English Essay writing skills

                                               English Essay

    An essay is a piece of academic writing generally between 2500 and 5000 words long. The word ‘essay’ originally meant a first attempt or practice, which perhaps suggests some kind of opinion exploration. Essay is an intellectual exploration of a topic, involving looking at different arguments and evidence and developing the writer’s opinion. An essay consists of three major parts:

   A. The introduction

B. The main body

C. The conclusion

   The introduction and the conclusion, although very important, are often relatively short. The bulk of an essay, both in form and substance, is contained in the main body. The introduction is intended to lead the reader into the topic and clarify what the essay will specifically deal with. 

It usually consists of one paragraph, but this depends on the length of the essay and the amount of background information the context requires. 

The introduction will contain a key sentence (or, if necessary, more than one). The main body deals with the major ideas that support the statement. Each main idea is presented in a separate paragraph and developed with supporting ideas in the form of explanations, definitions, or similar, and illustrated with examples, quotation, facts and data where appropriate or necessary.

 The conclusion brings the reader back to the purpose of the essay and draws all the points together before making a final comment on the result of the discussion/argument. Often this final comment will point towards some consequence the discussion may have for the future or make some observation about what the discussion has revealed on a general level. 

Ultimately an essay will show a progression from a general level (in the introduction) down to the specific (the statement and body) and back up to the general level again (conclusion). The purpose of writing an academic essay is to provide written evidence of your ability to give your opinion on a topic, weigh arguments, organize your thoughts, express these thoughts in a logical, coherent, critical and right grammatical manner, and reach conclusions which follow from the evidence and the arguments you put forward. In short an essay is the opinion of the writer in 20-25 paragraphs in most comprehensive way. 

Furthermore a good and an attractive essay must have following five components;

A. Structure

B. Content

C. Expression

D. Grammar

E. Arguments

The Writing Process

 Every productive work requires some kind of planning. Essay writing is a creative process; hence it requires planning as well. A good essay writer plans it into following stages;

Selection of the topic

Understanding of the topic

Prepared structure

Definite knowledge

Interest

Academic qualification

Pre-writing stage

Gathering of information

brainstorming

free writing

looping

invisible writing

Organization of information

selection

categorization

placement

outline

Drafting Stage

Structure

Content

Expression

Grammar

Arguments

Post drafting stage

a. Revision

b. Edition