The Most Commonly Asked Question - What Is an Essay?

Arguably, approximately 60-80% of high school English subjects are assessed through essay writing. 

Presumably, if you are unfamiliar with the specifics of essay writing, English as an entire subject may seem extremely dense thus challenging.

Like any other subject however, English can be navigated and conquered through both theoretical and practical step-by-step procedures!

The very first of these steps is to actually formally ‘define’ what an essay is. 

Simply, an essay is an extended response that unpacks and explores an idea/concept. At the end of the day, it is just a written piece of text that explores one key idea in detail.

Despite the basic definition, some complications and confusions may arise when we consider some specifics of the above definition. For example, what does it mean by ‘extended response’? How long should an essay be? Well, below is a quick list of recommended lengths for different age groups.

Stage 4 (years 7-8): 600-800 words

Stage 5 (year 9-10): 700-1000 words

Stage 6 (years 11-12): 900-1200 words

You might then be asking - how is it possible to write 600-1200 on a single topic?

Simply, after you choose your main topic, you break down the main topic into the 3 parts (aspects or perspectives). 

A brief example would be the topic/concept/theme of ‘success’. The concept of ‘success’ can be broken down into three other related concepts such as ‘hope’, ‘challenges’ and ‘effort’. You need to be ‘hopeful’ about succeeding; and you will face ‘challenges’ before you can succeed in something. And you will have to put into a lot of ‘effort’ to overcome the challenge; to be successful. 

As such, if you can break down a single concept into three parts, then your essay will become much easier to write.

Now where exactly do these three parts/ideas go? 

A general essay has FIVE paragraphs: an introduction, body 1, body 2, body 3, and a conclusion. These three ideas will make up the 3 body paragraphs of your essay!

As you can expect, the main idea and the three aspects will be introduced in the introduction and then summarised in the conclusion. 

The specifics of introduction and conclusion will be explained further in future updates!