Throughout the academic year, students have to go through many formal and informal essays, each with its own structure and format. Different essays need different skills, word count, structure, and others, which can be highly beneficial for their scores and GPAs. In this article, we have mentioned the critical type of essays that every student must know.
Types off writing
Irrespective of the type of essay, all essays follow one or more of the four writing styles:
- Persuasive
- Descriptive
- Narrative
- Expository
Personal Essay
These essays are the ones that focus on how a particular thing or incident has impacted you personally. It can talk about an event from the past, a current situation, or different experiences in general which have made you the person you are today.
Such essays often follow a narrative format. However, they can follow expository or descriptive techniques depending on the content. Sometimes, they also overlap with other forms of essays, like argumentative and college application essays.
Political essay
Students generally come across political essays in their history classes. Contemporary and historical thinkers write these essays in society. In such essays, an author generally comments on the situation or circumstances by pulling examples of similar situations from the past. Generally, they also fall into the persuasive or expository form of writing.
Compare and contrast essays
These are the type of essays that are written by students most frequently. In such cases, the author points out the key similarities and differences between two different subjects or topics. For instance, a student may be asked to compare two events, processes, or others and derive similarities and differences between them. But compare and contrast essays are generally written on two or more subjects.
College application essay
This essay is also known as a personal statement that highlights all the personality traits and experiences of a student, which helps in determining their fit in a particular college or university. It is generally written for admission to a college.
Analytical essay
Analytical essays talk about the core components of a problem or a subject under discussion. For example, analytical reports can be written on themes of a novel, the ideas in a political essay, and so on. In these types of essays, the author does not follow a persuasive approach to please the reader but analyzes the facts and provides an entirely personal opinion based on factual data.
Argumentative essays
In such essays, the author argues for or against a particular topic, which does not rely on emotional appeal but focuses on factual data, statistics, and logic. They are also considered persuasive writing pieces because they must persuade the reader to understand the author’s point of view.
