Hi, my name is Rick and I have developed this article to assist people in developing an effective Essay. Before I go any further, let me provide a little of my background. I have done technical writing for most of my long career, including award winning “position papers” that had a direct impact on multi-million dollar decisions. Additionally, I have spent a significant portion of my recent career assisting the international community on development of Essays, Dissertations, Research Papers and Thesis. Okay now that I have that out of the way, let’s talk about the definition of “effective”. The word “effective” is an adjective can be defined as: successful in producing a desired or intended result.
So, the key point here is to produce an essay that achieves its desire result, which is to inform the reader, whether or teacher, professor or other audience, in a brief and concise way the key points of the selected topic. Additionally, an essay should flow, have a methodical and logical delivery. This organization of information, of words, and its delivery to the reader, is usually dictated by the type of Essay which is being written. While there are many types of essays, I will list five major ones, with a brief description of each. Finally, I will provide an example of one type of essay.
Five general types of Essays:
- Five Paragraph
a. This style follows the organization of an introduction, description body and a conclusion reinforcing the thesis. - Cause and Effect
a. This type of essay requires you to conduct significant research so that you can relate the two critical points, cause and its effect. For example, you may want to write about social issue of homelessness or poverty, and in doing so, you would look for casual factors as well as the effects they have on society. - Argumentative
a. This type of essay requires you to take a position on a topic, such as whether smoking cigarettes should be banned. In this case, you would want to research the data/information required for you to support your position, in order to make as compelling argument as possible. - Research
a. In this type of essay, often used to support technical, medical studies and others, the student is asked to research a specific topic and draw a conclusion based on objective data and references. An example may be based on an assignment to do an essay on a new technology that reduces energy consumption. - Compare and Contrast
a. For this type of essay, you would discuss both the similarities and differences between two different items. The body of the essay would provide substantiating detail for each of those items, and the conclusion will weigh one against the other with a decision point. An example, perhaps you are comparing two modes of transportation, public and private transportation. You will identify key characteristics of both, and you may conclude that public transportation is better for society as it would reduce traffic congestion etc.
Interesting enough, we often transcribe our essay approach to formal PowerPoint presentations, such as in the example below
So I think we have given you a general idea of the major types of essays, and how this format also applies to other methods for delivering information. Now we will provide an example, which was written about “Effective Communication”. In this case, this was also used to support an oral discussion on the topic, but the principles are the same.