How to write an essay?

Essay - a type of creative assignment; a genre (philosophical, literary-critical, historical-biographical, journalistic) of prose that combines an emphasized individual position of the author with a relaxed, often paradoxical presentation, focused on colloquial speech. 

An essay is a type of creative assignment, a written independent work of students; a statement of their own thoughts, experiences, judgments, intentions. Essays are distinguished by genre or the way in which thoughts are expressed:

- description,

- narration,

- explanation,

- narration, narration, explanation, and reasoning.

An essay or essay is a type of exercise that completes preparation for an independent presentation of thoughts, ideas. Writing an essay or essay is preceded by: a plan, an outline, a summary of the read text, a statement of content, an abstract, an abstract of a series of texts.

The main features of essays are a specific topic (problem, issue) and expression of individual impressions, thoughts of the author on the topic (problem, issue) with an emphasis on the personality of the author (his feelings, worldview), relaxed manner of narration (colloquial speech), attention to detail.

The purpose of the essay is to develop independent creative thinking and the ability to state one's own thoughts. A quality essay should consist of an introduction, where the problem is posed, the thesis (the author's ideas on the topic), and each thesis should be supported by evidence confirming the author's point of view, and the conclusion - once again fixing the problem and summarizing the essay.

How to write a good essay is a question I will try to answer in about 2 minutes. There will be something else related to this question, an explanation of how to use citations correctly. An essay is about presenting not only your ideas, but also the ideas you need for evidence, for understanding the question. When we think of essays, we think of those little three-paragraph essays we used to write in one hour on exams. The principle, of course, is the same, but we need to increase the volume of these paragraphs.

 So, the essay consists of several parts, let's say 5. Let's write them down - 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. And we have to name these parts. 

The first part would be the introduction. The fifth would be the conclusion. 

Parts 2 and 3, paragraphs 2 and 3, are the parts where you have to demonstrate to the reader that you know what you're talking about. This is where you need to show that everything is balanced. For example, in a proof essay (argumentative essay), part 2 will have reasons for what's in part 4, and part 3 will have reasons against the statement that follows. This is just a tentative division. You might have the most important, strongest reasons for and against in Part 2, and additional reasons against in Part 3. 

The main way to write a good essay is to write according to a plan. But the plan shouldn't be too detailed-I've seen plans that spell out everything "from beginning to end," but the essays didn't turn out the best.

A plan is your understanding of what you don't say (and shouldn't say) at the beginning.

The plan is the ability to leave your main, central idea for the denouement - for part 4!

The denouement is what you state, state very clearly, something from part 2 or 3. You add some information from yourself, information that is important to your essay, to your statement. Information that will help you get an excellent grade at the end.

Paragraph 4 is the denouement. This should be your largest paragraph. The part where you again list the facts, supported by good citations, is clear (simple), logical (developing ideas), and in order (only what is relevant to the question). 

 

Briefly: paragraphs 1 and 5 should be short. In the first one, it is enough to outline how you are going to solve the problem. Paragraph 5 logically follows from paragraph 4. What is specifically said above is the conclusion of all that is said above. If you start a new discussion in paragraph 5, a new idea comes up, you need to write a new essay. That's a waste of your time. Don't add anything new to paragraph 5. This is the part that follows on from everything already written before it. 

Paragraph 4 is the proof. It's what you've been waiting for. It's like a street situation you and your friends got into. There's no point in trying to mumble something, childish or funny. You have to listen carefully to what they're trying to tell you - yes, I get it - and then lay out your arguments. Convince how accurately you understand everything, how wise your position is. And that's the fourth paragraph. First, second, third are your reasons why your opponent is wrong. And "bang" is your argument. It's blown him away, it's demolished him. You assert your own point of view. Very clearly, very simply, acknowledging that there are other points of view, but they are wrong.

I'll add something to this story. We have a five-paragraph essay system. But we also have to decide how to defend ourselves, how to build an argument. And we do that with quotations. Things that have been misused in the past. It's often said today that you can't use plagiarism. That would have been absurd to the ancient Greeks or Romans. After all, they were constantly taking someone else's thoughts to add impressiveness to their texts. This is not something that should not be done, on the contrary. You just have to point out where you took it from. That's fine. It's legitimate. You need to use the quotes correctly. Imagine you have six great quotes. And you have 35-45 minutes to write your essay. You may not have enough time to use all 6 of those quotes, so you have to choose very carefully.

Because a quote always requires three sentences: first the statement, then the quote, and then the explanation.

The quote is like a jewel in a ring, you look at the ring and say, "Oh, my God! What a wonderful ring, how bright, how it shines." Then you take the gemstone out of the ring, if you're a jeweler, and you look at it, turn it, look at its facets. And it's the same in your essay-you're only interested in a few facets, not all in all. You have to apply the quote, to put the gem back in the right setting. 

If the quote is used correctly, you will benefit from it. You can't use every quote you have in your head. You can use not only quotes, you can make references to different events, characters, you don't have to quote something. That's also useful. But a quote requires those three points - the statement, the quote itself, and the explanation. There's also no point in making the quote longer than your own text. I've seen papers where the citations are twice as long as anything the student himself wrote. This is absurd. A citation should be concise and add weight to what you say. 

 

If you do everything like I said, you'll have a great essay. It's mandatory.