Comparison Essay

dribble, shoot, kick, rally, volley, spike
block, run, jump
must not hold, drop ball
protective gear
racket, bat
use hands, feet, legs, head
individual, team sport
number of players
size and shape of court or field
open or divided
number of positions
offense and/or defense
time limits
fouls and penalties
tie breakers
change of player
possession of ball
steal, pass, catch, intercept
change of possession
size and shape of ball
made of leather or rubber
how to score points
easy, hard
size of goal
high, low, vertical, horizontal
protected or unprotected

Topics and items that students thought of:
How are they the same? How are they different?

t o p i c s People Movies Songs Sports Jobs Countries Schools Animals Food Clothes Books Language(s) Restaurants Religions

i t e m s men / women Back to the Future / True Lies Nagori Yuki / Okuru Kotoba Baseball / Soccer Restaurant / Convenience Store Japan / America High School / University Chimpanzees / Humans Fruit / Cake Pants / Skirt The Kiss / Harry Potter Japanese / English McDonald's / MOS burger Buddhism / Christianity

An easy way to think about ''classification'' is to think about a school putting students into classes (groups of students). There are many students, but only a few classes (maybe 3-5). As you know from your many years of experience as students,

(1) all students must be put in a class and
(2) no student should be put in two classes (no overlapping).

You might also imagine that when schools divide students into classes they like to avoid unbalanced classes sizes, particularly classes of only one or two students. If possible, they would move such students into one of the other classes.

A Classification Essay is a piece of writing that presents a way of dividing things (items rather than students) into classes. These things might be

physical items: musical instruments, alcoholic drinks, or countries;
things that are not physical: power, ways of studying, emotions; OR
a combination of both--desires (things that people want).

The first two steps in writing a Classification Essay are to figure out (1) the topic--what kind of items to divide up and (2) how to divide the items.

There are many examples (=items, like ''students'') of _________________ (=topic) ,
but only a few kinds (=classes).

Fill-in the blank. Then continue writing.

When deciding the topic and how to divide the items, you should keep in mind the last step--figuring out (3) what to write in your essay. It is best if you have based the division of items on a single principle, one which is

(a) original, (b) useful, and/or (c) intellectually interesting.

Let's take countries as an example topic. There are about 200 countries. How could we divide them? by their first letters from A to Z. But ... such a division would be completely arbitrary. The classes would tell us nothing about the countries--nothing original, useful, or interesting--so there is nothing to write about.

We could divide them by location in the northern or southern hemispheres. That's a little more interesting, but still too obvious, almost trivial. Although we could point out that their seasons are reversed and try to explain how the classification would work for countries that are in both hemispheres, that would not be enough to make an essay interesting.

How about dividing countries by their political systems. That's much more complex. We have to think more deeply about each country. It's a little bit troublesome, perhaps, but much, much more interesting . And we'll have a much better essay when we're finished.

Only after deciding the topic and how to divide the items are we ready to start writing. It would be nice to start off with an Introduction--a short paragraph that will introduce the topic and inform the readers how many classes we are going to divide the items into.

The bulk of the essay then will explain the principle we are using to divide the items. Usually there will be at least one paragraph (with at least 3 sentences in each) for each of the classes. Remember we are explaining the division of items--its complexity--the connections and, perhaps, interaction between the classes. This is NOT a personal essay. You should leave out all personal material and also any irrelevent details about the items themselves--details that have nothing to do with the division of items into classes.

Finally we'll want to end the essay smoothly by putting some final remarks into a short paragraph--a Conclusion.