 An expository essay attempts to

explain the subject to the audience.

This may be accomplished by
explaining a process, comparing or
contrasting two items, identifying a
cause-effect relationship, explaining
with examples, dividing and
classifying, or defining.
 Expository essays are written by
students to demonstrate their knowledge
and understanding of a particular topic.
 The purpose of an expository essay is to
present, completely and fairly, other
people's views or to report about an
event or a situation.
 It presents a subject in detail and the
writer explains a subject by analyzing it.
Unlike creative writing which is
imaginative and symbolic, the writing
style of an expository essay is formal,
standard, academic, factual and
straight-forward.
 Exposition usually proceeds by the
orderly analysis of parts and the use of
familiar illustrations or analogies.
 For example, a student might use a
descriptive pattern to emphasize the
features and characteristics of a topic, or
sequential writing to emphasize the order
of events, listing items in numerical or
chronological order.

 While different patterns may be employed

to create the essay, every essay
contains the introduction, the thesis, the
body paragraphs, and the conclusion.
 Variations of these patterns are
sometimes used, as well as a
combination of patterns to create an
expository essay.

 This lecture introduces you to the

different patterns/methods of exposition
including; describing, exposition,
defining, and narration.
Narration

 As a mode of expository writing, the narrative approach,

more than any other, offers writers a chance to think and
write about themselves.
 When you write a narrative essay, you are telling a story.
 Narrative essays are told from a defined point of view,
often the author's, so there is feeling as well as specific
and often sensory details provided to get the reader
involved in the elements and sequence of the story.
 The verbs are vivid and precise.
 The narrative essay makes a point and that point is often
defined in the opening sentence, but can also be found as
the last sentence in the opening paragraph.
 Since a narrative relies on personal
experiences, it often is in the form of a
story.
 When the writer uses this technique, he or
she must be sure to include all the
conventions of storytelling: plot, character,
setting, climax, and ending.
 It is usually filled with details that are
carefully selected to explain, support, or
embellish the story.
 All of the details relate to the main point the
writer is attempting to make.
In the paragraph below the writer uses a narrative to illustrate
his point about children acquiring their parents’ habits.
 It’s amazing how parents continue to pass their own hang-
ups on to their children. It reminds me of the story about the
young bride who cooked a ham for her new husband. Before
putting it in the pan, she cut off both ends. When her husband
asked her why she did that, she replied that her mother had
always done it that way. At a later date, when they were
having baked ham dinner at her mother’s home, he asked her
casually, why she cut both end s of her ham. The mother
shrugged and said she really didn’t know, except that her
mother had always done it that way. Finally she asked the
grandmother why she did always cut the ends off the ham
before she baked it. She looked at him suspiciously, replying,
‘‘because my baking dish is too small!’’
DENNIS WAITELY, Seeds of greatness.
Static and process description
 Process description is a method of paragraph
or essay development that explains step by step
how something is done or made.

 The process essay will employ chronological

(time) order

 It often uses formal, non-descriptive vocabulary.

 It should be written in chronological order which

accounts for subsequent actions.
Example
 The problem of hairballs that have already formed in
a cat’s fur can be solved by proper brushing. In order
to brush your cat’s hairballs, you’ll need two
brushes: a wide-teeth wipe and a metallic one. The
former will help you to dissolve and, partially,
remove tightly knotted hairballs without causing any
pain or discomfort to your cat. The latter used
subsequently, will remove excess of loose puffy hair
and decrease the possibility of reoccurrence the next
day. Once brushing is over, make sure to polish your
cat’s fur all over his body with the help of a clean,
cotton, or woollen cloth.
 In static
description, there is no action.
 The description is like that of still life painting where no
motion or feeling is expressed.
 Examples include a description of a mountain, a street,
a palace, etc.

The Jebel es Zubleh is a mountain fifty miles and more in length,

and so narrow that its tracery on the map gives it a likeness to a
caterpillar crawling from the south to the north. Standing on its
red-and-white cliffs, and looking off under the path of the rising
sun, one sees only the desert of Arabia, where the east winds,
so hateful to the vine-growers of Jericho, have kept their
playgrounds since the beginning. Its feet are well covered by
sands tossed from Euphrates, there to lie; for the mountain is a
wall to the pastures of Moab and Ammon on the west-lands
which else had been of the desert a part.
 LEW WALLACE, A Tale of the Christ
 END
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=5x0O-O3OUzw