Essay

An essay is usually a short piece of writing. It is often written from an author’s personal point of view. Essays can be literary criticism, political manifestos, learned arguments, observations of daily life recollections, and reflections of the author.
The word essay drives from the French infinitive essayer, “to try” or “to attempt”. In English essay frist meant “ a trial “ or “an attempt”, and this still an alternative meaning. The first author to describle his works as essays was the Frenchman Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592); he used the term to characterize these as “attemps” to put his thoughts adequately into writing. Inspired in particular by the work of Plutarch, a translations of whose Oeuvres morales (Moral works) into French had just been published by Jacques Amyot, Montaigne began to compose his essay in 1572; the first editions, entitled Essais, was published in two volume in 1580. For the rest of his life he continued revising previously published essays and composing new ones.
In recen time, essay have become a major part of a formal education. Secondary students are taught structured essay formats to improve their writing skills, and essays are often used by universities in selecting applicants (see adminssions essay). In both secondary and tertiary education, essay are used to judge the mastery and comprehension of material. Students are asked to explain, comment on, or assess a topic of study in the form of an essay.
Academic essays are usually more formal than literary ones. They may still allow the presentation of the writer’s own views, but this is done in a logical and factual manner, whit the use of the first person often discouraged.
Some students first explosure to the genre is the five paragraph essay, a highly structured from requiring an introduction presenting the thesis statement; three body paragraphs, each of which presents an idea to support the thesis together with supporting evidence and quotations; and a conclusion, which restates the thesis and summarizes the supporting points. The use of this format is controversial. Proponents argue that it teaches students how to organize their thoughts clearly in writing; opponents characterize its structure as rigid and repetitive.
Longer academic assays (often with a word limit of between 2,000 to 5,000 word) are often more discursive. They sometimes begin with a short summary analysis of what has previously been written on topic, whichis often called a literature review. Longer essays may also contaoin an introductory page in which word an phrases from the title are tightly defined. Most academic institutions will require that all substantial facts, quotations, and other supporting material used in an essay be referenced in bibliography or works cited page at the end of the text. This scholarly convention allows other (whether teachers or fellow scholars) to understand the basis of the fact and quotations used to support the essay’s argument, and thereby help to evaluate to what extent the argument is supported by evidence, and to evaluate the quality of that evidence. The academic essay tests the student’s ability to present their thoughts in an organized way and tests their intellectual capabilities. Some forms of essays are : descriptive, narrative, exemplification, comparison and contrast, cause and effect, classification and division, definition, dialectic, and other logical structures.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essay)