Composition and Essay-Writing

 Writing a composition (or an essay) is the art of communicating ideas in written form.

A composition is a fairly short (2-4 pages) and simple piece of writing presented in the form of narration or description. The narration (i.e. presentation of events in their development) and description (i.e. presentation of the atmosphere, the scenery and the tike), as a rule, interrelate in the composition, with one or another of them standing out more prominent.

The narration may be done in the first person, when the narrator is himself a protagonist. The narration may be done in the third person, when the narrator focuses on some other character or characters. The narrator may have no direct relation to the persons he speaks about, he may not be present at all, be entirety anonymous.

At school compositions are written by children in their own language. The subjects are different. In some classes the teachers prefer guided compositions. They give the class a plan and the students write their compositions according to this plan. Another type of composition is the picture composition. The students write their stories prompted by a series of pictures.

At all stages of learning to write compositions it is preferable to limit the length of the composition and to write a draft copy first. A considerable number of short compositions carefully worked out and written, then carefully analysed over, is a safe way to obtain good results in writing composition.

An essay is a much longer (up to about 20 pages) piece of writing. Unlike a composition, an essay usually assumes an individual interpretation of facts and it, as a rule, has some literary merit. Essays are written by people who have sufficiently mastered the language to be able to express their ideas in this form of writing.

According to the subject matter and the treatment it receives, essays may be divided into four main types: narrative, descriptive, reflective and argu­mentative (or discoursive). The division is, however, by no means clear-cut; in fact most essays have features characteristic not of one particular type, but of several.

A narrative essay is a description of happenings as they follow one another. It is the easiest to write because the material is arranged according to the actual course of events; the writer knows where to start and what to do next, each paragraph being devoted to one particular episode or group of episodes. In general, narrative essays bear a close resemblance to those short stories in which the author describes events as he himself has experienced them. Practically alt narrative essays could be classed as short stories.

A descriptive essay depicts people and places in statics. It is more difficult to write because the order in which your ideas follow one another is determined not by the sequence of events, but rather by certain qualities of your ideas and the logical connection between them.

A reflective essay is a piece of serious writing on any given subject in which the writer relies more on his imagination and power of observation.

An argumentative essay is a kind of writing in which the author's ability to discuss a problem, to argue for or against some proposition is tested. He relies mainly on his general knowledge.

Compared with the narrative and the descriptive essays, these are more difficult to write, not only because it is more difficult to arrange one's ideas logically, but also because one has to devote more thought and time to the collection of ideas relevant to the subject. Here a previous writing of a plan is essential.

In an essay of a reflective type the author while discussing the subject allots the greatest amount of space, as a rule, to descriptions of his own thoughts, feel­ings, behaviour and so on. The arrangements of the material and the manner of the exposition of the subject have very much in common with those of a descriptive essay. The author aims at creating pictures in the reader's mind. To a great extent this is achieved through the use of metaphors based on concrete images. Abstract nouns are used sparingly; words expressing very general ideas are avoided. The sentences are varied in length and structure, those that state the most important ideas being short, thus achieving vividness in the text.

The main problem, which arises when you are writing an argumentative essay, is to organize your pros and cons throughout the composition.