Ervin Nemeth's Essay Types

Ervin Nemeth's ESL Net
commonly used essay types

EssayDOS.ZIP - Commonly used essays -- DOS program in ZIP archive (1 M)

It is our hope that both native speakers currently enrolled in English Composition courses and those taking efforts in learning English as a Second Language can benefit from these pages. To know more about various essay types is important for advanced ESL students and native speakers alike. If you read on, you will see in John Henry Cardinal Newman's confession that even the greatest writers may struggle a lot when writing an essay.

Most materials on the following pages are taken from English Composition course handouts that were used at International Christian University. It is not always possible to give proper credit to the authors and or publishers of these materials. We don't want to violate copyright laws and this site is set up solely for educational purposes. None of the published materials are to be sold or used in any form of commercial situation.

The following introduction to a college course will give you further details about the writing process.

Writing an Expository Essay

The underlying assumption of a college composition course is that educated people need to be able to convey their ideas to others. This exchange will be a necessity in other college courses and after graduation. Therefore, college writing is mainly exposition, the stating of a position and the exposing of that position. The position is commonly called the thesis, and the exposing takes place in the supporting details usually organized by such strategies as example, narration and description, comparison/contrast, classification, process analysis, cause and effect, and argumentation. The actual composition of the essay can best be analyzed by dividing the process into three stages, the pre-writing, the writing, and the re-writing.

Pre-writing involves thinking, a process not foreign to all, but commonly associated with work and, therefore, often avoided. The writer must uncover a topic (if one has not been assigned) and then discover his ideas about that topic. The writer should strive to understand his purpose in writing the paper and to narrow the topic to a scope he can handle in the assigned length. He should begin jotting down ideas, since hastily scrawled notes on a sheet of scrap paper are often the beginnings of effective communication. Once formulated, the ideas can be organized by making a topic outline (usually sufficient for college assignments). This outline will help the student fit his thoughts into a logical sequence. Finally, these ideas should lead the writer to his position on this topic. This position, stated concisely and unambiguously, is the thesis to which the supporting details of the essay are directed. The student is now, and only now, ready to write.

The writing of the paper involves fully expressing and fluently connecting the basic ideas from the outline. With his purpose and audience constantly in mind, the writer tries to convey the most meaning in the fewest words presented in a technically correct form. His goal is to choose symbols (words) which will efficiently transfer the precise idea in his mind to the minds of his readers. This ideal, however, is seldom achieved in this stage of composition, so the writer should press on until he has a finished draft. The polishing will come in the next step, the re-writing process.

Re-writing is basic to good communication. Short of divine inspiration, nothing can give us the right word in the right place every time. But by consciously examining each word, each sentence, each paragraph, and the essay as a whole, we can always come closer to our ideal. During the re-writing process, the student should check grammar, spelling, punctuation, and logic. He should eliminate wordiness and seek absolute clarity. Even on an in-class essay, where time is short and must be used carefully, the student should correct his theme as thoroughly as is possible. It is during the re- writing process that the student fosters his ideas to maturity so that he can confidently contribute them to the world.

Thus, composition is an involved process, rightly respected by most people. When approached in these three stages, however, it can be less formidable. The pre-writing step forces the student to focus his ideas and to formulate a specific thesis. During the writing of the paper, the student seeks basic sentence structures and fluency. In the third and key stage, the re-writing, the student consciously strives for control and exactness of expression. The end of all this should be a tangible product of the writers thought process, a theme in which he can take pride.

[Taken from: from Harding University, Searcy, AK, Composition Manual]

On Writing
by John Henry Cardinal Newman (1801-1890)

The modulated tone and clarity that distinguish Newman's prose style were achieved by great conscious effort. He described his habits of composition in a way that should reassure any writer struggling for clarity:

"I write," he said, "I write again; I write a third time in the course of six months. Then I take the third: I literally fill the paper with corrections, so that another person could not read it. I then write it out fair for the printer. I put it by; I take it up; I begin to correct again: it will not do. Alterations multiply, pages are re-written, little lines sneak in and crawl about. The whole page is disfigured; I write again; I cannot count how many times this process is repeated."