to be tricky for you. On the one hand, you need to give a full picture of a phenomenon. You must not burden your reader with insufficient information.

The best way to understand your task is to think that your reader doesn’t know anything about the subject. So you must explain the phenomenon for him from scratch. Your algorithm, in this case, is the following:

1) Give a precise definition of the object. Explain, to which of its meaning you appeal.

2) Point out its essential features. Here you can compare it with other phenomena of its kind. Emphasize the contrast; explain what doesn’t relate to your object.

3) Keep unfolding your topic. Support your explanation with charts, statistics and case examples. Your paper must be factual, so avoid informal tone and unclear statements. Remember: you are telling the facts, not your opinion about them.

4) Engage reliable sources. Present different views and theoretical arguments. Compare them and define in which points they are contrasting with each other. Important: be accurate in quotations and facts providing. Check back your sources.

5) Summarize all the given information. Write a new definition, considering the facts you have explored.

To understand better the form and purpose of such an assignment, look up the reviewed examples of informative essays.

Reflective Essay

There are two kinds of academic tasks under the label of a reflective essay. Let's figure out the difference between the two.

In the first case, you need to describe some event or circumstance of your life and show its impact on your personality. So, you can choose a topic freely and there is no need to refer to anybody else’s experience. The main task here is to explain how some particular episode from your past has influenced you. Although the description is an important element of this task, you cannot reduce your essay only to this part. This task should reveal your introspective abilities.

In the second case, you need to share your thoughts regarding the information, you professor has given you in the class. It allows you to share your insights with a professor. Thus, your object here is the lecture materials you have got before. For this essay, you need to choose a lecture you want to discuss. Then you sum up it in several sentences. After that, you describe your feelings and thoughts point by point. This writing task helps to maintain a dialogue between the student and the teacher, so don’t hesitate to share your ideas and remarks.

For both types of reflection paper, it is crucial to show the consistency and originality of your speculations.

You should appeal to other examples of reflective essays, so you could understand in details how to write it.

Exploratory Essay

This type of an essay is the form of a scientific paper. This genre of an academic writing prepares you to write term papers and theses. A crucial element of this work is to provide a profound research. Then your task is to compile and cite your research materials in a clear and consistent way. After that you need to sum up the ideas you have explored and, if possible, present them from a different angle.

This essay shows how well you can work with sources, collect and summarize evidences. Thus, take the following steps to fulfill a good work:

1) Choose a problem you want to scrutinize. Explain, why this issue is important to consider. Show its context and causes. Answers to these questions will form your introduction.

2) In the body paragraphs, specify the theorists, who discuss the problem. Choose at least two contradictory positions, show how they conflict, compare them. Define their strong and weak points on the problem. Specify how these theorists contribute to the general vision of the issue. Consider also which possible solutions they suggest. Avoid subjectivity and try to be precise in presenting authors’ thoughts.

3) Include factual information to your body paragraphs. Statistic, charts, and case studies data must illustrate the points you discuss.

4) In the conclusion you need to restate the problem you focus on. Point out the probable causes of this problem and summarize the attempts of solving it.

Look up for the examples of exploratory essays to understand their specificity.