How To Write A Compare And Contrast Essay? Mastering the Art of Differentiation

College essays are difficult and give goosebumps to students on every occasion. A similar but more potent feeling arises with contrasting essays assigned to them. Knowing how to write a compare and contrast essay requires time. It exponentially grows the student’s mind and their understanding and results in A+ grades.

What is a Compare and Contrast Essay?

In this type of essay, a student or a presenter chooses two topics and details their similarities and differences. A compare and contrast essay is an open debate on two or more topics where a presenter or a essay writer gives their opinion. They might select a controversial and similar topic and differentiate what is common and what’s different between them. This way, they can demonstrate their analytical and presentation skills to the public, a selective audience or their professors.

Compare and contrast essays are common in the scientific community and for Ph.D. students. These essays are well-crafted and structured to show the writer’s authority on the subjects they are debating. Although this work is difficult, hiring essay writing service offers great help in completing the task.

Experts Guide to Writing a Compare and Contrast Essay for Students

Since undertaking this task requires tremendous work and research. Therefore it’s best to follow the guidelines. Students should know that compare and contrast is the same as an opinion essay. It’s just a bit more complicated. Let’s follow the steps students must take to make an outstanding composition.

Start Early

The best way to write a compare and contrast essay is to start as early as possible. If a period of two or one weeks is given, it’s recommended to start right after receiving the essay prompt. Students take days to find a suitable topic and make mistakes even then. Therefore starting right after knowing the requirements fills the gap and provides a buffer between mistakes and their eradication.

Starting a college essay ahead of time pays well because it’s a lengthy undertaking. It also helps if you ask for interviews with a subject matter expert who might not be available soon. Gathering facts, research and sources take time and starting early is a great step toward greatness.

Brainstorming Ideas for Contrast Essay Topics

After starting early, it’s time to brainstorm ideas from the essay prompt and select the best ones. Students should ask a few questions that will help them in topic selection. The results of brainstorming should answer the following questions:

• What topic should I be comparing and contrasting?

• What is to be added to it?

• What do I know about the topic sentences?

• What should be the structure of the write-up?

• Does this topic has sufficient and valid information available easily?

Questions like these will help set up some guidelines to follow whenever one feels lost while writing. The experts’ advice is to write down these ideas that one has brainstormed because, with time, these ideas get out of the mind and cannot be remembered, as we are humans.

This list of ideas will also help to add the relevant ones to the main essay while also guiding the way to perfect research on the right ideas, saving time. After this step, dive into the research because it’s the most important.

Research

Doing strong and promising research on that topic is mandatory to form a solid basis for comparing and contrasting two or more things. Good research on the same subject will make the essay strong enough and reliable. Adding research to the main points of the essay enhances its acceptability.

Similarly, while researching, ensure the sources from which data is taken are authentic enough to rely on. Also, one needs to keep track of these sources for reference purposes at the end if required. Find evidence and mention it in your next paragraph.

Probing helps students how to use research to support the story in compare and contrast essay. Research or an investigation into the topics offers a deeper understanding of the phenomenon. It also supports arguments and counter-arguments more intellectually.

Research is the only weapon in students’ hands that counter the probing from university professors and audiences. Compare and contrast essays are famous for many reasons, but in-depth research is the top reason for selection and value.

After these three critical steps of the pre-writing phase, it’s time to outline the essay and its component.

Crafting an Outline of the Essay

After going through the previous steps, outlining is the first technical one that requires precision from start to finish. Outlining is simply structuring the contrast essay and its different parts. Students may decide how much information they can add to the first paragraph and the rest of the essay by making an outline.

Outlining is the most effective way of communication and helps with making a thematic statement to composing technical drafts. The following are the top benefits of outlining a comparison essay.

• Adding concise details in each paragraph

• Fewer chances of deviation if followed properly

• Helps in changing the structure of the essay if required

• Makes the essay interesting for the audience

• Best framework tool for effective communication

• An outline helps allocate the word count if the essay is longer or shorter

• Parts of an Essay Outline

Well, talking about the standard structure of an essay, it has the following format;

1. Intro

2. Body Paragraphs 1 & 2

3. Conclusion

Hence, such outlining will help you write the essay more easily. Also, an outline will always keep you on track to follow a proper structure.

Writing the Contrast Essay Introduction

The first thing for any college or university student is to write an introduction to the essay. As discussed above, it’s an essential part of the essay outline. An introduction is the first paragraph of an essay, book or investigation report. Its job is to introduce the audience to a topic, like in comparison essays.

An intro of a good essay ideally has the following elements integrated into it:

• Hook statement

• Background touch

• Thesis statement

To start the introduction, the first sentence, which is a hook statement, should be interesting enough to attract the reader’s attention and keep it until the end. It would be best if you start an introductory paragraph with the following:

• A question

• A famous quotation

• Interesting facts etc.

All of these will be reflected in the ending statement of the paragraph or the thesis.

After finishing a hook statement, now is the time to proceed toward some background ideas about the topic that you will compare and contrast. Give a little touch of such background because the detail is provided in the essay’s body.

After the two parts, the final part is the essay’s thesis statement or, ideally speaking, the ending statement of the intro paragraph. The thesis should be strong enough to reflect the entire essay discussion. Hence, while writing the statement, be concise and plan for a good thesis.

Adding Research, Arguments, and Evidence in Body Paragraphs

After writing an intro, it’s time to write the most important part of the essay. Its body paragraph has all the findings a writer or researcher has gathered. The body paragraphs serve as the backbone for a healthy debate. It encourages a student writer to debate two topics to compare and differentiate their key features. These are the parts of a body paragraph of an essay.

• Topic Sentence

• Evidence Presentation

• Commentary

• Concluding the Argument

• Use of Transition

A body paragraph starts with a topic sentence that informs the audience of what’s inside the paragraph. After that, students can add evidence to supplement the effects of their arguments on the topic. When the evidence is presented, its usually given by using commentary.

The commentary is a collection of sentences that support the evidence. It helps to ease the delivery of narratives related to findings.

After providing the evidence with the support of commentary, the next thing is to conclude the argument in your essay. Typically there are two conclusions in an essay. The concluding paragraph related to the body ends the discussion of that particular part. Whereas; the main conclusion ends the entire essay and its discussion.

The argument conclusion ends the discussion after an assumption is created. Based on this assumption that the audience has developed an understanding, arguments are closed. 

The last part of writing a body paragraph is to use the transition to accurately shift from one paragraph to the next. Transition helps readers and your audience navigates from one paragraph to another without breaking concentration.

Ending the Essay with a Well-Crafted Conclusion

The last writing part of comparing and contrasting essay is to write a conclusion. Since the writer has presented their findings, it’s time to wrap up the discussion. Writers present their anecdotes as an expert’s opinion in this section and end the conversation.

Students also don’t need to repeat the words already used in the introduction and body paragraphs. An emphasis is needed on the thesis statement with new and creative words. After that, a personal experience or narrative can be put forward so that the audience can relate the findings with the writer’s opinion on the same page.

The final paragraph of the contrast essay holds a powerful position in the entire essay as the audience encounters it in the last, and the main thrust of the essay is to be reinforced in this paragraph. Here, the writer ensures the audience agrees with their point of view or main ideas. So, planning the end of the whole essay is essential.

Identify Mistakes by Proofreading/Revising

The last step of the entire write-up is proofreading and checking for mistakes. These errors might hinder the objectives of the essay; therefore, eradicating them is of utmost importance.

Although revising or editing the essay is a difficult task, from restructuring the essay or paragraphs to clarifying ideas, it still provides the opportunity to determine that your content is worth reading, understandable, and clear to the audience.

Revising prevents the overlapping circles of two or more subjects. After this step, your final draft is ready for submission to your professor’s table. 

Conclusion

It’s evident that students are less aware of how to write a compare and contrast essay. Hiring a college essay writing service offers a vast variety of help to sort students’ academic issues. In short, college students need to follow the steps provided in the blog to cover the gaps and get creative ideas.