The word “essay” comes from French and historically goes back to the Latin word exagium (weighing). The French ezzai can literally be translated with the words experience, trial, attempt, sketch, essay.
An essay is a prose work of small volume and free composition, expressing individual impressions and thoughts on a particular subject or issue, and knowingly does not claim to be a determining or exhaustive treatment of the subject.
Some signs of an essay:
- The presence of a specific topic or question. A work devoted to the analysis of a wide range of problems cannot, by definition, be performed in the essay genre.
- An essay expresses individual impressions and considerations on a particular subject or issue and does not claim to be a defining or exhaustive treatment of the subject.
- As a rule, an essay implies a new, subjectively colored word about something, such a work can have a philosophical, historical and biographical, journalistic, literary and critical, popular science or purely fiction character.
- In the content of evaluation essay topics primarily the personality of the author – his worldview, thoughts and feelings.
This genre has become popular in recent years. The creator of the essay genre is considered to be M. Montaigne (“Essays”, 1580). Today, essay topics are offered as an assignment quite often. It is one of the main components of the application package (for admission to an educational institution or for employment). An essay contest helps you choose the best from the variety of the best!
Essay writing is also important for a young professional. The way a candidate manages to present himself, how he described his achievements and failures, allows an employer to determine whether this person is good enough for business, whether his work experience is enough to justify expectations in the future and bring benefit to the company (organization, enterprise).
The purpose of the essay is to develop skills such as independent creative thinking and writing your own thoughts.
Writing an essay is extremely useful because it allows the author to learn how to formulate thoughts clearly and competently, structure information, use basic concepts, highlight cause-and-effect connections, illustrate experiences with relevant examples, and argue their conclusions.
The most relevant topic for the essay of a young specialist is “Me and my career”. The topic of the essay is given in order to make it easy for the commission (employer) to assess the features of your thinking, creativity, enthusiasm and potential. The best way to achieve this is to write directly and frankly, remaining honest with yourself. If you are not honest, there is every chance that your essay will be considered unnatural.
Structure and outline of the essay
The structure of the essay is determined by the requirements for it:
- The essay writer’s thoughts on the problem are stated in the form of short theses.
- The thought must be supported by evidence – so the thesis is followed by arguments.
Arguments are facts, phenomena of social life, events, life situations and life experience, scientific evidence, references to the opinion of scientists, etc. It is better to give two arguments in favor of each thesis: one argument seems unconvincing, three arguments can “overload” the statement made in a genre oriented on brevity and imagery.
Thus, the essay acquires a ring structure (the number of theses and arguments depends on the topic, the chosen plan, and the logic of thought development):
introduction;
thesis, arguments;
conclusion.
