TYPES OF ESSAYS (AND WHICH ONE SHOULD YOU CHOOSE?)
I have found many students to be clueless when I ask them about their favourite type of essay.
Type of essay? What is that? That is the answer I almost always get.
See, every essay has separate specifications. Some essays are about personal events, some describe a concept. Some of the essays explain the things, and some are written to convince the reader. These different purposes make a different type of essay.
And each type of essay requires a different strategy.
For example, if the topic of the essay requires some kind of explanation of political philosophy, you will write it differently when compared with any topic that requires you to write the causes and effects of any social problem.
Take a moment and think about it. Will you write the essay with similar approaches to these three topics?
a. Good governance is the key to the progress of the country.
b. Energy crisis: Causes and Consequences.
c. Future of democracy in Pakistan
All of these topics will be addressed differently in your essay. There is no one-fit-all formula for the essays. But in order to understand this, you need to know about four major types of essays.
1. Narrative Essay
This type of essay is mainly centred on the author’s personal feelings, emotions, life or any event related to her. In other words, it is the author’s own story. For instance, “My first day at school”. You will not find such topics in CSS/PCS exams.
2. Descriptive Essays
This type of essay is written in order to describe something, a person, place, event, emotion or feeling.
But the main difference between the narrative essay is that this essay is not about the author. This is about something else.
For example, “The Cow” or “The Civilisation of Moen-jo-Daro”. Such essays also appear very infrequently.
Expository or Factual Essay:
In this type of essay, the main purpose of the essayist is to investigate an idea, based on the facts, figures, statistics, examples and illustrations.
This type of essay is full of information and does not include the personal aspects of the writer.
Some examples:
i. Crisis of good governance in Pakistan: the need for reforms and institution building. (2016)
ii. Promotion of Tax culture in Pakistan: perspective, prospects and challenges. (2016)
Persuasive/Argumentative Essay:
The difference between factual essay and an argumentative essay is that the writer does not establish the claim in the factual essay whereas argumentative essay cannot be written without first establishing a claim for or against any particular point.
These days, the argumentative essays appear more often in the competitive examinations.
Although most aspirants consider this trend to be a little difficult, in my opinion, however, writing an argumentative essay is easier than the factual ones for a number of reasons.
Some examples:
i. Are modern wars not Holy wars?
ii. Gender equality is a myth.
iii. Labour saving devices are more troublesome than they worth.
BOTTOMLINE: Always choose the argumentative essay. If easy expository essay topics have come, then go for it. As suggested in the earlier post, analyse the topics first.
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| TYPES OF ESSAYS (AND WHICH ONE SHOULD YOU CHOOSE?) |