How to Write a Classification Essay in Education: What Is It and How to Deal With It?

First of all, let us define what a classification essay is. The paper is a type of college task that wants you, the author, to classify characters, things, ideas, events or objects into specific categories or groups. At first, the projects may seem quite daunting, but once you understand the process, you’ll get to realize that things aren’t that bad after all.
There are three main goals why your college professor might want you to write a classification essay to:

categorize certain topics;
make sure a single arranging approach is being used everywhere;
provide the variety of examples that belong to every cluster.

The way you group things in your classification essay depends on their specific traits. Basically, you’re required to clarify the type of the evaluation principle to be used for categorization and grouping of the issues. If you’re writing a classification essay about education, you have a great assortment of subjects to talk about. We’ll discuss them later.

Find Interesting Ideas

Before you do the research part or write the essay, you have to get as many ideas as you can. If, for instance, your college professors wants you to produce a classification essay in education, but he or she doesn’t assign the specific topic, what are you going to write about?
In order to provide you with a better idea of the essay, here are some classification essay titles for college and university students to serve as good examples:

Types of Religions And Religious People;
People’s Attitudes Towards Same-Sex Marriages;
Types of Dictatorship Societies;
Types of Ancient Literature;
Types of Habits;
Types of Dance Styles.

As you can see, one may take any sort of idea that attracts his or her attention and turn it into a good topic. To make it a complete project, you will need to take a look at the topic from different angles and categorize it in various classes.

If you have a task to write a classification essay in education, a preliminary research is the first step you should take. Pick the topic you’re passionate about. Then, find out what information related to it is available either online or in printed literature resources. Is it possible to get any ideas for classification? Is there a sufficient amount of important information available to support all of your arguments? If you choose a perfect topic and get enough material to work with, you’ll be inspired to manage your time well and write an A+ essay.

The sector of education provides students with a lot of topics for every taste:

Reasons for (Not) Attending College;
Types of Lectures That You’re Likely to Meet on Campus;
Methods of Studying for a Final Exam;
Types of Students’ Vacation Destinations;
Types of Students in College;
Ways of Saving Money in College;
Different Ways to Use Social Networking Websites for Education;
Different School Systems Around the World;
Different Forms of University Extracurricular Activities.

Chances are classification essay topics on education may appear to be easier and effortless to deal with for college students. You have an opportunity to write an essay on classes, exams, lecturers, students, the teaching methods and so on and so forth.

Write the Thesis Statement

The thesis statement is the foundation for a classification essay. It should help your readers to understand the key point of the paper. In case with the classification essays, the thesis statement should identify the main approaches that the author is going to examine. The thesis sets a range of expectations for the readers that you have to meet in the paper later. The example of the thesis statement for the classification essay about ‘The Importance of College Education’ could be like this: ‘There are many benefits that make college education an important part of life, and this classification essay shall attempt to do classification of some of the advantages that a person can reap from a college education.’

Write a Classification Essay Outline

Many students don’t like outlines and they skip this part at whatever cost. Don’t be like that. The point here is that you can’t keep the main point and logical flow of essay ideas in mind without a strong writing plan. An outline will keep you on track as your write your essay. It is recommended to use the five-paragraph structure to write a classification essay. It means that you have to decide on three different categories and follow the outline:

The introduction with the thesis statement.
The body paragraph 1 (Category 1)
The body paragraph 2 (Category 2)
The body paragraph 3 (Category 3)
The conclusion
The references

To make sure you understand how it works, take a look at the example of the classification essay about social networking. You can use it as your own template.

I. Introduction

Social networks are among the most important elements of life in modern society.
Due to multipurpose essence of the social networks, various ways of to use social networking websites for education have emerged recently.

Thesis: The three main ways to use the social networking websites for education exist today: to maintain relations, as a valuable tool for online public discussions, and a professional tool that students use to market themselves and their products.

II. Category I: To maintain relations

For communication needs.
To learn about social events.
To get a sense of being part of peering network.

III. Category II: A valuable tool for lecturers

Lecturers post their assignments online.
Students interact with the lecturers.
Public discussions.

IV. A professional tool for students

Students promote themselves.
Students market their products.
Students contact potential employers.

Focus on the Research

Don’t skip this important step because you need as much information about your topic as possible. Do comprehensive research to make sure you have enough details needed to explain all categories you’re going to include in the essay. A good plan requires time, so make sure to have enough of it as well. You already know what categories you’re going to work on and you provided them in the outline. Now you have to be attentive and find as much information as you can about every category. When it’s time to cite authoritative and trustworthy resources in your classification essay, remember that by doing so you make your paper more credible.

First of all, you will have to define or describe every category. Look for the right terms and definitions that are information, concise, clear, and proper in the area of education. Make a list of the general characteristics of all categories, as well as think about how you’re going to describe them in the essay. Chances are you will see that there are certain differences and similarities between every category. But when you work on the classification essay you are allowed to do some comparison-contrast.

If you find some interesting ideas in the process of your research, do not forget to place every piece of information into your outline (the one we created above). However, you shouldn’t forget about keeping track of your resources. You will need to reference them later, which means it is important to be aware of where this or that idea was taken from.

Write the Classification Essay: The Introduction, the Body and the Conclusion

Now it’s time to start writing the classification essay. By this moment you’re done with all the preparation stages, which means writing an essay won’t be that difficult. You already have all information about education at hand. Besides, you’ve made a great outline. Now, all you have to do is to tie all elements together to make sure your essay turns into a well-set mechanism.

The Introduction. Usually college students have no idea how to start the classification essay correctly. The introduction is provided for you to be able to identify the subject. You can’t talk about all the categories straight away. First of all, you have to state the overall concept that you’re getting ready to classify. To attract your readers’ interest, it is recommended to give some informative or descriptive details about your paper’s title. Then you insert your thesis statement and make sure that it explains the exact classification that you’ll talk about in the next paragraphs.
The Body. How many categories are you going to provide in your classification essay? That’s how many paragraphs you should insert into your body. This type of essay doesn’t have to include five paragraphs just like the other standards projects. In this case you have to format the essay according to the number of categories that you’re going to write about. It’s better to not provide too many categories because they will make your essay unclear. It’s important to stay on-point and specific.
Every paragraph should have a topic sentence as a starting point. This will help you identify the specific category. Then you will give more details to get into the specifics of the category.

Don’t forget about the fact that all paragraphs in your classification essay should flow logically. In other words, one thing should lead to the other. For example, you may start with the most common facts and go on with less familiar things. Or you can do it straight vice versa: begin with the least effective things and proceed with the most effective ones. The key here is to make sure your text flows logically.
Conclusion. Finally, you have to summarize all points that you’ve classified in your essay in a clear conclusion. It is important to go over various approaches and types that you mentioned in the paper. Besides, you can give some brief final comments on each, but ensure to remain non-repetitive.

Do the Revisions of the Classification Essay

It was definitely not an easy task to get to this point. You did a monotonous and in-depth research and precise writing. And it’s no wonder that you may decide to skip the editing work because you just don’t feel like you can cope with it. No matter how tempting it is for you to leave your classification essay just like that, you have to re-read it and revise.
At this moment, your essay will be ready. If you get lazy and don’t revise it, you will provide an incomplete essay full of errors. This will negatively impact on your grades in general. You don’t want that, do you?

Do the large review of your classification essay. You have to simply re-read your essay from beginning to end. Do you think that the essay content doesn’t flow logically and has some gaps? If yes, find more information to cover the gaps. If you see that one of your paragraphs in the body part is longer or shorter than the other paragraphs, do edit them.
Make sure your message is clear. Eliminate all unnecessary words and complex phrases.
Proofread the essay in order to make sure that it doesn’t contain any grammatical mistakes.

The classification essay in education must be based on an understandable message and have a good organization. Without a doubt, the classification essay takes more efforts and time in contrast to the other types of academic projects. Nonetheless, the right outline and interesting topic give you enough space to express your creativity. Even though writing a classification essay in education may seem like another boring college task, you can make it really enjoyable if you use the right tips and recommendations.

How to Write a Classification Essay in Education?