Writing an essay: A process analysis essay

Contrary to proper belief, writing an essay is not an easy task. It requires good understanding power, with linguistic skills and an excellent ability for logical presentation.

The first step towards a good essay is to be confident about one's linguistic skills. These can be acquired by reading books, magazines, journals etc. To write good e says continuously, one needs to develop reading as a habit. Once the topic of the essay is chosen, one needs to collect information on the subject. The main sources information are internet sites accessed throughpopular search engines like google and yahoo, books, magazines and journals on the topic. This is the stage wherein one needs to understand what other authors have to say on the subject chosen. It is very important that the subject is well understood, and the arguments, descriptionsin the researched information are well comprehended. The information collected serves as rawmaterial which will be shaped into a final essay.

The next step is to analyze the information. The arguments in favor and against the topic, byvarious authors need to be understood. These arguments can be claims, reasons or evidences.This is the phase where clarity of the content is achieved. Depending on the nature of the topic,the content has to be gathered and analyzed. For example an essay on globalization wouldrequire proper analysis of various positive and negative effects of globalization, whereas anessay on Darwin's theory of evolution, will have information in terms of evidences that he hadgathered and analyzed. To write an essay on Pyramids of Egypt, the writer has to firstunderstand its theological and geometric considerations and beliefs. At the end of this phase, thewriter has a relatively good knowledge of the subject on which he wants to write.

Once the information is collected and analyzed, the writer starts being creative and constructive. The "whys", "ifs" and "whats' related to the subject need to be asked andanswered by him. Such questions will help in developing a deep insight into the subject. This will also help in generation of new, original ideas on the subject.

Then comes the stage of introducing the reader to the subject and formulating a thesis. This is the most important stage, as it will decide the shape essay is going to take. Based on the insightgained, the writer has to form a thesis. The essay is nothing but backing the statement made inthe thesis with logical arguments, data, facts, and evidences which are collected. Formulating agood thesis is a prime requirement of a qualitative essay.

Once the thesis is defined, the essay has to be structured. This implies arranging the overallsequence of the ideas that are to be put forward, to back the thesis. Once this is done, the detail writing starts. The ideas as structured before, need to be explained to the minutest detail. Thelanguage style should be simple, and appeal to the reader in such a way that he has no choice butto accept the thesis. These paragraphs must be simple yet forceful.

The last phase is the conclusion. This is a simple packing of whatever is said earlier in theessay, but very briefly. Introduction, thesis, body and conclusion are the essential organs of agood essay. All good essays need to be written in this sequence.

A good essay also has perfect language, from grammatical point of view. All spellings andpunctuation marks need to be checked. Good use of figures of speech will certainly beadvantageous. The only time tested and simple way to achieve this is to make the first draft,revise it as the second draft and revise it again for the final essay. This will ensure linguistic perfection.

Once the essay is well prepared, the last step is formatting it and giving the appropriatecitations. Proper citations ensure that the reader can easily refer back to the source if he wantsany additional information. APA, MLA and Chicago are the popular citation styles

References:

• Johnson Tom, How to write an essay: 10 easy steps, August 2004, Retrieved on 27 July 2007 from: http://www.aucegypt.edu/academic/writers/