How to Write a Discursive Essay? Format Explained with Examples for Beginners | Affordable Dissertation

As a student, you’ve probably written many different kinds of essays. Just when you think you’ve done them all, you come across a new one, the discursive essay. This type of essay is different because it shows both sides of an argument without trying to convince the reader to agree with one side.

Due to its unique structure and writing tone, many students find it hard to write a discursive essay. To help them, the experts at Affordable Dissertation UK offer a holistic guideline for writing and formatting this essay. Keep reading to explore them.

Main Arguments of The Article:

• A discursive essay comprises arguments and counterarguments related to a controversial topic.
• In this essay type, the writer presents various perspectives on a topic and demonstrates their knowledge about the specific issue.
• Such essays aim to improve the research skills, critical thinking skills, and communication skills.
• To structure a discursive essay, add the three key sections, including an introduction, body paragraphs, and a conclusion.
• Learn how you can format all these key sections of this discursive essay.
• Explore the key writing steps that you must follow to write a compelling essay.
• See how you can write a perfect essay using discursive writing by following some dos and don’ts.

What is a Discursive Essay?

The experts of the University of Sussex define the discursive essay as “This is an academic essay that comprises arguments for a controversial topic or presents various perspectives on an issue.”

The word discursive is an adjective form of the noun discourse, which means writing about a subject. So, in this essay, you explore the discourse related to your chosen topic and present both positions: in favour and against.

In simple words, unlike the argumentative essay type, which aims to persuade the readers to a particular viewpoint, the discursive essay focuses on a balanced approach. This type of essay is not limited to presenting only two different points of view, but also requires including all relevant information.

The key purposes of this essay type include the following:

• It aims to improve your critical thinking skills by encouraging you to analyse different perspectives of the topic before developing any conclusions.
• By writing this essay, you get a chance to learn how to present your ideas and thoughts coherently.
• This essay type plays a significant role in polishing your research skills, as during the writing process, you collect the information from various credible sources.
• The best part of writing this essay is that it requires presenting multiple perspectives on a topic, which eventually enhances your persuasion skills

Thus, discursive essay writing contributes significantly to improving critical thinking and research skills. It also prepares you to write your viewpoints on complex topics. However, we know that writing this essay is not a piece of cake for you.

To tackle this difficult situation, you can approach us and seek essay writing help from our UK-based professionals. They have years of experience writing well-structured and engaging academic documents based on in-depth research.

Discursive Essay Format

Knowing the right format is important while writing a discursive essay. A well-established format and approach allow you to become more critical about your viewpoints. Moreover, with a good essay format, you can explore the full scope of your essay topic, including its strengths and weaknesses. It also helps that you consider all perspectives on the topic.

Are you finding it difficult to explore the right essay format for discursive writing? In this section, we are going to mention the right format for a discursive essay that will surely help you write a perfect essay.

Let’s explore this format.

1: Discursive Essay Introduction

The first part of your essay is the introductory paragraph. This paragraph is the foremost thing that your readers explore while reading your essay. So, this section must be engaging enough to grab the audience’s attention and compel them to read the document to the end.

To write an impactful introductory paragraph, follow the key steps below:

• No matter which type of essay you are writing, the best way to start is with a hook. This hook can be an interesting question, a striking fact, a compelling sentence, or anything that can grab your readers’ attention.
• Now, add a brief background about your topic or the issue that you are going to discuss in your discursive essay. This information will help the readers to understand your topic better and provide a basic understanding of it.
• At last, present briefly multiple perspectives of the topic without taking any particular side. This will tell your audience what viewpoints you are going to cover in this essay.

Pro Tip: Unlike traditional essays, this essay doesn’t require a thesis statement that comprises a definitive point of view on the particular topic. Similarly, there is no need to add a roadmap of the essay in the introductory paragraph of this essay.

Example:

“Should the use of social media platforms be restricted for school-going students?” This question sparked debate among researchers, government authorities, healthcare agencies, and cybersecurity firms. This essay explores multiple perspectives on the use of social media at an early age to give a complete overview of this topic.

2: Main Body

The next section of your discursive essay is the essay body. Here, you present your arguments, supporting details, and counterarguments. All these things will help you create a balanced discussion about the topic.

There are various body paragraphs in your essay, depending on the topic of your essay and the academic requirements provided by your professor. No matter how many body paragraphs you add to your essay, each of them follows the same structure. Various techniques are used to structure these paragraphs.

The PEEL is the most common technique that is used for structuring each body paragraph of a discursive essay. Have a look at the key elements of this technique:

• P (Point): The first thing that you must do in this technique is to state the main point or argument that you will discuss in the rest of the paragraph.
• E (Evidence): The next thing to add in your essay body paragraph is the evidence that will support your main arguments. This evidence can be anything, such as facts, statistics, quotes, or examples.
• E (Explain): Now it’s time to explain your evidence. This explanation is based on your analysis and interpretation. At this stage, state clearly how your evidence supports your main argument.
• L (Link): At the end, link your topic sentence with the main topic or argument of your essay. This linking will make your argument powerful and demonstrate the importance of the main argument to your readers.

Apart from following the PEEL technique, you should follow some effective tips while structuring the body of your essay. Check out what these tips are:

• The first thing that you must take into account is ensuring that you cover all the aspects related to your topic. Unlike other essays, don’t pick a particular position and skip all other perspectives.
• If you have various arguments related to your topic, then provide each argument in a separate paragraph. This will help you to make your essay comprehensible. Nonetheless, don’t forget to add the supporting evidence with each argument.
• The best way to write your discursive essay is to write it in an alternating method. Are you searching for what it means? If your first paragraph presents an argument that is in support of the main argument, then try to write the next paragraph on the opposing argument. This combination will make your overall essay unbiased and well-researched.

Example:

“Supporters argue that increasing the use of social media apps by school-going students can negatively impact their academic performance. For instance, research says that students who spend time on social media platforms score 40% less in academic grades as compared to students who have limited screen time.

Nonetheless, critics said that if we restrict the younger generation from using social media apps, then they may stay unaware of what is happening in the world. They further argue that if there are enough researchers available on the negative impacts of social media, then there are large studies available stating the benefits of these platforms.”

4: Discursive Essay Conclusion

After structuring your essay body, you have almost finished your discursive essay. Now, focus on the last section of your essay, which is the conclusion. This is the last section of your essay, so you must make sure that it is impactful and leaves a lasting impression on your readers.

Have a look at the tips below to make your essay conclusion powerful.

• Start your conclusion paragraph by briefly explaining all the key arguments that you have explored in your essay body. Make sure that you highlighted all the key perspectives that you have explored in your essay.
• Remember that there is no need to go into the details of all your arguments, just summarise them.
• Make sure that your essay conclusion is not too long. It will make your overall essay weak. The ideal length of this section is one paragraph; don’t exceed this limit. 

Example:

“In conclusion, the debate on excessive use of social media platforms for students highlights the need for moderate use of these apps. These platforms help students to stay updated on what is happening in the world. But these can also cause students to waste valuable time that they need to invest in their studies.”

Now that you have learned the discursive essay format, it’s the right time to move on to the writing process of this essay. Let’s explore the key steps of this writing process.

Discursive Essay Writing – A Step-by-Step Guide for Students

A discursive essay is not like a generic essay; it requires strong critical thinking, analysis, and writing skills. Therefore, many students find it hard to write this essay. To help them, we have come up with some key steps that they must follow to write a winning essay.

Let’s delve deep into this guide to explore these steps:

1: Choose a Good Discursive Essay Topic

Choosing an appropriate discursive essay prompt is the first step of the essay writing process. This step lays the foundation of your entire essay, so make sure you choose the right topic that interests you the most.

Below are some actionable tips that you must follow to choose the right topic for your discursive essay.

• Make sure that the topic you are choosing is divisible into at least three to four aspects. This will help you to structure a well-rounded overview of the topic within your essay.
• The topic you are considering for your essay must come under the umbrella of academic literature. This will help you gather research-based evidence and facts to support your main arguments. Therefore, before finalising any discursive essay topic, ensure that there is ample information available within the academic realm.
• The last thing that you should consider is to make sure that the claims and counterclaims available on your topic contain the same idea.

Discursive Essay Topic Examples

For your better understanding, we have mentioned some discursive essay topic ideas. Have a look at them:

• Should animal sports, such as bullfighting, should be banned?
• Why should smoking be banned within the educational premises?
• Athletes are living the ideal healthy life: Is this statement, right?

2: Conduct Research on Your Topic

As you have chosen your topic, it’s time to research it to gather pertinent evidence and information. During this research, you have to explore various credible sources that will help you in reinforcing or arguing your stance. These credible sources may include academic journals, news reports, online sites, and experts’ opinions.

The best way to gather supporting information for your arguments is to explore the repositories and libraries. We know that exploring this extensive resource is not easy. For this, you can use the Boolean Operators, recommended by the MIT Libraries experts.

Have a look at what these are:

• Use the word ‘AND’ to find the article that comprises both terms that you want to search. For instance, if you are looking for articles that comprise canines and confetti. Use the AND term as it will help you to
• Use the ‘OR’ term to locate the research article that contains either of the terms that you want to search. For example, if you write canine OR confetti in your university repository, you will find the articles contain one of these terms.
• You can also use the ‘NOT’ term to exclude the terms that you don’t want to appear in your search results. For instance, if you search for canines NOT confetti, you will only explore the searches that contain the canines’ term.

3: Formulate Claims and Counterclaims

Most students make this mistake: they jump into the writing process without first structuring claims and counterclaims. As a consequence, they end up writing a poorly structured essay lacking strong claims and counterclaims.

Therefore, before starting the writing process, you should formulate clear claims and counterclaims that are perfectly connected. Claims are generally your arguments that you construct to support your main arguments. On the other hand, counterclaims are the opposing point of view that usually rebut your claims.

Here, the question that students generally ask is how many claims and counterclaims they need to construct before writing their essay. The answer is simple. For a 1000-word essay, 3 claims and counterclaims are enough to formulate for this length of the essay. However, longer essays require more arguments.

4: Write Your Discursive Essay

As you have learned how to structure your discursive essay in the previous section, you know what components you have to add in this essay. Let’s recall again the key elements of this essay.

• Introduction: The introduction is the first section of the essay that must be compelling and engaging enough to grab the audience’s attention.
• Main Body: The body is the main section of your essay where you present all your arguments backed with strong evidence.
• Conclusion: Like the other essays, in the conclusion of the essay, you have to reinforce your main argument and summarise the key ideas.

However, when writing this essay, you have to focus on the logic rather than on emotional appeal. That means instead of writing something emotionally appealing, you have to present well-reasoned arguments. Additionally, it is good to add in-text citations while writing this essay. These citations make your essay credible and leave a powerful impact on your readers.

Discursive Essay Examples

As you have learned, the right format of a discursive essay and key strategies to write this essay, we hope that you can write an A-grade essay. If you are still in doubt about your writing skills, you can buy an essay online from our professional writers. Our expert writers write every academic paper with precision and research-based arguments.

You can also explore some discursive essay examples that we are going to mention in this section. These examples will make the concept of discursive writing crystal clear in your mind.

The first example is by Scribd. Let’s explore how the writer structured their arguments in this essay.

The next example is by StudentShare, in which the writer formatted his essay using strong claims and counterclaims related to their topic.

Do’s and Don’ts of a Discursive Essay

The experts of the Matrix Education recommend some dos and don’ts for writing a well-structured discursive essay. Have a close look at what these are.

What is the Difference Between Argumentative and Discursive Essays?

Most students confuse an argumentative essay and a discursive essay because both of these essays might look similar, but actually, they don’t. Both essays have a distinctive structure and require a unique writing approach.

Check out the key features of these essays to get to know how they are different from each other.

Argumentative Essay: Key Feature

• The argumentative essay is based on taking a specific position and defending it with strong evidence.
• The primary goal of this essay is to convince the readers of the specific viewpoint of the writer by providing logical reasoning.
• This essay type accepts the counterarguments, but most of the time, it refutes these counterarguments to strengthen the main argument.
• An argumentative essay is generally written in an assertive tone to convince the readers of the writer’s perspective.
• It follows a rigid structure that generally comprises an introduction, a thesis statement, a main body, and a conclusion.

Discursive Essay: Main Features

• A discursive essay follows an objective approach and typically comprises a comprehensive discussion on a specific topic.
• In this essay, the writer adds multiple perspectives related to a topic by presenting claims and counterclaims.
• Unlike the argumentative essay, the discursive essay follows a flexible structure that generally depends on the free-flowing of topic analysis.
• In this essay type, the writer has to present different ideas on the same topic. So, it is important to use a balanced tone and formal language to make it engaging.
• This essay generally deals with complex issues and requires a deep understanding of the subject.

Conclusion

In a discursive essay, you present your arguments and counterarguments on a specific issue. In this essay type, you need to cover multiple perspectives of a topic, which makes it unique from other essay types. Due to its uniqueness, students find it challenging to write this essay.

To save them, we have come up with this guide. Here, we have shared the key elements that are required to structure this essay. These components include an introduction, a main body, and a conclusion. With this, we also shared the effective writing steps that they must follow. These steps include choosing a great topic, researching the topic, formulating claims and counterclaims, and writing the discursive essay. We sincerely hope that these steps will help you in writing a perfect essay. For additional support, you can contact us and avail yourself ofthe best-rated essay writing services in the UK to ensure the successful completion of your paper.