The Types of Academic Essays
admin January 17th, 2008
Essay is a kind of paper presenting the author’s subjective point of view on a certain debatable issue. Academic essay papers can be of different types that will be presented in the given article. Some academic essay papers are longer than the others (for about 2,000 to 5,000 word limit). They usually begin with the short summary analysis on what has been already written on the topic, that is called “literature review”.
Long essay usually consist of the introductory paragraphs where the thesis statement is defined. The list given below enumerates all existing academic essay papers:
- Descriptive essays – the purpose of descriptive essay writing is to present the events or personalities vividly for the reader to get the image of what he/she is reading about;
- Compare-contrast essays – the purpose of writing this essay type of papers is to develop relation of 2 or more things, using simile;
- Narrative essays – the purpose of narrative essay writing is to describe the events from the subjective vantage point. This kind of essay papers can be written in 1st person singular past tense;
- Persuasive essays – in this essay type of the writer aims to persuade the reader in a certain point of view or agree with his/her own opinion;
- Argumentative essays – they set the thesis statements and then provide reasons for thinking that this thesis is true;
- Reflective essays – this essay type of deals with topics of abstract nature, such as habits, ambitions, etc.