What is an essay
The word "essay" comes from French and historically goes back to the Latin word exagium (weighing). The French ezzai can be literally translated with the words experience, trial, attempt, sketch, essay.
An essay is a prose work of small volume and free composition, expressing individual impressions and thoughts on a particular subject or issue, and knowingly does not claim to be a determining or exhaustive treatment of the subject.
Some signs of an essay are:
- The presence of a specific topic or question. A work devoted to the analysis of a wide range of problems, by definition, cannot be performed in the essay genre.
- an essay expresses individual impressions and considerations on a particular subject or issue and does not claim to be a defining or exhaustive treatment of the subject.
- as a rule, an essay implies a new, subjectively colored word about something, such a work can have a philosophical, historical and biographical, journalistic, literary and critical, popular science or purely fiction character.
- in the content of essays are evaluated primarily the personality of the author - his worldview, thoughts and feelings.
- This genre has become popular in recent years. Today, the essay is offered as an assignment quite often. It is one of the main components of the package of documents (when applying to an educational institution or employment). The essay contest helps to choose the best from the variety of the best!
- The purpose of the essay is to develop skills such as independent creative thinking and writing your own thoughts.
Essay writing checklist is extremely useful because it allows the author to learn how to formulate thoughts clearly and competently, structure information, use basic concepts, highlight cause-and-effect connections, illustrate experiences with relevant examples, and argue their conclusions.
Structure and outline of the essay
The structure of the essay is determined by the requirements imposed on it:
- the thoughts of the author of the essay on the problem are stated in the form of brief theses.
- a thought must be supported by evidence - so the thesis is followed by arguments.
Arguments are facts, phenomena of social life, events, life situations and life experiences, scientific evidence, references to the opinion of scientists, etc. It is better to give two arguments in favor of each thesis: one argument seems unconvincing, three arguments can "overload" the statement made in a genre oriented on brevity and imagery.
Thus, the essay acquires a ring structure (the number of theses and arguments depends on the topic, the chosen plan, and the logic of thought development):
- introduction
- thesis, arguments
- conclusion.
When writing an essay, it is also important to consider the following points:
- The introduction and conclusion should focus attention on the problem (in the introduction it is put, in the conclusion - the author's opinion is summarized).
- It is necessary to highlight paragraphs, red lines, establishing a logical connection of paragraphs: this way the integrity of the work is achieved.
- The type of essay for this nomination is analytical.
Rules for writing essays
Of the formal rules of writing an essay, there is only one - the presence of a title. The internal structure of the essay can be arbitrary. Since it is a small form of written work, it is not required to necessarily repeat the conclusions at the end, they can be included in the main text or in the title.
Argumentation may precede the formulation of the problem. The formulation of the problem may coincide with the final conclusion.
Errors in writing an essay
Unlike tests, essays do not assume a multiple-choice format (where you are given several options to choose from). Writing an essay is not limited in time, you can rewrite it many times, ask your friends to read your essay. Take advantage of all the opportunities and try to avoid common mistakes.
Bad checking
Don't think that you can limit yourself to spell-checking. Reread your essays and make sure that there are no ambiguous expressions, unfortunate turns, etc.
Tiresome prefaces. Lack of detail.
Too often an interesting essay loses out in what is an enumeration of statements without illustrating them with examples. Essays are characterized by the usual clichés: the importance of hard work and perseverance, learning from mistakes, etc.