At any stage of your academic career, you’ll come across multiple essay writing exercises that will gauge how well you can express your thoughts critically. While many students type “do my essay for me” to hire professional writers, essay writing isn’t as challenging as it seems.

As essays are a regular part of their academics, a survey found that, out of 26 students, 50% rated themselves to be pretty fair in essays. Meanwhile, 4% saw themselves to be extremely poor at the task. Thus, while studies have shown that the average student does quite well in essays, some struggle to frame their writing in the best possible manner.

An excellent way to improve your essay writing skills is to understand that all essays are not the same. There are five major essay categories that you have to be aware of to frame your writing in the most appropriate manner. Hence, let’s take a look at what these essay types are.

Types Of Essays With Example Topics

1. Descriptive essay

As the name suggests, a descriptive essay “describes” the topic in great detail to immerse the reader into the atmosphere. You can describe anything you want, such as an object, a person, an incident, an emotion, or a situation. However, the crucial point is that the description has to be vivid. Otherwise, your essay will not fall under the descriptive category.

Some examples of descriptive essay topics that you can work on are:

  • Describe the feelings that you experience when you see the sunset
  • How would you describe your first experience of independence?
  • Describe the person closest to your heart
  • Explain how you would feel meeting your ancestors
  • Describe the moment when you realised there was no Santa Claus
  • How did you celebrate your first day in school?

2. Narrative essay

A narrative essay revolves its central theme around a specific motif. Like a short story, it shares the elements of an introduction, body, and conclusion, along with certain characters, plot, setting, and climax. 

The crucial element in any narrative essay is the plot. In most of these essays, you have to narrate a personal experience. However, what matters the most is how well you can tell a story and bring it to a proper conclusion while extracting a moral from the narrative.

Some examples of narrative essay topics are:

  • The memory that you cherish the most
  • Your first flight
  • A trip to the beach
  • The thing that you fear the most
  • The day you helped your neighbour
  • Your first summer vacation trip

3. Persuasive essay

Most students find narrative and descriptive essays easy to write. However, when it comes to persuasive essays, you’d find the demand for online writing services suddenly surge. The reason is that this kind of writing is slightly more challenging.

In a persuasive essay, you have to convince the reader to agree with your point of view. As human beings are not monolithic, every person has their opinion on specific issues. As a result, convincing someone to agree with your viewpoint can be difficult if you do not present your arguments clearly and concisely.

Some persuasive essay examples are:

  • Should schools make foreign language a compulsory subject?
  • Do you think the government should lower the legal age for voting?
  • There should be curbs on media to minimise the spread of false information
  • Do you think building a wall will solve the migration issues of the US?
  • Should the medical board make it compulsory to wear masks outside?
  • Should the law abolish the death penalty?

4. Argumentative essay

In an argumentative essay, you’ll have to argue for or against a controversial topic and substantiate your views with facts and evidence. It is slightly different than a persuasive essay since your personal opinions won’t hold much importance in this instance.

An excellent argumentative essay convinces the readers by presenting both the claims and counterclaims surrounding the topics using fact-based reasoning.

Some argumentative essay topic examples are:

  • Has social media created more distance between human beings?
  • Reading e-books is better than traditional books
  • Do fashion companies have a moral obligation for unhealthy body expectations?
  • Is it ethical to deny abortion to women who are unable to support themselves financially?
  • Should schools do away with standardised testing?
  • Do you think schools should make counselling compulsory for all students?

5. Analytical Essay

In an analytical essay, you have to critically analyse a concept, issue, character, or situation. Here, your primary goal is to improve the reader’s understanding of the topic. 

As an analytical essay seems pretty similar to critical analysis, many students tend to substantiate one with the other and end up depending on English assignment help when their grades decline. However, you have to keep in mind that these two are slightly different.

In literature, an analytical essay primarily analyses a literary text. However, a critical essay would also include analysing the author’s literary devices and techniques.

Some examples of analytical essay topics are:

  • The effect of cyberbullying online
  • Importance of a proper work-life balance
  • Analyse the protagonist of any Shakespearean play
  • The relation between higher education and the quality of life
  • Does the financial situation of a neighbourhood affect its crime rate?
  • The influence of parents on a child’s life

Once you understand the nuances of each essay, it becomes much easier to frame your writing.

4 Tips To Write An Excellent Essay

Writing an essay becomes easier the more you practice. However, there are some tips that you can follow to make the task easier. 

1. Prepare an outline

Before you start writing your essay, it is best to frame an outline. This will act as a skeleton to your writing and ensure that you don’t forget any crucial points in the paper.

2. Divide the essay

You can divide an essay into three parts – the introduction, the body, and the conclusion. Each section has its purpose and shouldn’t be a repetition of each other.

3. Understand the topic

The quality of your essay depends on your understanding and how accurately you can express it. As a result, it is always best to conduct proper research into the topic before writing your paper.

4. Proofread your paper

It’s common to have minor spelling and grammatical errors in your essay despite all efforts to be careful. Hence, you should proofread your paper before submission to rectify all such mistakes.

Summing it up,

The best way to make the most out of any essay writing exercise is to treat it as a learning opportunity. Every essay that you write teaches you something. Hence, you can improve significantly as long as you avoid making the same errors in the future. Moreover, when you understand how to approach each essay, you’ll naturally find it easier to write a high-quality paper independently.

Author bio:

Anne Gill is a Professor of Literature at an esteemed college in the UK. She has researched extensively in Shakespearean and Elizabethan literature and conducts various seminars on the subject frequently. In addition, Drew loves to spend time with her family during weekends and go on camping trips.