How to Write a Summative Essay

Most students struggle to write a good essay. It’s even more difficult for them to write an excellent summative essay and get that stellar grade. A summative essay is the among most important essays you’ll write in college. And if you want an “A,” you need to make sure that you follow the correct format and have a good thesis statement.

So how can you write a good summative essay? Before knowing how to ace it, you first need to understand the essay’s features, characteristics, and format. This then clears the clouds for you to get it right.

Continue reading this blog to understand how to become one of the best summative essay writers.

What is a Summative Essay?

A summative essay is a short written piece, particularly an article that describes, summarizes, or evaluates a more extended passage. Because of its brevity, a short essay needs an exciting topic to capture the reader’s attention. It typically begins with an introduction and ends with a conclusion summarizing the main points covered.

On the other hand, summative assessment is the process your academic institution uses to determine your performance, understanding, and knowledge vis a vis the course.

Learning institutions give these essays to test a student’s understanding of a topic, concept, or aptitude.

There are different types of summative writings. Each has a unique requirement, and you must understand these to nail them. The types are

Theorizing

These types derive their name from the word theory. A theory is given, which may be a reality or in contrast to reality, and you have to answer the question.

Evaluative

Evaluative essays require you to take a specific character, idea, or issue from the course work and evaluate it. You have to support your evaluation with texts and other evidence from the coursework materials.

Compare and Contrast

As the name suggests, these writings require you to contrast two characters, ideas, or elements from the course.

Argumentative

Argumentative writing pieces establish a claim in the introduction, and you build upon it with evidence. Afterward, you take a contrasting idea and explain it still with support from the coursework.

Opinionated

Opinionated essays are essays you write to show your clear standing and thoughts on an issue or topic. Sometimes, people call them persuasive essays, although slight differences exist between them. In the former, you state your stand, while in the latter, you state your perspective and ask people to support or follow it.

Information/Explanatory

This type of writing is the most common in your curriculum. The paper requires you to summarize a concept or topic you have covered in your own words.

Format of Summative Essays

Summative essays are structured into three parts. However, depending on the essay type, this structure may slightly change. Nevertheless, you can follow this basic structure

1.      Introduction

The introduction gives background information about your topic.

2.      Body

The body contains several paragraphs covering a different point of your essay topic.

3.      Conclusion

The conclusion summarizes the points you made in the body.

This format is consistent with APA guidelines for research papers and academic writing in general, so it’s easy to apply to summative essays if you’re already familiar with that.

Additionally, summative essays have an abstract if you follow the APA guidelines. An abstract provides a concise overview of the main points of a paper or report, including its purpose, results (if applicable), and conclusions.

It should be no more than 250 words and should be able to stand alone from the rest of your paper or report due to its length limitations. Use short sentences and simple vocabulary when drafting your abstract since people reading it will likely not have read through your whole paper yet.

Tips for Writing a Good Summative Essay

To stand out in your summative essay writing, you should consider the following elements

1.      Develop an Outline

Developing an outline will help you write a good summative essay quickly and effectively. Your outline should not deviate from the format discussed above. But if your instructor gives a specific form, you should follow it.

2.      Have a strong introduction

As you begin writing your summative essay, make sure it starts with a strong introduction. It’s essential to have a short introduction that clearly introduces the paper’s topic. In addition, this is where you’ll want to put your thesis statement.

You might also want to provide some background information and use exciting language that will help draw in your reader. Finally, one of the primary purposes of this section is to provide an overview of the rest of the essay.

3.      Include a thesis statement and provide a brief outline of the essay’s structure

Your thesis statement should respond to the essay question and provide a brief outline of how you will structure your essay. Make sure that your thesis statement is consistent with your essay structure.

Your body paragraphs should each address one point from the thesis statement and develop it with examples, evidence, and/or analysis. Finally, the conclusion should restate the answer you have arrived at through your analysis of the evidence presented in the essay’s body.

4.      Ensure each paragraph has a main idea or topic sentence that identifies the central message

This helps you present your ideas and arguments concisely. Some considerations to follow here include.

• Focus on one idea per paragraph to make it easier for you to support your point of view with evidence and examples, and avoid offering too much detail at once.
• Connect the topic sentence to your thesis statement. The reader should always be able to see clearly how each paragraph in the body of the essay contributes to the development and support of the thesis statement.
• Avoid long paragraphs. Paragraphs over five sentences tend to contain extraneous information and digressions rather than stick closely to the main point

5.      Proofread your work

After finishing your essay, you should go through it once more to remove any grammatical errors. A vital tip in proofreading is to leave your work for some hours before coming back to proofread it. If your deadline is far, you can even leave it for days.

Conclusion

Summative essays may seem challenging to write if you do not know what they entail and their different types. However, this post has taken you through them, and now you know how to write one. Further, it would help if you went through your coursework to help you write about the given topic.

Additionally, your summative essay should follow your school’s rubric because each institution may prefer specific guidelines that may differ from the general rules.