College
students are required to write essays. There are many types of
essays, however, and they don't look much alike.
What are students to do?
More to the point, what are you to do? After all, your job is
to make it possible for them to learn to write the kind of expository
prose demanded
by colleges and employers.
Let's take a bird's eye view of various types of essays, or what
English teachers call essay genres.
Persuasive essays
The most formulaic — and most easily teachable — writing
style is the thesis-and-support
or persuasive
writing pattern. It is thoroughly expository, laying information
out in so clear a manner that no sensible person would miss the
point.
Obviously, the persuasive pattern is the basis for persuasive
essays. However, it also is the chassis for various other
expository essays, such as the:
This list doesn't begin to cover the titles used to describe
essays built on the persuasive pattern. To make things more complicated,
thesis-and-support essays can be hybrids, such as a literary analysis
that compares and contrasts two literary works.
Narrative essays
The least formulaic expository pattern is the
narrative essay, which has much in common with imaginative
writing. Unlike expository writing, imaginative or expressive
writing isn't required to be obvious. The value of narrative
value may come from making the reader dig to understand its subtlety.
Of all the types of essays, the narrative essay is the most difficult
to teach or learn to write. Fortunately, ordinary people rarely
have any need to write a narrative essay. After high school, a
student will probably write one narrative essay in college and
never ever write another.
Narrative
essays use fiction techniques like setting, plot, characters,
and dialogue. However, unlike fiction, the narrative
essay is primarily written to make a point
rather than to entertain readers.
Narrative essays require a mature reflection on the significance
of one's experience that few high school students can manage.
If you plan attempt teaching narrative essays, I've provided
some tips on teaching
the narrative essay and a sample
narrative essay about teaching writing that I wrote in the
format students use in their early attempts at narrative essays.
All students, however, can — and should — learn to write
anecdotes, which can be used in lieu of several pieces of
evidence in a body paragraph. Writing anecdotes eases students toward
understanding the narrative essay.
You can also use reflective informal
writing activities to move students toward the objectivity
required to write a narrative essay. Ultimately, developing objectivity
is more important than writing narrative essays.
Crossover essays
A few essay types incorporate both persuasive and narrative
essay elements. They are:
-
Cause-and-effect essay
-
Process essay
-
How-to essay
Each of these essays includes a narrative element that's more than
just a simple anecdote.
Implications for teaching
Educational
best practice is to teach writing in one essay genre until all
students are competent in it.
After students master that one genre, they can learn to write another
kind of essay readily by noting how it resembles or differs from
the one they know.
