SMARTHINKING Writer's Handbook

Chapter 1, Lesson 4

Exposition: Explaining Why

Objective

In this lesson, you'll learn how to write an expository essay that explains why something is or is not.

What is Expository Writing?

Expository writing involves explaining concepts and ideas to others who may not be familiar with them. Writing to explain, or exposition, is very much like teaching someone. To explain, or expose, a subject requires that you know why and how something is or is not.

There are two basic types of exposition. One addresses the questions of why and why not. The other type addresses the question of how to do something, often called a process paper. This lesson will address the first type of essay that explains why. To learn more about the second type of exposition—the how to, or process paper—see Exposition: Explaining How To.

Expository essays are among the most frequently assigned types of writing for college courses. Because you'll write expository essays often, it's helpful to review some of the most important principles for this kind of writing. You'll also find exposition useful in the work world outside of school. Memos in the office, "how-to" manuals in the shop, procedure papers at the factory—someone who knows the subject has to write them all, and often that person will be you. Promotions and increased responsibilities at work can come from knowing how to explain information to your co-workers.

Audience and Purpose

When your audience is a teacher who has assigned the essay and if the assignment is based on your class work, there is a good chance that s/he knows a great deal about the subject. In that case, the purpose of your essay is to test your knowledge and ability to express the ideas clearly. However, when your audience is your classmates or a group not directly involved in your writing situation, you must analyze the audience to consider how much they might know about your subject. If they know very little, or if you are presenting the material in a new way for them, then your purpose in writing the essay is to teach the audience something. [See "How the Audience Affects the Purpose for Writing" and "Analyzing the Audience."]

Explaining Why: Offering Reasons

• Why do some farmers like to keep their cows pregnant in the winter?
• Why are some college students better test-takers than others?
• Why doesn't the American college student say the "Pledge of Allegiance" every morning?

These are the kinds of questions that require explanations of why.

Addressing these questions requires several steps from you as the writer:

• Find good answers for the question.
  There are multiple reasons that some students take tests better than others. Your job is to research the question and find these reasons. Good strategies include asking students and college testing center workers (called field research), finding articles in professional journals and books, reviewing social science textbooks, and searching the Internet for answers.
  
  
• Formulate a thesis.
  A thesis for an exposition generally is non-argumentative in nature. Although there certainly are different viewpoints that people can hold about the questions that are posed above, a thesis for a paper that explains why is expressed in a somewhat matter-of-fact manner. For example, a thesis sentence for the first question might be: Keeping cows pregnant in the winter is a natural method of conserving energy. A thesis for the second question might be: Some college students are better test takers than others because of such factors as their early testing experiences, their learning styles, and their ability to focus when under pressure.

Exercise

Think of two different thesis sentences for the third question posed above and type them in the text box below. Then, click on our response to compare.

 

• Determine what kinds of reasons you'll need to support this thesis.
  Every expository essay needs to be supported by reasons. The natural answer to the question "why" is "because." So, to list good reasons for your thesis statement, think of as many because statements as you can. Notice how the following thesis is written with the reasons stated within it: "Some college students are better test takers than others because of such factors as their early testing experiences, their learning styles, and their ability to focus when under pressure." Of course, the writer does not need to limit him or herself to just these three reasons. Other reasons for being a poor test taker include learning disabilities, dislike of the testing process, and poor study habits. All of these reasons could be included in one expository essay, although the thesis sentence itself would need to change to something less definitive, such as "There are a number of valid reasons that some college students are better test takers than others."
  
  
• Let your thesis guide your essay's development.
  A thesis can be a wonderful tool for guiding both you and your readers in the explanation that you're writing. Using the thesis, "Some college students are better test takers than others because of such factors as their early testing experiences, their learning styles, and their ability to focus when under pressure," you can see that there are three reasons offered and that these three reasons will need to be explained in detail with supportive evidence. You will need a minimum of three paragraphs in the body of the essay, but you can write more; if your essay is supposed to be very detailed and has a page requirement of more than three pages, you might find that you need three to five body paragraphs for each reason offered!

  On the other hand, the thesis, "There are a number of valid reasons that some college students are better test takers than others," suggests only that you will offer reasons in support of the thesis. You will write as many reasons as you think are reasonable and the essay's paragraphs will develop by one-to-three paragraphs per reason-limited only by your understanding of the subject, your audience's needs, and the page requirements of the essay.

• Let your thesis guide your essay's organization.
  Just as your thesis can guide your development of reasons and sense of paragraphing for the essay, it can guide your organization of your reasons. You can look at the reasons offered in the following thesis sentence and see that an organizational pattern already is suggested for you: "Some college students are better test takers than others because of such factors as their early testing experiences, their learning styles, and their ability to focus when under pressure." However, you still need to think about your organization. Are these three reasons in the most useful order? Is the first reason one that needs to be addressed before the second or third one can be? Have you deliberately decided to place the reasons in the order of most to least important or vice versa? When your thesis is well written, it can truly guide your writing process and your reader's understanding of the reasons that you'll provide.

Exercise

Return for a moment to the thesis sentences that you wrote in the exercise above. Do your thesis sentences indicate what kinds of reasons you'll need to give for the essay? Do they assist you in planning the essay's organization? In the textbox below, copy one of your thesis sentences and list the reasons in the order that you think they should be presented. How long do you think your essay will need to be to explain this thesis?

• Other tips for writing strong expository essays:

  Use concrete language.
  Use language that will convey your ideas clearly. Readers who are learning from your essay want to concentrate on what you're teaching, not on figuring out the meaning of your words. Be specific and include all necessary details. A word of caution, though—don't go to the other extreme of including unnecessary details! Unrelated or irrelevant information can be as confusing to the reader as too little information.

  Support your statements with evidence.
  Your essay will only be useful to your readers (and acceptable to your professors) if you use solid and sufficient evidence to support your explanations. Good sources of evidence are facts, example, anecdotal stories, statistics or numbers, and testimony from authority figures.

  Write an interesting introduction and a summarizing conclusion.
  As with most writing, academic or otherwise, readers require some introduction to a subject—why it is important, interesting, or relatively unknown. Your introduction actually tells readers why they should read further. Likewise, especially in an exposition, your conclusion serves an important function of summarizing and restating the reasons provided in your explanation. In essays that "teach," the general rule is to tell the readers what you are going to talk about (introduction), talk about it (body paragraphs), and then tell them what you talked about (conclusion).

  Review the first draft for a new thesis.
  An interesting occurrence in essay writing is that sometimes you will start a draft with what you believe is your thesis and then, during the writing process, you will discover a stronger or more clear thesis. Look at your final body paragraphs and the conclusion to see whether you actually want to say something new or different. If this has happened, congratulate yourself! It means that by engaging in the writing process, you have let your thinking develop and grow to a new level. To address the new thesis, cut and paste it to your introduction paragraph and revise each paragraph to support the reasons and new main points suggested by that thesis.

Summary

You'll use expository writing to explain ideas and concepts many times during your college and professional careers. By following these principles, you can prepare yourself for writing successful and helpful explanations.