essay

Essay Writing: Types of Essays

Critical Review
This type of essay can be either formal or informal, depending on the context. Its goal is to evaluate a work such as an article or book. Your personal, informed, opinion plays a significant role in the process. However, a certain objective standard needs to be maintained and, as in an argumentative essay, your assertions need to be proved.
The formality of the review will be determined by how much of the essay is analysis, how much is summary and how much is your reaction to the work you are reviewing. A more formal review will not only discuss the work on its own merits but also place it in context. Newspapers and popular magazines often review in terms of finance: is this CD or film worth spending your money on? Critical journals will attempt to determine whether a new novel or play has achieved something new and significant. A good review will discuss both the qualities and the importance of a given work.

Research (Analytical)
The research essay leads you into the works of others and asks you to compare their thoughts with your own. Writing a research paper involves going to source material and synthesising what you learn from it with your own ideas. You must find texts on the subject and use them to support the topic you have been given to explore. Because it is easy to become lost in a wilderness of source material, you must take particular care to narrow your topic. A research paper should demonstrate what you have learned, but it should also show that you have a perspective of your own on the subject.
The greatest danger inherent in the research essay is plagiarism. If your paper consists of a string of quotations or paraphrases with little input of your own, you are not synthesising but copying, and you should expect a low grade. If any of the borrowings are unacknowledged, you are plagiarising, and the penalties can be severe.
Literary
In the literary essay, you are exploring the meaning and construction of a piece of literature. This task is more complicated than reviewing, though the two are similarly evaluative. In a review you are discussing the overall effect and validity of written work, while in a literary essay you are paying more attention to specifics. A literary essay focuses on such elements as structure, character, theme, style, tone and subtext. You are taking a piece of writing and trying to discover how and why it is put together the way it is. You must adopt a viewpoint on the work in question and show how the details of the work support your viewpoint.
A literary essay may be your own interpretation, based only on your reading of the piece, or it may be a mixture of your opinions and references to the criticism of others, much like a research paper. Again, be wary of plagiarism and of letting the opinions and ‘voices’ of more experienced writers swamp your own response to the work. If you are going to consult the critics, you should reread the literary work you are discussing and make some notes on it based on your own viewpoint before looking at any criticism.