Process Essay
First of all, you should understand exactly what does it mean – Process Essay. When you explain the reader how to do something (in details) or when you describe how something is done (also in details) – it is a process essay. This type of essay especially important in scientific writing or some technical writing.
The first step in process essay writing – is to choose a right topic (process). Since you are going to explain how some exact process works, you must know the procedure (the process) inside out.
Do not use some hard or strange process that you are not familiar with. You can lose some points or even fail your process essay describing unknown process.
Now try to ask yourself following questions and make sure you can answer all of them:
• Why is it important to describe exactly this process?
• Who are your target audience (your readers)? Will it be interesting for them to read about this process? Do they need some special knowledge (background) to understand this process?
• How many steps in that process?
• What difficulties you can face during each step? How you can solve these problems?
• Are there any alternative ways to complete this process?
Now it is the time to think about your title.
If you want to write an ideal process essay the title should be very informative. Your reader should know from the very begging what is the process that you want to describe.
Structure of a process essay:
- Introduction (including Thesis Statement). Here you should name the process and provide some background information. You can also explain why it is important to know about this process.
- Body. Here you should describe the process step-by-step, do not forget to mention all, even minor, details. Please, note that process essay is not necessarily advised to provide the audience with enough instruction to allow them to reconstruct the process. But in the same time instructions should be clear enough!
- Conclusion. First of all restate/paraphrase your thesis statement here. Please, provide the summary of the whole process also and tell the reader about the results of the activity. You can also give some tips and advises to the readers in this part.
Writing your process essay you can use specific, technical language. It is also suggested to use transitional words, to give your reader an idea when one step ends and next step starts. Process essays are often written in the second person, but it is better to check this fact with your tutor.





