What is Expository Writing?
Expository writing is a technique used for highly creative and technical topics. These essays are presented as fact and do not give an opinion. The Writer must do his research, gather facts, and present them. Although it seems like a child’s play, but it is not.
If writing this is becoming too much difficult for you then you must read this blog.
In this blog, we will cover all the vital steps necessary for composing an expository essay. For having less brainstorming and more details keep reading this to the end. We’re sure you will write half of the assignment as you reach the end.
What is an Expository Essay?
An expository essay defines the narrative with clear facts and presents them to readers. These types of writings are commonly used in journalism and newspaper editorials. Investigative journalism uses these on regular basis. In fact, any corruption or illicit activities are exposed by using this type of composing.
Thus expository essays are fact-finding missions for many prominent journalists. An investigation into war crimes and politicians’ secret love affairs is one prime example of such editorials.
When these essays are given as an assignment to students, most of them try to create a comfort zone by taking the help. Paying others to write college essays involves more cheating than meets the eye.
Expository essays are given importance due to them being neutral and based on factual representation. In college, these are given to most of the students who are candidates for doctorate-level education. Although writing this gives a feeling of being “Sherlock Holmes”, but, it is one of the toughest literary works to undertake.
How Do I Start an Expository Essay?
You can simply start an expository essay by taking the following steps such as;
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Choose a topic:
The first step is to choose a topic for an expository essay that is best suitable for your assignments and their requirements. Do not accept a topic that has less factual information available because you would not be able to make a thesis statement about it. Good topic selection is the first important step in assignment composition.
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Add the Evidence in Body Paragraph
All the evidence that is available at your disposal should be presented in the body paragraph. It is essentially important to add only proven facts, there is no need to add your personal opinion. Evidence and its sources should be mentioned here promptly.
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Supporting Elements
After filling the details with facts in the body paragraph, further supporting evidence is added in the next line. It is not possible to cover all the vital evidence of your essay in one paragraph, thus this step further strengthens your case.
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Conclusion
To end your evidence base discussion you need to conclude it as well. After presenting the case; leave the decision to your audience’s discretion to believe it or not.
What are the 5 Parts of Expository Writing?
The 5 parts of expository essays are following.
- Intro
- Thesis statement and hook sentence
- Body paragraph part one
- Body paragraph part two
- Conclusion
Purpose of an Expository Essay?
The main purpose of assigning students an expository essay is to elevate their critical and analytical thinking skills. It is a must-do for journalism graduates because most of the editorials of newspapers are based on expository essays and reporting.
Types of Expository Essay
Expository essays have many different categories that serve different purposes depending on the intention of the writer. The following list contains the different forms of expository essays such as;
Classification Essays:
These essays details many subjects on one topic for example if we talk about bears, then we can say that two types of bear are most commonly known as Grizzly bear and Polar bears.
Similarly, we can choose one topic such as bears and other relevant kinds or breeds can be discussed in this as well.
Definition Essays
Definition essays describe a definition of an event or topic name that is chosen. Any historic event can be chosen for writing this type of expository essay. You can discuss the event, its impact, and how it was perceived by the public.
Process Essays
This type of essay takes the audience on step by step guide. Usually, these expository essays are based on cooking recipes, a chef biography, or his how-to about some special cuisine.
One of the interesting things about this type is, that it has an audience-friendly and reader-centric approach.
Cause and Effect Essay
The cause and effect essay discusses the impact of cause or causes that resulted in the exponential growth of one or many effects. A cause can be singular and its effects can be many or vice versa. It is vital to know the cause and effects essay topics because you need to detail all the aspects of cause and its consequences.
How to Write an Expository Essay?
Before writing or undertaking this task always have a clear mind about what topic you will select. Having your selection narrowed down to one or two topics is the best practice. When you’ll have the topic then it will be easy to know how to write an expository essay.
After the topic selection, you will find the research available either in books or on the internet. It is important that information that is available or retrieved through online platforms should be credible. Because you are supposed to write facts, not rumors. Thus maintaining a writer’s credibility and integrity is of cardinal importance.
Look at the following steps in detail on how to write an expository essay
AMA
APA
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MLA
Turbian
Harward
IEEE
Topic Selection Before Writing an Expository Essay
As mentioned before, the topic’s selection is the make or break and requires 10/10 attention. Most of the students try to create a shortcut by undermining the value of the topic. Thus it is their downfall from the start.
Likewise, selecting a topic that has a narrow research field and credibility is a pit that is hard to get out of. There are many things that can be selected for proper research. For example, you can select “the role of cigarettes in high mortality rate in adults”.
The above example topic has extensive research available from credible health journals like “New England Journal of Medicine”, “Mayo Clinic”, “FDA” etc. Selecting the topic that has evidence base studies available will give an authentic representation to your essay.
Similarly “Dangers of fossil fuels and melting ice-caps of polar ice” has loads of research. Choosing any topic like the mentioned ones here will surely help in good research and consequently in writing as well.
Do the Proper Research
As soon as you choose the topic; it is time to do the research. Make a well-prepared list of citations and sources that will be mentioned when you will write the essay. If you have a book that is already written on the same topic then try to dig for more information.
Additionally, it is also possible that the previously written essays might have missed some of the core findings. This will help you add more stuff as new findings to capture the audience’s attention.
Also, write and save all the research on paper as well as in digital form. This step will help you when you will be composing the final draft of the essay. A well-written expository essay should have two to three sources mentioned. Writing around the gathered facts gives a proper outline on which the entire essay will be based.
Relax and Make a Mind Map Before putting pen to the Paper
As soon as you finish your research work, try to relax for a few hours. It is better to utilize a mind map to structure your essay. Write all the ideas on one big chart or a board and gather all your thoughts.
Immediately after getting the thoughts sorted and refined; it is time to write. Take all the headings from the mind map and put them on paper.
On the other hand, only pause when ideas are finished in your mind. Stopping, again and again, will create a gap in your thinking and writing abilities. Thus, continuous momentum is vital to keep the smooth running of your composition.
Make a Good Introduction
After selecting the topic, doing research, and gathering ideas by mind map, it's time to write the introduction. Your introduction of the essay should contain a “thesis statement” and “hook”.
An introduction is a short description of the entire research of the topic. For example, you can write how “smoking is the leading cause of death in adults”. According to your research, you have found these figures either to be true, less or completely false, etc.
Then you can summarize the outline of your essay by saying, your topic is containing facts from FDA, etc. When you claim your facts to be authentic and sound that would be your hook statement. You will capture the audience’s attention by adding new facts or simply contradicting the old myths or beliefs.
Making a bulletproof introduction is essential because 50% of the audience is lost if the introduction is poorly written. Thus as a writer, it is your duty to present a good introduction filled with interesting facts to your audience.
Present Your Evidence in Body Paragraph One
The body is the most important part of an expository essay. It can be called the heart of the entire research. Providing your evidence is the key to honing the skills of writing an expository essay.
Additionally, expository essays are quite lengthy and thus require much evidence to be added. That’s why you can add further supporting evidence into body paragraph two.
The main highlight of the essay is the evidence you have collected. Supposedly should be unique and authentic as mentioned in the first few paragraphs line.
Secondly, present all the collaborating statements that will show to the audience that you know about the topic as much as you claim. This makes them trust you and your thesis evidence. Try not to complicate things by using too many words, but rather concise and to-the-point references are enough for impactful words.
Present one evidence and its statement and so on. Presenting all research and pieces of evidence in one paragraph and then explaining them all is a killer for your career and writing as well.
Body Paragraph Two
After presenting one or two major pieces of evidence, it's time to start adding the secondary evidence in body paragraph two. These are collaborating and small factual details that you will add to further strengthen your case.
Usually, expository essays have one major piece of evidence and few witnesses to the ongoing research that is collectively called “supportive evidence”. To illustrate its effectiveness, it can explain as “Smoking causes serious health issues; many studies have shown almost 80% of heart attack victims are smokers”.
The aforementioned paragraph shows collaboration and a strong link between smoking and heart attack. Thus we can say that it's definitely a fact that smoking causes serious health deterioration and should be avoided at all times.
Avoid Jargon and technical words
One important thing in knowing how to write an expository essay is to completely avoid jargon. Your audience is not a technical one and needs education. It's better to use an informative tone than a persuasive one. Because in the end, you are presenting the facts, not giving a sales pitch.
Using jargon can complicate things if the words are too much difficult. Your readers will prefer to read something simple and informative rather than full of technical jargon.
Simple language can let the readers know all the things in your expository essay rather easily. Complete avoidance of jargon will create their interest even more and let them make it to the end.
Conclusion
The last part of getting to know how to write an expository essay is the conclusion. When you present all of the main findings, their sub findings, and shreds of evidence; it is time to give the final verdict.
You have to summarize all the essay's main highlights and compile them in short form. One thing is important to read the body paragraph one and two, note down important points and rephrase them in the conclusion.
A conclusion should serve as a verdict, not a repetition of words. A good starting point for writing a conclusion is to start with the following statement as
“In the light of the evidence presented in this writing, it is clear that smoking is dangerous and causes a heart attack in adults regardless of age, gender, or race, thus the general consensus is that it should be avoided in all cases”.
By clearly stating the facts and supportive arguments, you will be able to present the factual side of the narrative. In academic or college assignment writing, the conclusion is considered the “Holy Grail” of writing.
One important thing in writing a conclusion is to never add irrelevant information and words. Your conclusion should have one or a maximum of two paragraphs consisting of two to three lines each.
In short, treating and making a conclusion lengthy and full of wordy sentences is a suicide mission. Hence ignore it completely altogether.
Do Not Exceed Your Expertise
It is also very important to never exceed your expertise and choose the topic you have information about. If the topic is already provided by your professor or teacher then it's another thing. Otherwise, always know which direction you will choose in writing.
Usually writing an expository essay seems quite easy but it's totally the opposite. Any topic you have already information about is an easy one and should be selected as the primary choice.
What is an Example of an Expository Essay?
The following is a perfect example of an expository essay for many people, who are trying to compose assignment writing based on such an investigation.
Expository Essay About Prevalence of Diabetes in the world and America
Introduction;
Diabetes is one of the leading causes of death in adults of all ages, and also one of the worst endemic of the 21st century. More than 422 million people die each year due to complications of diabetes according to WHO (World Health Organization)
One of the most affected populations in the world by diabetes are developing or third world countries. We will evaluate some of the key findings of the high prevalence of diabetes today. If you have the symptoms like high glucose level, excessive hunger, continuous thirst, and obesity then you should be careful and contact your local physician on priority.
Body Paragraph:
According to National Diabetes Statistics Reports issued by CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) in 2020 stated that 34.2 million population in America had diabetes. That is equal to more than 10% of the entire population in the united states.
Adults aged more than 20 years had a prevalence of diabetes in 2004 at 6.9 million, which gradually became higher to 33 million in 2016. It is an almost 5-fold increase in 12 years time span.
The majority of these patients are from native Indian, Hispanic and black communities. And all of these are ethnic minorities and underprivileged. Thus we can say that diabetes is affecting more people from poor economic backgrounds than the middle class.
Body Paragraph Two
A recent survey by World Economic Forum has revealed that the global population with diabetes is more than 400 million, and 300 million out of 400 are in developing countries. This is clear evidence that more and more poor population is developing diabetes and serious health conditions.
Conclusion
On the basis of two of the most prominent medical and financial organizations survey has demonstrated that diabetes has the highest prevalence in poor economic countries and background families.
Due to this evidence, we can conclude our research and findings that concrete diabetes prevention measures should be taken in developing countries. United Nations, International Diabetic Federation should provide means and training to medical staff for effective management of diabetes control and awareness.
How many Paragraphs Should an Expository Essay have?
Typically it is recommended to keep the length of your expository essay maximum to 5 paragraphs. It can be kept to a minimum of 3 paragraphs.
What is an Expository Paragraph?
An expository paragraph provides details and concise information to the audience or readers. These details might be a historic event and its consequences in chronological order. Or based on the most prominent one and its lowest ones.
Expository paragraphs may also contain instructions for any investigations or similar topics. Many celebrities’ biography writing, affairs and corruption scandals are a few examples of expository paragraphs.
Conclusion
Thus we have given you all the important details that you can use and guide your assignment in the right direction. It is important to follow all the steps mentioned here because this will help you all the way. Now you have your hands on the secret recipe so read the content make notes and start composing it straight away.
