All You Need to Know About Expository Writing, Basics & Prompts

Expository writing exposes the truth or facts to its readers. Expository essay writer presents the facts without their own opinion and educates the audience. Historically expository papers have been used extensively by journalists, Textbooks, whitepapers, medical and pharmaceutical research, and surveys are counted as an expository writing style. 

In college, students from political science, history, international relations, and all branches of medical science are given these assignments. In this blog, we will discuss the what, how, and why of expository essays and make you a pro. Let’s take a deep dive into this subject. 

What is Expository Writing?

An expository paper is a fact-based essay written to educate readers about untold truths. It’s possible they might have known this information—or you are adding new evidence that will support the previous narrative or denying it altogether. 

Medical investigation into any disease, investigative journalism, and guides are all types of expository writing. A writer’s job is to inform their audience or expose the facts to them and leave the decision to them to choose their side. Thus, any fact-finding writing or mission is classified as expository. 

A writer  (content removed according to suggestion)

What is the Purpose of an Expository Essay?

The primary purpose of an expository essay is to expose or introduce the facts to the audience. These essays are specifically used to evaluate a student’s critical thinking and analysis behavior. Journalists are more exposed to this genre of writing. Their future career is based on finding facts and evidence to support their narrative. 

Secondly, expository writing requires diligent work and a critical eye for finding hidden details. These assignments open students’ minds and fulfill their curiosity through a thorough examination. 

Lastly, expository writing makes students keen to find details in everything and get to the truth. By doing this, they get to the bottom of the fact and find deep meaning within the topic. In short, composing expository content enables students’ creativity and sharpens their mind and skills. 

10 Helping Expository Writing Prompts for Middle School

Expository writing is a skill that students should learn from a young age. However, you may develop it at any stage or age of your life. Here we will add some good expository essay prompts that will help you in writing. 

1. Explain why jet travel is safer and quicker than trains or cars.

2. Write an essay on PlayStation 5 and explain why it’s better than buying a gaming PC.

3. Write an essay on the importance of sports for students. Explain why students must participate in extracurricular activities to stimulate their brain activity.

4. Choose what method is better for education, homeschooling or on-campus. Explain which one is better for students.

5. Choose your favorite book or its chapter and explain why you like reading it. Also, compare why it’s better than other books in your curriculum.

6. Write an essay on your favorite movie. Explain which scene inspires you the most and the key takeaway from its theme.

7. Explain the difference between a laptop and a PC. Choose which one is the best by comparing its advantages and disadvantages.

8. Choose a pet from a cat, dog, hamster, chicken, or rabbit. Explain which one is the best and the reasons for choosing that pet.

9. Explain how you would like to go to school. Choose a mode of transportation and explain why it suits you better than other options.

10. Write an essay on the living conditions of your city. If you have a choice to move to another city, where would you like to move?

These expository writing prompts will help you write an excellent middle school assignment. 

Basic Expository Writing Style

After knowing the definition and essay prompts, students must also understand the expository writing style. We will explain this highly creative style of writing to all the students. 

The writing style for an expository essay is fact base, and a writer avoids adding their bias or subjective opinion. If you are a student or a journalist, presenting objective statements and negating non-factual ones is mandatory. 

Typically, your audience might get bored by lengthy statistics and monologues, but you can also make them engaging. Using some elaborative techniques with persuasion in presenting evidence makes a big difference. Writers can deliver technical and factual details in a descriptive manner that suits their target audience. 

The last thing you must remember is to add all the sources you have used correctly and precisely. Any evidence showing bias or gravitation towards subjective opinion will make your writing useless and warrant it as a personal opinion. Using unreliable resources is prohibited and should be avoided all the time.

Types of Expository Writing

There are a total of 5 types of expository writing that are used widely across the world. Each class is used for a specific purpose or topic and describes the essay’s subject accordingly. These different kinds are mentioned below.

Compare and Contrast Expository Essay

The first and widely known expository essay type is compare and contrast. In this type, you evaluate two different things and present your analysis. Both subjects have some similarities and some differences, and your job is to highlight these. 

Compare and contrast essays can be written on a personality or a political science theory etc. It’s essential when you choose both subjects; they must have a few similarities and a few dissimilarities.  

By writing this essay, students deploy their best capabilities in research and analysis and provide the examination results. Secondly, this examination must be based on facts and reality rather than being hypothetical. This way, you can inform, educate and provide additional information on two different subjects or topics.

Definition Essay

The second type is a definition essay that defines a topic for the audience. Your topic might be a subject, an action taken in the past or present by someone famous, etc. In this type, you define how your subject or topic behaves or has behaved under certain conditions. Using facts and genuine details is a must, like in any other expository essay.

You might get a topic such as “President Nixon’s Watergate Scandal.” To do this, you will define time, critical moments, and decisions taken by Nixon. All the facts and figures should explain and describe the event or topic appropriately.

Problem-Solution Essay

The third expository writing example is a problem-solution essay. A writer discovers or debates a topic and offers a solution to tackle it. This type requires solid arguments with concrete evidence to prove the problem’s existence. An author must carefully examine the extent of the negative or positive effects of the problem. 

For example, to eradicate the problem of obesity, we can educate obese patients and their family members. A writer must offer solution to a problem they propagate in their essay.

After thoroughly studying the phenomena, they must offer a solution that tackles it from all angles. Problem-solution essay also discusses the feasibility and practicality of the solution. Students are encouraged to think outside the box for creative ideas for generating a good remedy for a short and long-term strategy. 

Cause and Effect Essay

The second last type of expository writing is cause and effect essay. This kind of essay deals with specific issues and their consequences. You might choose a topic such as “poverty causes in South Asia” and present its consequences. For example, poverty causes rising incidents of theft, pickpocketing, ransom abduction etc. You also debate many topics in this essay and their collective effects on the environment, humans or animals, etc. 

Process and Classification Essay

The last kind of expository essay is a process and classification essay. Sometimes they are discussed separately. When we talk about process essays as a single type, it involves how to and steps of a topic. For example, you might want to write about the steps for making an Italian pizza, etc.

In a classification essay, we define different classes of one subject and discuss their link with each other. For example, if we talk about engineering, we can branch out its other courses such as mechanical, electrical, aerospace, etc. 

When used collectively, we may add steps or how to of a topic, such as “baking cookies,” etc. Then we can connect its steps with baking an apple pie or a cake and evaluate their connections. These types help us write expository paragraphs for our assignments. This way, we can choose our desired kind and explain the facts in our write-ups. 

How do Narrative and Expository Writing Differ?

Narrative and expository are both writing styles for essays. Students are given assignments on both types of writing. There are many differences between narrative and expository writing. We will discuss these differentiations in detail here for your better understanding of the topic.

• Narrative essays use storytelling techniques. Expository essays use descriptive language to present fine details about the topic.

• The tone of the narrative writing is always persuasive, and readers enjoy it more as it appeals to them. The expository tone is rigid, and its emphasis is more on technical details and their credibility. 

• Narrative writing is all about fiction and exaggerates feelings, situations, outcomes, and effects. Expository essays focus on facts and evidence and avoid exaggeration of all forms. 

• Expository essays are written in organized form, and there’s no deviation in context. Narrative write-ups are unorganized, and their structure sometimes consists of reverse chronological order. 

• Due to the storytelling tone, narrative essays are only used in novels, short stories, poetry, and personal speech. Whereas expository writing is used explicitly in research papers, technical analysis, compare and contrast essays, etc.

Here we’ve discussed all the differences in both writing genres that make them easily distinguishable. After knowing the differences in both types of writing, it’s essential to understand the structure of expository essays.

Expository Essay Structure

Here we will discuss the details of the structure of an expository essay. Like all academic essays, expository writing has the same structure, such;

• Introduction paragraphs 
• Body paragraph one  
• Body paragraph two
• Body paragraph three
• Conclusion paragraph

Unlike the typical structure of a 3 paragraph essay, expository writing follows a 5 paragraph structure. You can add your research and evidence in these paragraphs and complete your assignment accordingly. 

Conclusion

Expository writing provides a great opportunity for college students to learn critical analysis skills. We’ve provided all the necessary details to help you make it to the top. By understanding the core concepts, structure, and expository writing prompts, you can ensure good grades in assignments.