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 Reasons for Writing an Essay May Include Your Writing Assignment

Teacher

Reasons for writing an essay will include assignments that your instructor gives you. Many people ponder exactly where to start. Others fear that they will get lost along the way to completing it. It’s also very common that many students do not understand the prompt. Misunderstanding the prompt, and writing the essay, will result in futility.

Educators understand the reasons for writing an essay and will help their students to also uncover these reasons.

Corbin tells us that the "reasons for writing an essay will vary depending on the type of essay that you are producing, but are generally categorized under three groups: i) creative and/or personal, ii) formal and informative iii) persuasive and evidence-based" (pt. 1).

Recall that there are four types of popular essays. They are:

  •  Narrative
  • Descriptive
  • Expository
  • Argumentative

Because of their creative and sometimes personal styles, the narrative, and some descriptive essays fall into the first group. In this category, the story can be written in [the] first person. The author puts his feelings and experiences in this category (Corbyn pt. 1).

If you were asked to write a narrative or a descriptive essay, you can use colorful words to paint a picture of what you're trying to convey. The personal essay falls into these categories where you use the first person pronoun. The first person is I, me, or my. You can then tell your personal story about the strange incident you encountered in the woods. Or you can describe in detail how you almost fell into a lake that you thought was frozen. 

The expository and argumentative essays use persuasion through evidence to tell their stories. In addition, these essays will give their stance on the topic (Corbyn pt. 1).

Reasons for Writing an Essay May
Include Mastering it

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Many things can intimidate us. When they do, it causes us anxiety and affects our ability to carry out our duties with a clear head. If one of the reasons for writing an essay is to master it so that it lessens intimidation, getting a deeper understanding as to how these categories are used in certain disciplines will help.

Here is more information regarding how narrative and descriptive essays are used.

Narrative and personal descriptive essays are largely used for obtaining creative writing degrees, but can also be used in the social sciences. These include anthropology. Here, the anthropologist's essay can include his personal experience on a particular topic. Barristers, developing their stories for a case, also use these types of essays (Corbyn pt. 1).

As stated above, descriptive essays are used mostly for obtaining creative writing degrees and in the social sciences, but there is another type of descriptive essay, the informative descriptive essay. 

The informative descriptive essays are most often used in the natural and mathematical sciences. Without using argument, these essays show expertise on a given subject (Corbyn pt. 1 ).

Here is a more in-depth view regarding the expository and argumentative essays:

.. . expository and argumentative essays are widely used across the humanities, natural sciences, mathematical sciences, and social sciences -- they can be found pretty much anywhere! As mentioned, this could include a history paper making a claim about the cause and effect of a particular event, a social science paper comparing schools of thought, or a natural sciences’ paper arguing for a medical advancement to solve an international problem. (Corbyn pt. 1)

Knowing that different disciplines might favor different writing styles, will help you to learn these different styles since one of your reasons for writing an essay is to master it. However, knowing that your instructor may use any of these styles will also keep you from getting blindsided.

 Many Reasons for Writing an Essay
Simply Include Getting Good Grades

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Getting accepted into college may not be an easy task. There is competition. Besides having to submit a personal statement, students will need to provide a transcript of their grades. Admission officers look closely at these grades. If yours aren’t high enough, your chances of getting accepted to college are slim.

Since one of the reasons for writing an essay will be to get a good grade, you will need to focus on just how to do this. You’ll need to discipline yourself by making sure you:

  • Understand the prompt. Ask for clarification if needed
  • Understand the different types of essays
  • Give yourself plenty of time to complete your essay
  • Make sure your essay is in the proper format
  • Edit and proofread your paper

Reasons for writing an essay vary. Make sure you understand your reasons and make sure you have addressed them. In this way, you may alleviate your fear of writing an essay and achieve a good grade at the same time.

Corbyn, Joe. Essay Writing: A reference guide to organizing and writing argumentative essays, classification essays, process essays, and more. JP Publishing, LLC, 2020. Kindle Edition.

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