Writing Composition: Informative Essays

Contributed by:
Ivan
These types of essays educate the reader or raise their awareness on a particular topic. An informative essay educates your reader on a topic. They can have one of several functions: to define a term, compare and contrast something, analyze data, or provide a how-to.
1. Informative Essay
What is an Informative Essay?
An informative essay educates your reader on a topic. They can have one of several functions:
to define a term, compare and contrast something, analyze data, or provide a how-to. They do
not, however, present an opinion or try to persuade your reader.
Examples are; animals, a country, a sport or club, cooking. Below is a list of more ideas.
1. The way homeless people survive
2. School textbooks cost
3. Childhood obesity: Causes and outcomes
4. Why does censorship on TV exist?
5. Talk about favorite book
6. The way cell phones functions
7. Useless school laws
8. The way gravity works
9. The life cycle of any insect of choice
10. Things that make bloggers popular
11. Building a wood cabin
12. What is Artificial Intelligence
Write some of your ideas here?
What do I do?
Make sure all your facts are accurate. You will need to write a topic sentence for each fact and
write a focus sentence (thesis statement) for the entire essay. Create an outline that will
organize your facts in a logical way. Then you will be ready to make your first draft.
 Brainstorm to come up with the list of great topics. Conduct research to find which
of the offered topics has most of the related, credible, and up-to-date materials before
making a final decision. Think about which of the potential topics would be the most
beneficial for the reader. Example: Eating disorders are a relevant topic for the modern
society.
2. Informative Essay
 Create a sound, tentative thesis statement before writing. Think about what you
wish to share with the reader, reasons why the specific problem is important, and how
to persuade the audience of the issue’s significance. It could be something like, “The
progressing eating disorders caused 13% of the deaths in the United States during the
last year.” If a student writes something like that, he/she should recall a source of the
statistics.
 Write a draft. In the initial draft, list the questions related to the chosen topic along with
the facts you know. Provide specific examples from real life to prove that the issue/
topic is real.
 Observe the selected topic online and in the library. It is important to choose
credible, relevant, and up-to-date sources meaning they should not be older than 5
years (start from textbooks and end up with journals and scholarly articles).
Interviewing people is another great way to collect information.
 Write the body.
 Edit using your 6-Traits of good writing sheet.
A short view of an organizational outline
1. Define the topic (what smoking is).
2. Provide short background information on smoking (the way people obtain this
bad habit, reasons to become addicted, and what happens if the person decides
to quit smoking).
3. Create a thesis statement. It could be the relationship between the smoking and
the increased risk of various dangerous lung diseases). Identify the scope of the
informative essay.
Main Body
1. Smoking and different risky lung diseases.
2. Describe the way smoking can impact human organism in other harmful ways
(example: heart attack, brain activity, etc.)
3. The ways to quit smoking/release form this harmful addiction.
1. Reword the thesis sentence(s). Recall the correlation between different types of
lung and heart diseases and a bad habit such as smoking.
2. Reiterate the significance of the research on the outcomes of smoking.
3. Offer some forecasts for the future (example: “If the American nation does not
quit smoking in the closest future, it might result in…”).
REMEMBER TO CITE YOUR SOURCES!!!!
WHERE DID YOU GET YOUR INFORMATION FROM?