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What is an Essay?

Relatively short, research papers that are meant to analyze, criticise, or explain any subject are known among students and their educators as essays. Students are familiar with such assignments in schools and colleges alike. All papers have a similar structure.

Today, these documents become an essential part of the established educational process. In high school, educators ask their students to write this kind of papers. This helps them to develop their critical thinking as well as writing, analytical, and research skills. Composing an essay in the form of an admission letter is also a requirement when you are going to apply to the university. Essay writing helps teachers and lecturers to test their students regarding their competence as well as ability to declare their ideas in a logical flow.

When it comes to education, essayists are required to analyze, explain, prove, and comment on the major ideas their articles are written about. If compare literature and academic papers, the latter ones are more formal. Nevertheless, essayists still have to present their own points of view in a logical order. Here, we will review the variety of academic works.

Types of Academic Papers

Except for the fact that papers can be long or short, descriptive or explanatory, funny or serious, they can also be compared or contrast as well as persuasive or argumentative. In this article, we will consider commonly used formats.

Composing different types of papers effectively is crucial to academic performance. For students, it is crucial to feel confident when it comes to various types of academic works as they come with their own set of rules which have to be followed properly.

5-Paragraph Articles

Many students are first required to write a piece consisted of five parts. These are three body sections, which follow an introductory section, and a conclusion part, which is also the final one. The body text involves evidence, positions, and arguments which are meant to prove the thesis mentioned in the introduction. The finishing section is all about restating the thesis and summarizing the ideas used to support it. There are lots of disputes around this articles. While proponents claim that they help writers to structure their statements properly; their opponents believe that they put lots of bounds.

Papers which length is up to five thousand characters usually are more flexible. They may begin with a brief summary review considering existing information relevant to the chosen topic. It is also known as a literature survey. These essays often include introductory pages, where words and their combinations from the title come with the definition. It is always required to end up the text with a list of references, where all facts, ideas, quotes, and so forth are referenced properly.

Compare/Contrast Papers

For many students, who work on a compare or contrast article, this may be a quite confusing assignment. This is mainly because of the need to balance between two processes that are quite alike. The paper usually involves a number of differences and similar aspects so that the essayists can state in which ways two or more things are alike and in which ones they are absolutely different.

Persuasive Papers

With this kind of an assignment, all the essayists’ efforts are made to convince the recipient in a certain point of view. This can be achieved through the use of various rhetorical devices. Unlike other essays, this one allows writers to put into action emotions along with evidence and facts.

Argumentative Papers

This type of academic pieces is very similar to the previous ones; therefore, many students get confused when it comes to composing one of them. The main difference between these two assignments is the thing they are motivated with. While persuasive essays may involve issues that are not proved, argumentative ones come with targeted ideas which have to be supported with actual proofs. This is the main point which distinguishes these two papers.

Descriptive Papers

For an essayist, the primary goal to achieve when working on this kind of paper is to create a clear picture of a human, event, place, and so forth in a recipient’s mind. The piece should contain the details which help the readers to visualize everything described in it clearly. There is no need to provide any evidence, proofs, etc. This kind of assignment is considered the easiest one.