I am sure you have been assigned a particular type of essay and then thought to yourself- how is that different from a normal essay? Below is a list of the most common essay types, a brief description, and an example essay to help you get started.
Descriptive Essay: gives details about something. It may describe how an object looks, behaves, tastes or sounds. A descriptive essay may also be written to describe how something happened.
Persuasive Essay: also known as the argument essay, utilizes logic and reason to show that one idea is more legitimate than another idea. It attempts to persuade a reader to adopt a certain point of view or to take a particular action.
Literary Essay: focuses on the meaning or structure of a piece of literature. Unlike a book report the the student does not summarize the events but expresses their view on such concepts as structure and theme.
Compare and Contrast Essay: used to discuss the similarities (compare) and differences (contrast) between two objects, people or concepts.
Reflective Essay: describes a real or imaginary scene, event, interaction, passing thought, memory, or observation in either essay or poetic form, adding a personal reflection on the meaning of the item or incident, thought, feeling, emotion, or situation in his or her life.
Research Essay: research into the works of others and compare their thoughts with your own. Writing a research paper involves going to source material and synthesizing what you learn from it with your own ideas. You must find texts on the subject and use them to support the topic you have been given to explore.
Cause and Effect Essay: explains why an event took place and what the result of that event was. This essay studies the relationship between two or more events. The cause describes why some event took place and the effect describes what happened after the event occurred.
Other types of essays exist but these seem to be the most commonly assigned essays. Hopefully this gave you the brief overview you needed to get started on your essay and if not, don’t hesitate to comment or contact us on Facebook or Twitter with your question.