{"id":62,"date":"2015-08-31T22:59:50","date_gmt":"2015-08-31T22:59:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sukiwessling.com\/kidblog\/?p=62"},"modified":"2015-08-31T23:04:03","modified_gmt":"2015-08-31T23:04:03","slug":"what-is-an-essay-and-why-should-you-care","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sukiwessling.com\/kidblog\/what-is-an-essay-and-why-should-you-care\/","title":{"rendered":"What is an essay and why should you care?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The first time I taught an essay writing class, one of my students raised her hand as I was talking.<\/p>\n

“Excuse me,” she said. “But what does S. A. stand for?”<\/p>\n

\"Essay\"Like I always tell my students, there is no stupid question. But that question was surprising to me at the time!<\/p>\n

Now I realize why people haven’t heard of essays: because they don’t see a need for them in their daily lives.<\/p>\n

In reality, though, essays are not only fun and interesting to write, but they actually are useful little things.<\/p>\n

What is an essay? <\/strong><\/p>\n

An essay is a piece of writing in which a writer explores one topic and argues<\/em> for one opinion about the topic. The opinion has a fancy name, too: the thesis<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Another way to look at it is that an essay is a written-down thing that we do all the time in real life: we learn about something, we form an opinion about it, and we have discussions with other people in which we try to convince them that our opinion is right.<\/p>\n

Scientists do that.<\/p>\n

Politicians do that.<\/p>\n

Car salespeople do that.<\/p>\n

Video game designers do that.<\/p>\n

So an essay is not something that’s separate from real life. It’s just something that many people do verbally instead of in writing.<\/p>\n

What’s the point of writing an essay?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"A
One of the most famous essays ever written is “A Modest Proposal” by Jonathan Swift. But it’s not one that’s meant to be taken seriously!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Writing down our ideas forces us to think them through. When we have to write our reasons for our opinions, we go through an important process:<\/p>\n