Essay and Speeches: A Comprehensive Guide to Writing

Essay writing holds a major place in a student’s academic life. It teaches a student to express their opinions and offer a valid perspective. This validation is refined with the use of some certain standard essay writing techniques. Learn all about them by reading the listed points below:

Types of Essays:

1. Descriptive Essays: This type of essay paints a picture of the scene to the reader. Here, the writer should supposedly appeal to make the reader feel, smell, hear and see the things that they are describing. This essay is very detailed in nature, allowing the reader to experience the scene. Writers can use this essay genre to create a piece of text which is extremely stimulating.

2. Narrative Essays: A narrative essay creates a plot for the readers by introducing the characters, settings and leading to a climax then conclusion. This essay follows a traditional reading type- the format of a beginning, middle and the end of a scene. This essay is meant to be very interactive and it engages the reader to listen to the facts that the writer has to say and successfully convince the reader.

3. Expository Essays: This type of essay is most used in school writing classes to help students express their ideas concisely. This style of writing is used to freely express an opinion. This essay follows the format of an introductory paragraph, discussion paragraphs and then the conclusion. This essay should include evidence and references to support the opinion that is expressed. The writer here provides the reader with a final thought by the conclusion to make an impact on the reader’s perspective.

4. Persuasive Essays: As the name suggests, this type of essay attempts to persuade the reader to agree with the writer’s point of view. It is about stating your opinion, laying down some facts and convincing the reader to consider the writer's perspective. In this essay, the entire focus should be on proving the opinion as correct. Writer should be clear and considerate while writing the essay.

5. Argumentative Essays: This type of essay is majorly written on a controversial topic or an issue and the writer attempts to provide certain evidence to support his argument. This kind of essay is similar to persuasive writing style but argumentative essays require a tremendous amount of research and all the different viewpoints are considered rather than just the writer’s. The conclusion of this essay is persuasive; however, the argument is supported with plenty of evidence.

Essay Writing Format

The following format is considered as the common writing style to write every type of essay.

• Introduction 

1. Introducing the topic/setting/scene/argument

2. Laying down of the major discussion points

3. A concise paragraph

• Body

1. Points put forward/narration of the scene

2. Main discussion which includes putting forward the opinions/expressions/evidences

3. Maintaining the flow of description/narration/argument.
   

• Conclusion

1. Restating all the points in a very short and concise manner.

2. Giving the final conclusionary point.

3. Stating the call of action or opinion.

Essay Topics

You can practise essay writing on the below listed topics:

• Pollution due to urbanisation

• Education Essay

• Social Media Essay

• Wonder of Science

• Newspaper and it’s current value

• Children’s day

• Republic Day

• Christmas

• Contribution of technology in education

• Abraham Licoln

• Subhash Chandra Bose

• Swami Vivekananda

• Rabindranath Tagore

• My hobby

• My Aim in Life

• My Family

• Father's Day Essay

• Save Earth Essay

• Environmental Pollution

• Natural disasters

Essay Topics for College Students

• Academic interest

• Social consciousness 

• Self-introspection 

• Globalisation 

• Hardships

• Political air on college students

• Education system

Points to Remember When Writing an Essay 

There are some techniques to write a beautiful essay which is stimulating yet understandable. Read the following points to enhance your essay writing skills:

• Analyse the topic carefully and decide the content matter which centralises that topic.

• Students tend to deviate from the topic when they get engaged in writing a longer essay; to avoid this from happening, you should practise writing small paragraphs on the suggested topics above mentioned then gradually increase the length of paragraphs.

• Introduce the setting or the argument first then define your argument.

• Use reasoning to support your point of view such as giving real life examples or proven facts.

• You can also support your argument by referring to reasonable perspectives.

• Organise your essay as a coherent piece of writing. You should keep all the points linked with each other and present them chronologically as mentioned in the essay writing format.

• Write clearly, don’t attempt too hard to use difficult words or phrases between your lines. You can add a quote once or twice.

Speech

A speech is a verbal presentation that is meant to prove a certain point. Speeches are delivered with the goal of convincing the audience to buy into your idea or to attract attention to your discussion. Making a speech or even writing one can sound a bit intimidating but with the right techniques and plenty of content knowledge, anyone can write a speech.

Here, you can learn about the structure of speech, know about a sample of speech, its elements and aspects. You are advised to take note of the further below mentioned points and get an idea about how to write a brilliant speech. We have provided the accurate format of speech along with speech examples for students to learn.

Types of Speech

Learn about various types of speeches:

1. Demonstrative : this type of speech provides information on a subject and educates the audience about a topic. Here, the context is focused on demonstrating a way of doing a particular thing.

For example- A company gives the instructions to use their product along with demonstrating how the product works, this is a demonstrative speech.

2. Informative : Informative speech uses facts, reasonable arguments and statistics to support the assertions made. This type of speech is used to discuss social or economic issues. Informative speeches are used to inform the audience and not necessarily persuade or convince them.

3. Persuasive : Persuasive speech delivers the information along with evidence to persuade the audience and receive their support. The best example of persuasive speech is the work of a lawyer. When a lawyer delivers a speech, the facts and statistics are mentioned along with the stance of argument. This is the way persuasive speech works. This type of speech is also used to impact the emotions of the audience through the speaker/writer’s feelings.

4. Entertaining: This type of speech amuses the audience and it is less formal than traditional speech. Entertaining speech communicates through feelings rather than facts. They include humour or emotional elements and are often heard in birthday parties and weddings.

Speech Examples (Topics to Practise)

Technology

• Should there be age restrictions on video games?

• Are self-driving cars a good idea?

• Allowing social media at school

• Online interaction becoming a threat

• Electric cars- an idea

• Effect of television

• Personal password security

• Does social media broaden our viewpoints?

Motivation

• Importance of fitness

• Value of time

• Are dreams worth it?

• Pursuit of happiness

• Meaning of life

• Importance of culture in our urban lives

Education

• India’s education system

• Literacy rate of india 

• Strategies to build a good educational platform

• Is online education leading our country?

• How will recycling secure our future?

• How can school teach practical life skills?

Tips for Speech Research 

To write a good speech, the research behind the content should be accurate and vast. Here are some tips to help you enhance your writing and research skills for a making a speech:

• Gather information about your topic by asking questions to the people around you, get to know the practical information first about the topic with the help of common opinions in your area.

• Move on the theoretical knowledge, read some articles or content pages available online regarding the topic. You can also refer to books for acquiring information at a vast scale.

• Frame your argument or opinion according to the facts you gathered, do not deviate from the reasonability of a point of view. In the case of entertaining speech, you can collect materials from the society you live in and create an entertaining speech.

• While writing your speech, make sure to keep the content coherent and clear.

• While delivering your speech, make sure to pay attention to your body language and enunciations. You can engage the audience by asking questions and replying to them as a part of your speech performance.

Conclusion

This was a brief discussion on essay writing and speeches. You can learn about the types of speech, essays, find topics to write short English essays on and practise writing with the help of essay topics and speech topics provided here. The tips to create the best piece of text are provided here to assist students in producing excellent essays and speeches.