- The main purposes of an essay
- Statement of arguments or examples
- Entertain or tell a story
- 3- Demonstrate learning or knowledge
- 4- Inform
- References
The purpose of an essay is normally to entertain, inform or express a personal opinion. An essay is a text generally written in prose and by a single author where a particular topic is analyzed or interpreted.
Frequently used in education and academic settings, it is characterized by granting a lot of freedom to the writer, since although it has certain rules, these are flexible and not so strict, allowing a fairly open point of view.
There are several types of essay, such as narrative, literary, comparative or descriptive, the difference between these is the amount of arguments or subjectivity, as well as their purpose.
To achieve its mission, the information expressed in an essay must be properly organized and supported. This organization depends on the author, but usually has the following structure.
-Introduction: presentation of the topic.
-Development: main content where the opinions of the author are expressed.
-Conclusion: summary of the reasons and issues presented.
The main purposes of an essay
Statement of arguments or examples
Many times the presentation of a hypothesis is carried out through an essay, in which case it would be a scientific essay.
Using formal language (although technical language can also be used), the information search methods, the phenomena studied, the rigor of the tests and the conclusions reached by the author are exposed.
Although it is a text where it must be argued with concrete facts, only part of a scientific essay deals with this issue. The rest of the content should include the personal opinion of the author where he explains his ideas.
Entertain or tell a story
The essay is a literary genre, so like poetry or drama, it can be used for the simple purpose of entertaining the reader.
This form of essay is represented by the literary essay, where the topics are not addressed with the depth that is presented in more educational or informative texts.
For the literary essay, subjectivity and other resources such as metaphor are used a lot, which also depends on the style of the author.
It is the type of essay that can be considered "freer", since it does not try to convince with solid arguments, but rather to present different observations.
3- Demonstrate learning or knowledge
At the academic level, an essay is a way of evaluating the learning that a student has on a topic seen in class.
Since it allows a lot of freedom when writing, the author can justify his ideas while presenting his personal opinion, and not necessarily base his position on scientific sources.
These types of texts are generally called academic essays. Apart from being a means of measuring the degree of knowledge of students on the subject, it serves to discover their own opinions.
4- Inform
The purpose of an essay can also be as simple as reporting something, either describing or comparing 2 events, objects, or situations.
Of course, even if it is not based on scientific opinion, the text must be organized and structured in a logical way.
References
- Elizabeth Abrams (2000). Essay Structure. Retrieved on October 3, 2017, from Harvard University.
- Essay Characteristics (sf). Retrieved on October 3, 2017, from Western University.
- Descriptive Essay (nd). Retrieved on October 3, 2017, from Study.
- Types of trials (nd). Retrieved on October 3, 2017, from Typesde.
- Orlando Cáceres Ramírez (September 28, 2016). Literary essay. Retrieved on October 3, 2017, from AboutEspañol.