The term discursive essay could cause a certain level of anxiety for some. This happens when the person does not really know what a discursive essay really is.
However, I believe that all this worry should not be there really. This is because a discursive essay is really like any other essay that you would need to write during your time of study.
Basically, writing a discursive essay is not so hard if you know how. In this blog I’m going to show you a sample question of a discursive essay.
I believe that it is important for you to know what the question is going to be like first to be able to understand what is required of you in the question. You would need to familiarize yourself with the question beforehand.
To achieve this we will go through this question part by part.
The discursive essay
In a discursive essay you will need to present your opinion on the topic given and provide a balanced view of it. Here you will be able to showcase your ability to present ideas and flex your ability to discuss about a topic in a constructive way.
Writing a discursive essay would involve presenting your ideas, describing what you particularly observe that is happening around you and in our society in general with regards to the topic being discussed. You will be giving your opinion from both sides of the arguments and so this means that you would write about both sides of the view.
Time allocated for the question
The MUET writing paper consists of two tasks. They are task 1 and task 2. In task 2 you will have to write an extended writing essay.
The time that you should allocate for writing this essay in task 2 is 50 minutes. The duration of time for the entire MUET writing paper is 75 minutes.
So, you will spend the first 25 minutes of your time, answering task 1. Once you are done with task 1, you are going to straightaway move on to answering task 2.
I would like to advise you to use the first few minutes to prepare for task 2.
Preparing for task 2 involves brainstorming on the content points, thinking of the elaborations and listing examples for you to use in the writing of your essay. There is a lot for you to do here and it should all be done within the first 5 minutes of your time.
Yes it is going to be a little bit of a rush for sure. You would need to think very fast and in a more objective way.
In your mind will be just the topic and thinking about the contents and the support for the contents . Write all that you are thiinking of on paper.
You will do the selection of ideas that you will be using after that.
The situation given
In this essay, it says that you went for a talk. And in this talk, a fresh graduate gave a speech.
During the speech the fresh graduate made a comment which would be the focus of the discursive essay.
In this situation, the person giving the comment was a fresh graduate. It is interesting to see that the person making the comment was a fresh graduate and not someone else like a police officer or a lecturer for instance.
By using the fresh graduate as the person giving the comment it would bring with it some connotations.
This is because just by mentioning a fresh graduate, few things will come up to mind. Among others would be the challenges they would potentially face during a job hunt, being too choosy in looking for a job and also, the current unemployment rate.
So, when you are writing about the topic in your discursive essay later you would need to include and remember these issues mentioned above.
The topic of discussion
In the situation given the fresh graduate made a comment that a person’s career choice should be based on the person’s interest alone.
This comment would mean that when looking for a job the fresh graduates should focus on a particular career choice that they would prefer. This would disregard the other opportunities that may come their way should they not be the types of jobs that they would be interested in.
Let’s now focus on the topic being discussed. When a person would only go for and accept the job that they are interested in, it would result in two things.
The first is the person’s job opportunity distinctly would be narrowed down to a very limited few. The second would cause the person to have to wait perhaps much longer for the type of jobs that they are interested in to come by.
Certainly by only going for jobs that a person is interested in would seem quite idealistic. What’s with the current unemployment rate going on in our country.
The situation with the current pandemic that we are all facing certainly does not help the matter. With more people facing the danger of retrenchment and losing their source of income, only looking for a jobs based on the person’s interests is in fact rather naive.
These would be your opinion about why you feel a person should be open to accepting jobs that may not be of their interest. You feel that the person should practise prudence and accept the jobs that they have succeeded in getting. Perhaps later in the future, when the opportunity arrives for them to move on to another job that they actually love then they could always do just that.
On the other hand saying all that does not mean that you totally disregard the importance of having a career that you are interested in.
This is because you could see clearly from experience and from your observation around you that having the job of your interests would only lead to success.
This would include the success at work and success in life where you will find happiness and job satisfaction from the career that you love.
Consequently having a job that you love would certainly contribute to your overall quality of life.
The content points to use
So these are the items that you would need to think of and talk about in the content points when preparing for your essay.
Write these ideas down in a more constructive way.
Perhaps you can have two points to support and another two points to oppose the topic.
From these four points you will choose only 3 content points that you will be working on and elaborate in your essay.
For a discursive essay you need to first of all mention and discuss content points to support the topic given. Use the two content points you already have for the first two contents- content 1 and content 2 to support the topic here. And in your final content which is content 3, you will switch your view and you will oppose to the topic given.
This is how you would write your content points for a discursive essay.
Fulfilling the task set in task 2
In this question, the task that you will need to fulfill is for you to write an essay expressing your opinion on the statement.
The task clearly states for you to provide your own point of view.
So voicing out the your point of view with regard to the statement made in a clear way is the task that you need to fulfil here in task 2. Your task in not to sway the reader to agree with your point of view. In fact you are simply writing in order to provide the two different arguments of the topic.
You would also need to discuss the current subject matter in an engaging and informative way.
To be engaging is to be able to keep the interest of the readers as they read your essay.
So again, remember that your purpose is not to influence the readers to agree with you but for them to see your point of view and to provoke the readers’ thoughts on that matter. By doing this also you are giving a mature treatment to your essay writing. This shows critical thinking on your part.
As you are writing the discursive essay, bear in mind that you need to write it in a more formal way.
Your writing would involve discussing ideas and evaluating the topic. And to make your arguments clear you would need to add in examples based on your observation around you.
Length of essay
For this essay, you would need to write more than 250 words. Writing a longer essay would provide an in depth review of the subject matter.
