The essay is a unique literary genre. In essence, this is any short work-essay written in private on any issue. The key feature of the essay is its author's design - in contrast to the styles of scientific and journalistic, which have a strict specification of style. At the same time, essays are ranked below fiction.
Terminology
Briefly, we can formulate such a definition of an essay - this is the rationale for a person's personal point of view in writing. Nevertheless, it should be borne in mind that the work of this literary genre does not claim to be the basis of the issue under consideration or its exhaustive information source. Such an essay contains the author's conclusions and conclusions. Therefore, how to write an essay, a sample of its writing and requirements are only recommendations or a setrules (refers to the latter), and the main part should be occupied by your thoughts.
Historical background
Essay comes from the French "attempt", "trial", "essay". And this genre was also born in this beautiful country, back in the Renaissance. The French writer and philosopher Michel de Montaigne first tried to write "about everything and about nothing, without a preliminary theme and plan of action." He claimed that he liked to soften the boldness of his thoughts by adding mildly questioning "maybe" and "probably" speculations to sentences. So "possible" - has become an expression of the formula of essayistics in principle. Epstein, in turn, defined this genre as a kind of meta-hypothesis, with its own original reality and way of depicting this reality.
Differences from the novel
The essay genre developed in parallel with the novel genre. The latter, however, is more familiar to Russian literature, especially classical. The essay, in turn, had a huge impact on Western prose.
Unlike a novel, an essay is monologue and represents the individuality of the author. This narrows its scope as a genre, and the picture of the world is presented in an extremely subjective way. At the same time, the essay is inevitably interesting because it reveals the inner world of a particular person, not fictional, but entirely real - with its advantages and disadvantages. The style of such a literary work always contains the imprint of the human soul. The novel, on the other hand, reveals the characters of all the characters and heroes who have come out from underpen of the author, no less interesting, but virtually, unreal.
Why write an essay?
Students and applicants on the eve of exams often have a question about how to write an essay. A sample of writing this type of work is also often sought, and it is worth saying that it is not difficult to find it. But why write it at all? This question also has an answer.
Writing an essay develops creative thinking, writing skills. A person learns to identify cause-and-effect relationships, structure information, formulate what he would like to express, argue his point of view, illustrating it with various examples, and summarize the material presented.
Usually essays are devoted to philosophical, intellectual and moral and ethical issues. The latter is often used to assign essays to schoolchildren - they are not subject to strict requirements, referring to insufficient erudition and the informal design of the work.
Classification
Conventionally, essays are divided according to the following criteria:
- According to the content. This includes artistic and artistic-publicistic, historical and philosophical, spiritual and religious, etc.
- According to the literary form. Among them may be letters or a diary, notes or reviews, lyrical miniatures.
- The shape. Such as: descriptive, narrative, reflective, analytical, compositional and critical.
- According to the form of description, subjective and objective are distinguished. The first reflect the characteristics of the author's personality, the secondaimed at describing an object, phenomenon, process, and so on.
Distinguishing Features
Essays can be "identified" by the following features:
- Small volume. Usually up to seven pages of printed text, although different schools may have their own requirements for this. In some universities, an essay is a full-fledged work of 10 pages, in others they appreciate a summary of all their thoughts on two sheets.
- Specific. An essay usually answers one specific question, which is often formulated in the topic of the assignment. The interpretation of the answer is subjective and contains the author's conclusions. Again, depending on the specification of the essay, it may be necessary to look at the issue from all angles, even if half of the opinions described are by no means directly related to the author.
- Free composition. The essay is notable for its associative narrative. Logical connections are thought out by the author, following his thinking. Recall that the essay reveals his inner world.
- Paradoxes. Moreover, the phenomenon of paradoxes takes place not only in the text itself, but also in the principles of the essay itself: after all, this literary genre, although presented in a free narrative, must have semantic integrity.
- Consistency of the theses and statements of the author. Even if the author is a contradictory nature, he is obliged to explain why he cannot choose one point of view, and not lose the thread of the story, either breaking it or starting anew. In the end, even the pages of the diary, converted into an essay, are framed by literary norms. After all, the final essayread not only by the author himself.
How to write an essay?
A work sample can be confusing for a beginner: one or two examples will not help the author, who cannot understand what is actually required of him.
First of all, it is worth mentioning that in order to write a so-called essay, you must be fluent in the topic. If, when writing, you have to turn to many sources for information, the essay ceases to be one. This rule comes from the fact that in his “test” the author expresses his true point of view, although, of course, he can emphasize it with quotes from great people, etc. Of course, in order for the data to be reliable, it is necessary to check them. But the essay is not written on the basis of the material, but starting from it, coming to its own conclusions and results.
Why are there problems with spelling?
Many students struggle to find sample essays because schools don't give enough time to write this type of work. School essays, although they are classified as this genre, and some teachers formulate the task using this particular terminology, still do not have a specific specification. As mentioned earlier, school essays are not even always called as such. In secondary schools, children are just beginning to learn how to formulate their thoughts in a literary format. That is why many come to take the Unified State Examination with fear - they will have to express their point of view in a short time, while they do not know how to do it at all.
Structureessay
Essay topics are usually presented in the form of quotes of famous people, with which the writer may agree or disagree, arguing his opinion.
That is why it is recommended to start an essay with the words "I agree with this opinion" or "I cannot say what I think in the same way as the author", or "this statement seems to me controversial, although on some points I I join this opinion".
The second sentence should contain an explanation of how the statement was understood. You need to write from yourself - what, in the opinion of the writer, the author wanted to say and why he thinks so.
The main part of the essay is a detailed presentation of the author's point of view, according to the principle "I think so, because …". You can seek help from other quotes and aphorisms that the writer agrees with.
Conclusion of the essay - the results of the work. This is a mandatory item that makes the work complete.
Let's consider the main subjects on which essays are written.
Social Studies
Social science is an academic discipline, the subject of which is a complex of social sciences. The close relationship of social doctrines is considered, and not each of them separately.
So, social studies course may include:
- sociology;
- political science;
- philosophy;
- psychology;
- economy.
The basics of these disciplines are being studied.
Sample essay in social studies is often necessary for graduates whenwriting the exam. The structure of this essay fully corresponds to the structure given above. At the knowledge test, students can be given statements by famous philosophers, sociologists and other figures in the social sciences as a topic.
Below is a sample social studies essay (in brief).
Theme: "In time of war the laws are silent. Lucan"
After reading this statement for the first time, I decided that I absolutely agree with this statement. But a little later it occurred to me that this quote, like almost everything in our world, is not so simple.
I associate another notorious aphorism with Lucan's statement - "In love and in war, all means are good." Probably because many unconditionally follow this rule, considering it to be true, and it turns out that in wartime all laws prefer to keep quiet.
But there is another side of the coin: in times of war, the very law of war operates. "Kill or be killed." And glorious heroes follow the laws that their hearts tell them. In the name of loved ones, relatives and friends.
So it turns out that war creates new laws. Tougher and more uncompromising than peacetime.
Of course, I can understand Lucan: all of his quotes suggest that this man had a pacifist point of view. I also consider myself to be peaceful. But this particular statement does not pass a logical test on my part, so I cannot say that I agree with it."
At the exam itself, they put a limit on the number of words in the interval form. It is very important to adhere to them, otherwise even a well-defined essay structure will not pass the examiner's verification.
History
History is ranked among the sciences of society and nature. Despite the fact that the curriculum adheres to the division of this discipline into two separate ones: the world and the country in which they study, the basics of writing an essay for both subjects are similar to each other.
In choosing a topic for writing an essay on history, they can often deviate from aphorisms and quotes. With equal success, these can be reflections on the global consequences of wars, an assessment of the actions of notorious Decembrists or dissidents, an author's opinion about any historical person or phenomenon. To write an essay on history, a student (or applicant, or student) must have solid knowledge on a given topic. At the same time, a sample essay on social science is not suitable as an example, because this discipline often considers moral and ethical issues. Although writing an essay on this subject requires sufficient erudition in many areas.
But the question of how to write an essay is important. The sample historical essay in its structure, again, does not deviate from the given rules. However, additional requirements may be imposed on it in the form of a used list of references and a title page.
Writing an essay on history
Even if a sample history essay is not at hand at the moment, you can write an excellent essay by following these rules:
- To startlooking for information on a given topic: even if it is well known, it does not interfere with repeating the material.
- Next, it needs to be structured, to identify cause-and-effect relationships, to roughly describe the plan along which the reasoning will move forward.
- It is important to think through arguments and counterarguments.
- About the style: it is better to ask the teacher which one is recommended to use. In rare but present cases, it is necessary to write in a scientific style.
- Don't forget about the conclusion (the importance of the results of the work is described in the description of the essay structure).
Russian language
An essay on the Russian language is somewhat like a school essay-reasoning, but on such knowledge tests as the USE, it includes more writing rules. Therein lies its complexity.
The essay must be written according to the text proposed by the examiners, therefore it is necessary:
- Reveal the problems of this text.
- Describe aspects of the problem.
- Argue your point of view about what the author wanted to say.
- Draw conclusions.
As you can see, a clarification is added to the usual structure of an essay: the topic (in this case, problems) is identified by the writer and formulated by him. In addition, when checking an essay in the Russian language, more attention is paid to speech, grammatical and punctuation errors. Additional points in favor of the author in the eyes of the verifier are added when using literary arguments, well-known examples, and so on. Consistency also plays an important role here. Sample essay onthe Russian language must clearly follow all the above requirements.
English
In essays on English in post-Soviet countries, where it is not native, they completely depart from the rule of giving a statement or a quote as a topic. When translated into Russian, they are often very simple, and writing an essay itself is aimed at checking the use of a foreign language when presenting one's thoughts.
Great attention should be paid to grammar, different tenses, complex constructions, synonymization of simple words.
Essay in English: classification
Compositions in English are usually divided into three types:
- "for" and "against" any phenomenon that is the topic of the essay;
- opinion essay, in which it is very important to look at the topic from different angles;
- offering a solution to some problem (often they give something global).
Writing an Essay in English
And here is a specific task: to write an essay in English. An example of how this can be done is provided below.
- Use introductory words: moreover, indeed, generally, mostly, usually, recently, besides.
- Insert template phrases to start a paragraph with: to begin with, doubtless, one argument is support of.
- Use English clichés, set phrases, idioms, idioms and sayings: long story short, one cannot deny, one does not simply, nail drives out nail.
- Don't forget how to speak Englishformulate a conclusion: in conclusion, I can say that although, so it’s up to everybody to decide whether … or not.
Design
The above has detailed how to write an essay. The sample, although formally only one was provided, reflects the essence of what is happening and what the inspector wants to see in the opus handed over to him.
But after the essay has been written, there is a problem with its design.
Usually, this specification is specified by the teacher. And the obstacle lies specifically in how to arrange the title page in the essay.
A sample is shown below.
At the top of the page, in the middle, line by line:
Ministry of Education and Science (country name), full name of the higher education institution, faculty, department.
In the center of the sheet:
discipline, essay topic.
From the right side of the page:
student(s) of the group (group name), last name, first name, patronymic.
Bottom of page, middle:
city, year of writing.
From which it follows that making a title page in an essay (the sample shows this very well) is not difficult. The requirements are close to those of the abstract specification.
For example, if you consider a sample essay on history, you can make sure that in this case the work is written on the basis of the sources used. So sometimes a bibliography is required. But even this does not bring much difficulty in how the essay is drawn up. The sample for writing a list of used literature is the same asas well as reports, abstracts and other similar works.
For example:
Ratus LG "Philosophy in the Modern Age". - 1980, No. 3. - S. 19-26.
Mishevsky MO "Historical influence of psychology". - P.: Thought, 1965. - 776 p.
Kegor S. M. "Horror and awe". - K.: Respublika, 1983 - 183 p.
Yarosh D. "Personality in the concept of society". - M.: Roslit, 1983. - 343 p. (All sources provided are fictitious and reflect only an example of their design.)
Conclusion
A detailed classification of essay types was provided at the beginning of the article. Summing up, we can identify its simplified section, taking into account all those mentioned here. So, conditionally select:
- Essays that are written when passing the exam (they have clear volume limits, up to the number of words, are written within exactly the agreed time, measured in hours or even minutes, do not have a specification in the form of a title page and a bibliography, in turn, are divided by subject, depending on the academic discipline).
- Essays written by students of various universities (volume is determined in pages, from two to seven, terms are allocated based on the frequency of classes, seminars, lectures, are drawn up according to the above information, along with a title page and a list of sources used).
The article contains: terminology, history, essay design, work sample, structure and requirements. All this will help to successfully write and design this work.
