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In this course you will refine your essay composition by writing (and reading) five different types of essays: 1) expository 2) comparison and contrast 3) persuasive 4) contemplative and 5) research and analysis.

These types are not necessarily exclusive. A persuasive essay might use the comparison and contrast form (“Cats make better pets than dogs”). A research and analysis paper could be persuasive (“Shakespeare's Hamlet, despite its high critical and popular reputation over several centuries, is not a fully successful play”) or expository (“An inquiry into the effect of Shakespeare's mixing of `low' and `high' styles in Hamlet will help account for the play's long-standing popularity with critics and public alike”).

Nevertheless, each type of essay is distinctive in its own right, and each (except for the contemplative) is standard fare in university courses. It might help to distinguish between purpose and form. The purpose of the expository essay is to explain something, and the purpose of the persuasive is to persuade your audience to accept your position. The form of the comparison and contrast essay consists of comparing and contrasting two ideas or things, and the form of the research and analysis paper consists of presenting evidence you have gathered in support of your thesis.

Expository Essay

The purpose of an expository essay is to describe, explain, clarify, expand or explore a concept, an event, a thing or a process. Writers do this by using specific details and examples to illustrate the general point they are trying to convey to the reader. By explaining the particular topic to the reader, the writer is demonstrating his or her understanding of the topic.

In his Web site, Dr. Robert Berman suggests that an exposition has a structure—it requires the construction of paragraphs which perform the following tasks:

  1. Clarify the belief. Clarifying the belief may involve some or all of the following:

    paraphrase—begins the process of clarification by reformulating the belief in other words

    exemplification—clarifies the belief by providing examples to illustrate it concretely

    analogy—clarifies the belief by likening it to some other more familiar belief

    contrast—clarifies the belief by means of a contrast with an opposing claim.

  2. Provides supporting reasons for the belief you have clarified.
  3. Traces implications and consequences which acceptance of the belief might have both for thought and action.

If you are unfamiliar with writing expository essays, this structure might help you formulate a similar kind of outline for your own writing. Please remember, the above is simply an example—be sure to use a structure that suits your approach.

Comparison and Contrast Essay

The Canadian Practical Stylist suggests that comparison and contrast can appear in many different structures: the writer can run contrasts side by side, or illustrate through analogy. Furthermore, a comparison emphasizes similarities by featuring the unknown with the known. Contrast, however, highlights differences by comparing similar things (147-150). Comparisons are a natural means of conveying your ideas through vivid impressions— impressions that reach the largest possible audience. The power and universality of comparisons can be gauged by noting that they are the foundation for the two most potent poetic techniques, simile and metaphor, and for the most popular poetic device up to the Renaissance, allegory. When Robert Burns opened his poem, “A Red, Red Rose” with his well remembered simile: “O my luv's like a red, red rose/ That's newly sprung in June,” he could expect his readers to be pleased with the comparison, and to associate his love with the qualities of a fresh, red rose (English 255 Student Manual).

There are two primary methods of organization for this type of essay: block and alternating. As the name implies, block organization requires that the writer first write about topic A, and then topic B: if you are writing about men and women, you would write your first half of the essay about men, and the second half about women. The important part of this approach is that you must be sure to create a transition between the two, otherwise you will have written two separate and unrelated sections—this is not an essay. The alternating method, as it suggests, alternates point by point: you would write about men, then women, then men, then women and so forth. This can be a trickier approach because it is not just about one successful transition, rather, about numerous smooth transitions. The danger of this method is that the essay can sound choppy if you switch between them too often. Perhaps an approach would be to think of some main points to compare and contrast between men and women, and use a paragraph to explore each one.

Persuasive Essay

This form is similar to the expository essay; however, the goal is different. In this type of essay the writer must try to defend the chosen side of an argument—the writer must not only show, but also convince. The University of Victoria Writer's Guide Web site suggests that, “the persuasive essay must choose a side, make a case for it, consider and refute alternative arguments, and prove to the undecided reader that the opinion it presents is the best one. You must be aware of other sides and be fair to them; dismissing them completely will weaken your own argument.”

From:
http://web.uvic.ca/wguide/Pages/ExpositoryEssay.html

The following guidelines for writing persuasively are from the New Technology High School's Web site.

  • When deciding how to begin, always consider the audience. Remember, you are addressing an audience whose views may differ from yours.
  • Your first concern is to get your audiences to “listen.” You might use humor, a rhetorical question, an anecdote or any other attention-getting device to accomplish this.
  • However you begin, you need to concisely state your purpose for writing. Develop your position, or thesis statement. This will help you to focus on your issue as you draft your essay.
  • You need to support your position with valid evidence and logical arguments. For evidence, you might use any combination of facts, statistics, expert opinions, and reasons and make responsible appeals to emotion.
  • Anticipate opposing arguments.
  • End with the re-emphasis of your strong points and in a way that prompts your audience to change their thinking or to take a certain course of action.

From: http://www.nths.napa.ca.us/courses/political_studies/
StudentTips/PersTips.htm

Contemplative Essay

The contemplative essay is both a form and a purpose essay (but the purpose is less easily categorized). The form is characterized by tentativeness at the opening; the purpose by exploration of the situation or topic presented. While the standard formal essay is expected to have the thesis statement (i.e., the essay's conclusion) placed emphatically at the conclusion of the opening paragraph, the contemplative essay typically begins with an interesting—perhaps puzzling, or even shocking or bizarre—observation and proceeds to a sense of resolution by exploring various implications of and perspectives on the opening observation.

This distinction can be seen clearly if you compare Sheridan Baker's famous “Keyhole” diagram on page 120 of The Canadian Practical Stylist with the practice of Annie Dillard. Baker's diagram presents what is, essentially, a formula for writing essays: put the thesis at the end of the first paragraph; arrange your middle paragraphs from least to most impressive; restate the thesis at the beginning of the final paragraph. Consider that formula in light of the formal sentence in the title essay in Dillard's Teaching a Stone to Talk: “In a cedar-shake shack on the cliff—but we all live like this—is a man in his thirties who lives alone with a stone he is trying to teach to talk” (p. 85). Instead of doing the expected (in terms of the standard formal essay) and adding a thesis (something like, “and we all avoid him, for he must be crazy”), Dillard goes on to describe his work as “noble” and to lead us through a serious mediation on the meaning of silence in nature. (By the way, the term palo santo in this essay is Spanish for “holy tree.”)

The contemplative essay offers a technique for exploring topics—for meditating upon them—in a style that mirrors both one's own tentative grasp of things and one's exploratory spirit. Thus, it permits the exploration of ideas and perceptions not normally available to the standard formal essay. (Have you ever, in a university course, been asked to write a formal essay on teaching a stone to talk?) Where standard formal essays require the conclusion up front, the contemplative essay demands a less conclusive, more tentative, opening statement leading to an exploration of the significance of that statement.

Contemplative essays need not be restricted to the bizarre. For example, in the second essay in Teaching a Stone to Talk, Dillard begins by observing a weasel, imagining what it would be like to be a weasel, and ends by suggesting that weasels might have something of value to teach human beings. The contemplative essay, in sum, is characterized by close observation of details, by a tentative opening, by an exploratory spirit of inquiry, and by the linking of an opening situation to a larger context. This does not mean, however, that it is without form, though it doesn't readily meet the criteria of Baker's “Keyhole” diagram; in the hand of a master practitioner like Dillard, every part relates directly to the whole.

The Research and Analysis Essay

The University of Victoria Writer's Guide Web site suggests that the research essay relies on works of others. The process of writing a research essay requires you to find source material, then synthesize what you learn with your own ideas. You must find books on the subject and use them to support the topic that you are exploring. Take particular care to narrow your topic because it is easy to get lost in the plethora of outside materials. The greatest danger inherent in a research essay is plagiarism. If your paper consists of a string of quotations or paraphrases with little input of your own, you are not synthesizing but copying; if any of the borrowings are unacknowledged, you are plagiarizing, and the penalties are severe. (See the “Plagiarism and Academic Honesty” section of this manual.) A research paper should demonstrate what you have learned, but it should also show that you have a perspective on the subject.

To ensure that you do not plagiarize, always include a Works Cited page at the end of your essay—details of the Works Cited page and the research essay are outlined on pages 340-345 of the Canadian Practical Stylist. Be sure to familiarize yourself with Chapter 11 before proceeding with your final paper.