Description
Writing a comparative essay can be a real tough nut to crack. It is one of the most difficult types of academic writings and requires a lot of special guidelines and training. The difficult part in writing a comparative essay is that most people hardly even know what a comparative essay is. Writing essay is something all students are familiar with.
All of us, at some point or the other, have written essays. They can be for school, college, or other reasons. However, writing essay, especially a comparative essay is something not all of us are familiar with. Before we start discussing tips for writing essay, let us first try and understand what a comparative essay is.
What is a comparative essay?
A comparative essay is nothing but a composition made up of many paragraphs. In those paragraphs, the author studies two subjects or topics and discusses and compares them with each other. These comparative essays are all about comparing and contrasting two topics with each other. They compare these topics and try and find out the similarities between them. Not only that, they also contrast and try and find out the differences between them. They are not specific to any one topic.
These topics can range from science to history to anything in the world. They are not restricted to a specific genre or subject, and that is the beauty of these essays. However, you must keep in mind that the two subjects that are being compared must have some relation to each other. There needs to be some similarity or connection to establish a comparison.
Tips on writing a good comparative essay
Now that we have learned what exactly these comparative essays are, let us now try and understand a few tips that can help you write a good comparative essay.
Understand the topic
It is extremely important that you have a good understanding of the topic. It is even more important that you understand the type of essay you are required to write. Understand completely what exactly does comparative mean. You can go really wrong if you do not have this understanding with your write up.
You may have really great ideas for the essay. But unless and until you do not answer the question that is being asked, you are failing miserably at it. It is advised that you study whatever your topic is very thoroughly before you write anything. Highlight the exact keywords that need to be used and you will notice that writing this essay will become really easy.
Understand the basis for comparison
Writing a comparative essay is all about drawing comparisons and contrasts. Which is why it is essential that you discover a basis of comparison for your essay. In most cases, the mainline provides you with the exact question that you need to answer and the basis of comparison for your essay.
However, there are also cases where this is not the case. In such situations, it is up to the author to discover what the basis is. This not only tests the authors’ comprehension abilities but also tests how much in-depth knowledge he has of the subjects.
Develop the content of your comparative essay
Once you have identified what question you need to answer and what are the basis of comparisons, you move on to the next step. This is perhaps the most important step of the whole process. In this step, after completing the two initial stages, you need to identify what data must go in your essay. It is in this step that you collect all the data and information regarding your topic.
Once you have done that, you need to study your collected information. Go through all the information carefully and highlight all the similarities and the differences. At the end of this process, you will have all the information which you need to write down in your essay.
Chalk out a plan on how to use all of the information and move forward it. The last step after this step would be to just write all the data and form an essay.
You are now ready with your final essay. Simply format and edit your essay once you are done with the first draft. Keep editing until you have the perfect essay. Now that you have read this article about writing essay, you are now fully capable of writing a comparative essay. However, if you still think you need some help or expert guidance, then Uniresearchers is the place for you.
