Hereâs how to craft an effective explanatory essay:
How do ideas gain traction? How does a point of view become widely adopted? In most cases, it’s because many people take that information, and present it to new audiences in ways that they can understand. That’s the purpose of an explanatory essay. You select a topic, then use evidence, data, and solid logic to support it.
Like other essay types, explanatory writing revolves around a central idea. Students are expected to explore and critically analyze the main idea. Their primary goal is to provide the audience with a clear understanding of the essay topic. They must present their findings in a well-structured and objective manner. Explanatory writing examples include how-to guides, college course outlines, informative essays, etc. Such essays are common academic writing assignments, especially in the fields of journalism and history. Generally, students are assigned essay topics by teachers. However, sometimes students have the opportunity to select their own topic. Typically, the type of explanation you write is determined by the assignment your teachers have assigned you. However, if you choose it on your own, think about an article topic and its central direction based on the notes below: The primary purpose of an explanatory essay is to convey vital information to the reader without any criticism. The writer doesn’t need to agree or disagree with the research topic. But, instead, it is the writer’s job to evaluate the evidence and present the findings. The writer must be objective and neutral when composing their arguments. Explanatory writing (also known as an expository essay) is one of the four classic discourse styles in composition studies. Narration, description, and reasoning are all the primary elements of such a writing style. Explanatory essays intend to inform, educate, or explain a particular phenomenon. It is a descriptive that is used to shed light on a specific topic. In such writing, the author researches and investigates the topic. The writer presents facts using statistics, examples, graphs, and charts to inform the reader.
How to research effectively for an explanatory essay.
As a factual piece of writing, explanatory essays provide lucid and unbiased explanations of an event. Instead of debating or arguing about a point of view, you just state facts in expository essays. Because many students struggle to create authentic expository essays, we have compiled this guide to help ease the writing process.
Crafting a thesis statement for explanatory essays.
A body section of an explanatory essay should contain main arguments and support a thesis statement. Basically, students need to ensure all the topic sentences relate to a main thesis statement (Sentell, 2020). In this case, essayists can support a central claim with adequate evidence while writing. As a result, explanatory compositions must contain accurate in-text citations in all the sentences that contain borrowed evidence.
Organizing your explanatory essay: Outline essentials.
Like all other essays, explanatory essays have common elements such as an introduction, the main body, and a conclusion. Furthermore, it is widely used in academics and forms part of the school, college, and university curriculum. Such essays are used to assess and improve the students writing and comprehension skills.
Writing introductions that captivate in explanatory essays.
An explanatory essay should contain a summative conclusion section. In writing, a last paragraph should restate a thesis statement and summarize all the topic sentences presented in an entire text (Sentell, 2020). As a rule, a closing section cannot contain new evidence. Instead, one should bring an overall work to a satisfactory closure and join all the main ideas together.
Developing coherent body paragraphs in explanatory essays.
An introduction section of an explanatory essay must begin with a hook. Basically, such an approach enables writers to capture a reader’s attention (Sentell, 2020). In this case, essayists give a brief overview of a chosen theme to show a particular scope that an entire essay must take. Besides, a closing sentence should include writing a thesis statement. In turn, outstanding papers should have debatable thesis statements.
Concluding your explanatory essay: Summarizing key points.
In most cases, you will choose a topic that is relevant to your class, then you will approach the topic from a specific angle. This usually means supporting a specific idea or point of view. For example, if you take a class in economics, you might write an explanatory essay in support of Keynesian economics.