Differences in Essay Writing: Elementary School, Middle Grade, High School and College
It only makes sense that the essays you write will become more complex as you age through the education system. With every essay or paper you write, you are learning and improving upon your skills as an academic writer. Hopefully, it gets easier with time. Here are some of the differences between the essays you’ll see as you make your way through school.
Elementary
Typically, you begin learning the art of the essay in third or fourth grade. These essays aren’t on complicated subjects, but teach the basic format of an essay and what one looks like. You learn that most essays have an introduction, body paragraphs, and a conclusion. The goal is simply to write an on-topic essay with complete sentences, correctly formatted paragraphs and proper spelling and punctuation. Some prompts you might see in an elementary classroom are:
What is your favorite food, and why?
Describe your most treasured memory.
Do you believe the Earth is flat? Use supporting facts as the basis of your response.
Although the topics are simple, they serve to build the foundation of how to write an essay, something you carry with you throughout your academic career.
Middle Grade
In middle school, the level of difficulty increases slightly. You receive more essay assignments, and it’s not as simple as describing your favorite weekend activity. The papers will have more detail, more structure and require more than just a couple of pages. Some examples include:
Is social media a good thing, or a bad thing? Why or why not?
Describe why honesty really is the best policy.
If you could choose any character from a book to meet, who would you choose and why?
These prompts require a little more thought and input than the elementary examples. Students are given the opportunity to use their own opinions, ideas and what they’ve learned to write a thoughtful and organized essay. This step up in middle school writing is extremely important to prepare for what’s required in high school writing.
High School
Almost as soon as you enter the high school doors, academia becomes a whole different ball game. There’s more homework, more subjects to learn about and a greater need to focus hard in order to perform well in class. Not only will you have to write essays on books you read for English, but you’ll typically end up writing papers for almost every class you take. This makes it even more important to know the ins and outs of essay writing, as you’ll have a wide array of new subjects to cover. A high-school essay question may look like:
Compare and contrast two short stories by Edgar Allan Poe. How do the similarities and differences in their narration explore different ways to perceive the idea of insanity in a character?
During the civil rights movement, what methods did American political leaders use to win public acceptance?
What impact have classic sci-fi films, tv shows, books, and anime had on the real world and on scientific research? Discuss three examples of science fiction’s influence on real world discoveries or events.
As a high school student, you’re exposed to much more than you are in middle school. So, there’s a wider variety of topics for your essays, and you should be prepared to write about pretty much anything. Writing essays can help you learn more about a certain subject (especially when it’s a research paper) and challenge you to apply the skills and knowledge you’ve learned in class. After you walk across the stage at graduation, having written more essays than you can count and breathing a big sigh of relief that it’s finally over, college writing wastes no time in making itself known. Not only does the college application process require essay writing, the four (or so) years of university education will be full of rich writing opportunities as well.
College
When you get to college, everything changes. You no longer live at home, you no longer stay in one building all day and chances are you don’t even have class every day of the week. Even if you’ve decided on a major you think gets you a pass from essay writing, think again. Just like in high school, all subjects require writing; yes, even math! Some essays you might see in a college class are:
(Physics): In what ways is our ability to measure and understand different light wave patterns impacted by weather?
(English): Discuss Toni Morrison’s intentions in the writing of her novel, Beloved. In what ways are her methods of storytelling successful?
(Psychology): Analyze the ethics of the research in the Stanford Prison Experiment and evaluate the implications of the study. What does this explore about human behavior?
These essays will typically be pretty lengthy, and require a ton of research, primary sources, quotes, evidence and sometimes even experimentation. College professors are experts in their subject, so you have to be prepared for hard grading. Doing well on a college paper is extremely important to passing classes and graduating with a degree! You prepare to write these essays from your very first writing lesson in elementary school and continue to do so all throughout your educational journey. Allowing yourself to learn and grow when it comes to writing academic essays will pave the way to successful grades on college papers and beyond.
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