The concept of an exploratory essay is that you start without an end in mind. You don’t necessarily know how you feel about a subject or what you want to say about the subject, you allow the research and your own direction to determine the outcome. This is writing to learn rather than writing to prove what you know.
Purpose: The exploratory essay builds on the inquiry essay by having you look at and contribute to a range of arguments rather than just one at a time. Whereas the inquiry essay introduced you to a debate by looking at one argument a time, the exploratory essay asks you to widen your vision to the whole conversation.
1. The focus of an exploratory essay is a question, rather than a thesis.
2. The two main ways to compose an exploratory essay yield different effects: The “in-process” strategy produces immediacy, while a “retrospective” strategy produces more artistically designed essays.
3. Exploratory essays chronicle your research actions and the thinking that results from those actions; they address both content-oriented questions and rhetorical questions about possible responses to the problem under consideration.
4. Exploratory essays regularly consider the strengths and weaknesses of various different solutions to a perplexing problem.
5. Exploratory essays are often dialectical in either the Platonic or Hegelian sense of that term because they recreate the engagement of antithetical positions, sometimes resulting in a productive synthesis of contraries. Read the rest of this entry »
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Exploratory Essay
Oct 29
The Narrative Essay
Oct 29
What is a Narrative Essay?
When writing a narrative essay, one might think of it as telling a story. These essays are often anecdotal, experiential, and personal-allowing the student to express herself in a creative and, quite often, moving way.
Here are some guidelines for writing a narrative essay:
If written as a story, the essay should include all the parts of a story.
This means that you must include an introduction, plot, characters, setting, climax, and conclusion.
When would a narrative essay not be written as a story?
A good example of this is when an instructor asks a student to write a book report. Obviously, this would not necessarily follow the pattern of a story and would focus on providing an informative narrative for the reader.
The essay should have a purpose.
Make a point! Think of this as the thesis of your story. If there is not point to what you are narrating, why narrate it at all?
The essay should be written from a clear point of view.
It is quite common for narrative essays to be written from the standpoint of the author; however, this is not the sole perspective to be considered. Creativity in narrative essays often times manifests itself in the form of authorial perspective. Read the rest of this entry »
Planning Stage
For an argument essay to be effective, it must contain certain elements. For this reason, you must take a few minutes to plan before you jump into writing an argument essay.
Find a Good Topic
To find good topic for an argument essay you should consider several issues that will have two conflicting points of view or very different conclusions. As you look over a list of topics you should find one that really sparks your interest.
While a strong interest in a topic is important, it’s not enough. You next have to consider what position you can back up with reasoning. It’s one thing to have a strong belief, but when shaping an argument you’ll have to explain why your belief is reasonable and logical.
As you explore the topics, make a mental list of points you could use as evidence for or against an issue.
Consider Both Sides of Your Topic and Take a Position
Once you have selected a topic you feel strongly about, you should make a list of points for both sides of the argument. One of your first objectives in your essay will be to present both sides of your issue with an assessment of each. Of course, you will conclude that one side (your side) is the best conclusion. Read the rest of this entry »
Lesson Five: Introductions
Oct 29
The introduction is the first sentence of your essay and it plays the dual role of setting the theme of your essay and engaging the reader. The introduction should not be overly formal. You do not want an admissions officer to start reading your essay and think, “here we go again.” Although admissions officers will try to give the entire essay a fair reading, they are only human — if you lose them after the first sentence, the rest of your essay will not get the attention it deserves.
General Tips
* Don’t Say Too Much. Just tell the story! Your introduction should not be so complex and so lengthy that it loses the reader before they even start. You have the rest of the essay to say what you want. There’s no need to pack it all into the first sentence. This leads to the next tip…
* Don’t Start Your Essay with a Summary. If you summarize, the admissions officer does not need to read the rest of your essay. You want to start your essay with something that makes the reader want to read until the very end. Once you have drawn the reader in through the first one to three sentences, the last sentence in your introductory paragraph should explain clearly and briefly what the point of the whole essay is. That is, why you are using this person, place, or thing. What does it say about you?
* Create Mystery or Intrigue in your Introduction. It is not necessary or recommended that your first sentence give away the subject matter. Read the rest of this entry »
Introduction
The easiest way to sabotage all the work you have done so far is to skip this lesson. Writing is as much a discipline as it is an art, and to ensure that your essays flow well and make sense, you need to construct solid outlines before you write. Unless you conscientiously impose structure around your ideas, your essay will be rambling and ineffective. An outline should make sense on its own; the ideas should follow logically in the order that you list them. As you add content around these main points, these words should support and reinforce the logic of the outline. Finally, the outline should conclude with an insightful thought or image. Make sure that the rest of your outline reinforces this conclusion.
The body paragraphs should consist of events, experiences, and activities you have already organized in chronological order or in order of importance. In many of the essays that our editors read, the order of paragraphs seems to have been chosen at random. Make clear why one point follows another: each point in your outline should connect with the next; each main category should be linked to your introduction or thesis; and each sub-category should be linked to the main category. As you make your outline you should be able to see where there are holes in your essay.
Continue on to descriptions and examples of various essay structures, a sample outline and essay, short essay strategies and samples.
The following structures are demonstrated and discussed:
*Example Structure
* Compare and Contrast
* Narrative or Chronological Structure
* Descriptive Structure
* Cause-and-Effect
Example Structure
The Example Structure follows the rules of a traditional academic essay: begin with a main argument or thesis statement, follow this with three pieces of evidence that support the argument, and wrap up by stating what the essay has shown. Read the rest of this entry »