What is the Purpose of an Essay?

Series Summary

At about the third grade, every child gets introduced to what will soon become their worst enemy for the next 15 years. That's right, at about the ripe age of 10, every kid meets the essay. The essay has been around since the early modern period and has been re-popularized in the 1970's by deconstructionists like Jacque Derrida and other post-structuralists. Since the resurgence of this literary form, the essay has become the preferred educational medium for argumentation, compare and contrast, description, and antecdotal narrative. All said, whether it's a one page essay or a fifty page essay, writing essays can be a daunting task for all ages.

In this free video series, award winning English and Journalism teacher Peggy Charlton teaches how to write an essay. Learn the purpose of an essay, different types of essays, how to gather facts and research, how to cite sources, how to develop an introduction, a body and a conclusion, how to proofread, how to fix grammar and run on sentences, how to use a thesaurus. Essay writing has never been so well explained and easy, so watch this educational series from Expert Village.

Video Transcript

"Hello! I'm Peggy Charlton for Expert Village on how to write an essay. The first thing that you have to do to write an essay is figure out what your purpose is. Purpose is very important. The purpose of the essay would be the aim of the essay or the plan of the essay. For instance if you're doing this for a professor or a high school teacher and they're telling you to write an imforative essay and you write a perssuasive. As far as me being an English teacher for 20 years, I would have given an F to that student. Purpose is so important. If you don't meet your purpose, nothing else matters. Let me give you an example of what I'm talking about. If you were to write and imformative essay on say a historical figure and you pick Abraham Lincoln and you write the paper on how he was not an effective president, you purpose is lost; you're pursuading. You must fit your purpose in right, and usually the essays are pursuasive or an informative."