What Is the Purpose of Teaching Students Exposition?
The primary purpose of exposition is to convey facts or truths. This is something that we can all relate to and strive towards every day. To push our thoughts forward to future generations, this is a much needed skill and is paramount in the pursuit of human intelligence. Every periodical we read is centered on this goal. The reader is left to gauge the level of truth that is being brought their way. In the information age of today, the target for any reader is to come to the general conclusion is what they have just read is legitimate and had their best interest in mind.
Expository writing is a tool that is often focused in academia. Bodies of this kind of work often start with a thesis statement that is followed by paragraphs that support the thesis and attempt to prove the thesis as a tried and true fact. The summation or concluding paragraph is written to sum up the argument of the facts. The purpose of this type of writing is not to amuse or persuade a reader to form a certain opinion. The goal is to provide the reader with a cadre of facts that control the narrative of the purpose of the work. As a writer your goal is to arm your readers with undeniable truths that can stand the test of time.
Steps to Compose an Expository Essay
It often starts with clamping down a topic that you will explore in your writing. Teachers will often assign topics and if they did, you can skip this step entirely. If you were not assigned a topic and have a bit of freedom with the focus of your work, there are some considerations you should have about this. I would encourage you to investigate a topic that you have a good deal of interest in. If you are even slightly passionately about the topic, it can help you put together a much better piece. If it is a topic that you know something about, that is even better. Starting from scratch can be difficult.
You next step is to learn everything relevant to the topic that you can. You can do this through a bit of research. Make sure that vet the sources of information. Look at the credibility of people that have put together this information. We are looking for completely objective sources for our background information. As you perform your research, you may notice that your topic takes an alternative track, and you may want to consider adjusting the title of your piece accordingly. For example, you may be writing about electric cars and find that most of the information focuses on the work of a single company. You might want to adjust the title to include that company.
Once you have investigated the topic, in depth, it is time to plan how you will put together this expository essay. The best way to plan an expository piece is to write up an outline. This starts with an introductory paragraph that hits us the audience with something compelling that helps capture their attention. We then explain this over the course of the traditional three-paragraph structure. We then end off with a conclusion that sums up what we have dived into and we see if there is interest in exploring the topic some more in a different direction.
Once we have all these parts of our expository essay planned out, we craft our thesis statement. The thesis statement is simply a bit of information letting the reader know what we will be exploring and why they should care about it. We do not provide a great deal of context in this section; we save that for the body of the work. We are trying to inform them what this is about and engage them to continue on reading.
Once we have that thesis put together, we write our entire first draft based on what we have in our outline. I would make sure to touch on each main point and include context that the reader can clearly relate to. Include a hook at the front of the work. If there are multiple viewpoints to what you talking about be sure to explore them. Once you have completed your expository essay take time to go back and edit and proofread your work. It may take a few passes and then it is time to get another set of eyes on your work for some feedback.
