Writing an Essay of Classification

When you classify, you generally break a subject down into its most meaningful parts. You may also classify a subject by explaining how it fits into a larger category or grouping. When writing an essay of classification, your goal is to help readers better understand the whole (your subject) by presenting the parts. Your goal may also be to show how your subject fits into the larger scheme of things. Use the guidelines below to help you develop your work.

Step 1: Brainstorming

Make a list of subjects that could be broken down into types. Likely topics for classification essays include people or objects or activities that tell us about the people to whom they belong. Some that came to my mind are: dogs, mothers or fathers, students, coin collections, wedding rings, dinner parties, babies, teachers, golfers, pilots, racists, preachers, sermons, funerals, soccer games, basketball players, gardens, dorm rooms, part time jobs, frozen pizzas, purses, farms, drivers, families, believers, dates, presidents, beaches, sunbathers, persuasion techniques one uses with one’s parents, shoppers, hunters, fishermen, married couples, churchgoers, letters from home, friends, study habits, boyfriends or girlfriends, how people eat, and types of employees.

Step 2: Topic Selection

Select from your list a topic that you find interesting and think will prove rich in descriptive possibilities. Try to select something you often have the opportunity to observe or already know a good deal about. For purposes of illustration, I will choose from my list farms.

Step 3: Topic Development

Break your topic down into several (Yes, I will count off if you have only two!) categories, and give each category as concise a label as you can come up with.

Think of something interesting or important to say about your topic that relates in some way to the labeled categories into which you divided it. You will probably have to think about your labeled categories—what they have in common with one another and how they are distinguished from one another—to find some assertion to make about them.

Step 4: Introduction

Your introduction should make clear not only what you are going to be writing about but why you are writing about it in the first place. You need to make your audience care enough about your topic to want to know what you have to say about it. If you don't care about your topic—or if it's clear you have classified its types merely because you have been asked to write a classification essay—then you won't be able to make an audience care what you have to say about it, no matter how well you write. Your introductory paragraph, in addition to telling us what your topic is and what categories you will be using to describe it, needs to tell us about you and your relationship to the topic. I call this defining your authority, and I grade for it. The beginning of your opening paragraph will establish some sort of connection between you, the writer, and your subject that will make us want to read on and find out what you have to say about it.

Your thesis statement, as always, will assert something about your topic. What you start out with as a thesis statement, your working thesis statement, may have to be worded differently as it metamorphoses into your actual thesis statement, which will, in all likelihood, be located at the end of your opening paragraph.

Step 4: Body Organization

Look back at your labeled categories. Reword them in any way that suits them to your purpose better. Get rid of any that do not pertain or are redundant, and regroup the ones you want to cover such that you have more than one larger categories. Label these. Order them in a way that pertains to your topic—for example, in the case of my topic, from small family farm to corporate farm. An outline might help you organize your thoughts.

Step 5: Writing the Body

Begin each body paragraph with an assertion about the labeled type that will be discussed in that paragraph, then describe that category in detail in the remainder of the paragraph. You may wish to brainstorm first about each subcategory, or you may want to start right in writing. Be as concrete and objective as possible. Avoid making value judgments about your categories; rather, let the information you provide lead the reader to see things the way you do, and be as descriptive and specific as possible so that your readers will believe in your analysis. A specific example of each type may help us to see and believe in what you are arguing, but remember that you must first give us the contours of the type in general. In other words, an essay in which you tell us you have several types of friends and then describe three friends in detail without first telling us what type each belongs to and what that type is like would not work for this assignment.

Step 6: Conclusion

Write a thoughtful conclusion that reflects, but does not merely restate, your thesis and contains a change of some sort: a change of pace or emphasis or point of view, a remaining question if you’ve been offering answers, meaningful repetition containing slight change, a personal reference if you’ve only considered others, a memorable picture or story, a meditative summary.

Step 7: Title

Give your essay an interesting, original title.

Step 8: Classification Essay Examples (follow the links on the website)

(This Assignment sheet is taken from Ms. Patty Kirk’s website)