English Essay CSS Tips

Types of CSS ESSAYS By Mureed Hussain Jasra (CSP)

Types of CSS Essays By Mureed Hussain Jasra (CSP)

Types of Essays:

An essay is a piece of writing that methodically analyses and evaluates a topic, a question or an issue. Fundamentally, an essay is designed to get your academic opinion on a particular matter. Many students get confused about the word opinion in essay writing, and think that essay writing should just stick to report the facts and forget about opinion altogether. However, there are major differences between an academic opinion, based on strong evidences, and a personal opinion, based on emotion and feeling without concrete evidence and logic, and it is important to comprehend these when you are putting together an essay. Writing a good and comprehensive essay is not about simply surveying and re-telling existing ideas. Instead, a good essay takes into account various opinions and points of view and puts forward an argument that reflects the writer’s informed opinion and stance. Furthermore; there are many kinds of essays which differ from one another on the basis of formation of outline, selection of words, presentation of facts, organization of arguments, composition of paragraphs, forms of tenses and description or narration of ideas and events. Writing different types of essays effectively has become critical and key requirement to get good marks in essay writing. Students must remember that every type of essay has its own requirements and their different approaches can be obviously seen in structure. There are over a dozen types of essays, so it is easy to get confused. However, essentially there are four major types of essays which are included in CSS. These include;

1. Factual or Social Essays:

The essay that describes socio-economic issues is called factual or social essay. The purpose of such essays is to explain a topic in a logical and straightforward manner. Without bells and whistles, such essays present a fair and balanced analysis of the topic based on facts mostly in the form of causes, impacts and solutions. Furthermore; the key requirement in such essays is to convince the reader to accept the writer’s point of view or recommendation in simple but flawless language. The writer builds a case using facts, examples, expert opinions, and sound reasoning to get good marks. The writer should present all sides – primary and secondary statements – of the argument in order to facilitate the examiner but must be able to communicate clearly and without equivocation why certain causes, consequences and solutions are more critical. Its ideal length is 2500-3000 words and it always gets only passing marks. Some of its examples are;

  1. Global Warming: Its Causes and Consequences (2018)
  2. Energy Crisis: Causes and Consequences (2012)

2. Descriptive Essays:

The descriptive essay provides details about how something looks, feels, tastes, smells, makes one feel, or sounds and this essay paints a picture with words. In CSS/PMS such essay often requires comprehensive description and analysis of some concept, personal event, organization and movement. Analysis does not mean telling the story. Many students fall into the trap of telling the reader what is happening in the text instead of analyzing it. The topic you have chosen to analyze is divided in primary and secondary statements. After stating the problem, elaborate and
present your argument. Its ideal length is 2000-2200 words and mostly such essays get good marks.

  1. Pakistan is Rich in Resources but Poor in Management (2010)
  2. World as a Global Village: Learning to LiveTogether (2016)

3. Argumentative / Persuasive / Literary Essays:

This is the type of essay where you prove that your opinion, stance, theory or hypothesis about a topic or an issue is correct or more truthful than that of others. This requires a writer to defend a position on a topic using evidence/arguments from personal experience, literature, political science, theology, history, psychology and sociology to support his or her stance/viewpoint. The writer usually uses several different arguments to prove his/her point and you may not quote more than one example from one source. In short, it is very similar to the persuasive essay, but the difference is that you are arguing for your opinion as opposed to others, rather than directly trying to persuade someone to adopt your point of view. The argumentative essay should be based on pros and cons and you have to support one side with solid evidence and examples. Furthermore; it also involves subjectivity of the readers/examiners and thus enables them to award highest as well as lowest marks for the same essay. Some of its examples are;

  1. Is colonial mentality impeding Pakistan’s progress?
  2. Are modern wars not holy wars?
  3. Great nations win without fighting.

4. Narrative Essays:

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A narrative essay is a description of some past events, and personality in which the writers share their personal experience. Writing a narrative essay provides the examiner an opportunity to get to know and understand you better. During the process of writing a narrative essay, you will learn ways to articulate personal experiences to inform and entertain others. Narrative essays provide human interest, spark our curiosity and draw us close to the storyteller. However, narrative essays never appear in any type of competitive exams like CSS/PMS.

Actually in simple words, the essay has two major types and they are totally different from each other on the basis of formation of outline, composition of introduction, construction of body paragraphs, organization of conclusion, selection of words, presentation of facts, organization of arguments, , forms of tenses and description or narration of ideas and events. These are;

Descriptive Essays:

The type of the essay that always describes concepts, ideas, events, social evil etc. in the farms of primary and secondary statements.

Argumentative Essays:

The type of the essay that requires your stance in the form of yes or no. In short the argumentative essay is a specific type of writing in which a student chooses a topic (often a controversial topic), researches it extensively, and then uses the evidence gathered in the research process to establish his/her opinion or position on the topic in an essay designed to persuade others to share that opinion.

This table will further elaborate and help the students to understand different kinds of essays

Types of CSS Essays By Mureed Hussain Jasra (CSP)

About the author

Mureed Hussain Jasra (CSP)

Mr. Mureed Hussain Jasra boasts of a diverse professional background. Being a Civil Servant, he has served at important positions in the Federal Secretariat and autonomous bodies dealing with the important policy level matters. Prior to joining Civil Service of Pakistan, he served as a lecturer of English in the Federal Government of Pakistan and won accolades in academic circles and intelligentsia for his professional commitment and devotion to work.
Mureed Hussain Jasra's current fame among the CSS aspirants owes to his stellar success as being the most towering CSS coaching teacher and mentor. Under his careful mentorship, many young men and women have won distinctions in the CSS/PMS competitive examinations and are now serving the nation in different capacities. He regards teaching as the singular driving passion of his life and has founded Civil Services Preparatory School for the young aspirants.
Mr. Jasra is an avid reader of books and loves debate on history, culture, literature and governance. He is Masters in English Literature.