How to Write a Good Profile Essay

By: Tasha Kolesnikova

13 min

0

10.04.2022

How to Write a Good Profile Essay

Before you learn how to create your perfect profile essay, you need to master academic writing's necessary skills. You must understand from which parts the composition is formed, what must be included, what vocabulary for each type you need to use, etc. The essay typer should be professional and express thoughts correctly.

To assess your writing skills, a professor or teacher can give an assignment in the form of a profile essay. Our article is based on what you learned to create essay introduction phrases, central part, conclusion, outline profile essay.

It is much easier for those students who have already read autobiographical articles or descriptive landscapes since this is all a profile essay. Agreeing to describe something in words is easy, but conveying thoughts on paper is much more difficult since the paper should be framed appropriately. Here we will give you step-by-step instructions, but you can contact StudyBay managers and receive professional help if you have any difficulties. Now let's get to the study of a profile essay and find out what details it will add up.

What Does Profile Essay Mean?

A profile essay is a type of paper in which it is necessary to describe a place of events, a landscape, a person, with formatting in APA style or ASA, Chicago or Harvard. Your topic should contain detailed information so that the reader can enter your text or make a decision, learn something new.

The description text consists of the following parts:

  • general characteristics of the subject, general impression;
  • signs, details;
  • the general assessment of the subject.

For example, the description can be a portrait landscape. Anything can be the description's object - a person, his emotional state, an animal, a plant, a city, a house, a park, a village, and the weather. The speech feature predominates nouns, adjectives, adverbs, a minimum of action, and static text. The descriptive text answers the questions "what? what kind?". Let's see an example:

"The color of the fungus is yellowish-gray. It can be dirty brown and darker towards the middle of the cap. The stem is thin, dense, white at the cap, gray at the base, sometimes brown."

We also want to note that two concepts are similar to each other in the English language: "descriptive essay" and "profile essay." But there is a difference between them that you should be aware of when completing a task. A descriptive essay is a concise message about facts, events, and related phenomena. For example, a description of recent events or a book/movie review essay. Usually, it contains not only the main idea but also may contain the opinion of the author. A profile essay is aimed more at describing in detail portraits, landscapes, and all the details, while the author brings new information but cannot express his opinion.

What Are The Main Goals Of Profile Essays?

If you carefully study this type of essay's type, then it speaks for itself; that is, its basis includes describing the place, thing, event, occurrence, person. The profile essay is full of adjectives. Without them, we would not be able to describe the subject. They are keywords. When composing the text, you can use a dictionary of synonyms that will help you choose adjectives. Based on this information, several main goals of a profile essay can be distinguished:

  1. A clear description of nature, phenomenon, person, with all the details.
  2. The student should describe a person or place in his own words, using epithets, comparisons, antonyms.
  3. The student must prove that he has the required academic writing skills.

There is a more demanding attitude towards college students since, with this type of assignment, the professor can evaluate the organization, presentation, and research skills. Many students think this is the most confusing essay, as it can be easily confused with other types. Therefore, you need to study the essay checklist and steps below to avoid getting lost in your thoughts.

How Do I Prepare to Write Profile Essays?

Of course, experience in writing essays is gained through constant practice. The more essays you have written, the higher the chance of getting a good grade. However, due to the large volume of the curriculum, many students have the so-called "short-term memory effect" - they write a paper using argumentation, but after a couple of months forget everything.

Therefore, we recommend starting your preparation by examining the directions for writing an essay proposed by the compilers this year. Then you need to carefully study each of them and understand what the essence of each is. So even at the initial stage, you will have meaning about a profile essay.

To prepare most effectively for this type of essay, we recommend compiling a list of topics that may be used in advance. Topic wording allows the student to choose the material on which he will base his reasoning. If such blanks are made in advance, then you will be able to compose the paper faster. We also made a step-by-step preparation instruction. Please read it carefully.

Explore Examples

Before work, each student should carefully read the examples of profile essays to see the text's structure. To do this, you need to write an "example of a profile essay" in an Internet search engine, and you will immediately be given many sources of information. Still, you only need to choose those for which there are reviews or if you did not find mistakes there. Also, special magazines with examples of different types of essays are issued for students, so most likely, you can also find a profile essay there.

While reading the example, pay attention to the structure of the text, the design, the theme, built by the paragraphs, and what artistic techniques were used. Also, please keep track of what style the author used, what language he used, etc. And the last thing you should pay attention to is this introduction and conclusion. You must understand how the author grabs the reader's attention and what phrases he used for the final paragraph. You can write them out and do the same.

Read as much as possible because every author has his writing style, and you can see some details that the previous writer did not use. It is in the examples that you can find basic knowledge that the teacher will not tell you.

Choose a Topic

To successfully choose a topic for a profile essay, use the following tips:

  1. You need to think about what exciting information you can choose for the topic and whether there is a source to write an interesting article.
  2. Choose the closest to you that resonates with you because your task is to demonstrate personal interest. That is, to express your attitude to the chosen topic, your position on the problem, to give an individual assessment of the events, characters, and actions that will serve you as arguments. And this can be done most convincingly only if the experts feel your interest in the chosen topic.
  3. It would help if you chose the topic to express your perspective and convincingly argue it based on literary material. This means that you know where to get an example to prove that you are good at describing the topic.

Find Your Writing Style

Your style is like your voice. You need to understand what only you can write about how you differ from everyone else. Here are some tips for finding your writing style:

  • Write a lot. It is corny but effective. Moreover, it is desirable to write in different genres, themes, and volumes. Keeping a journal is also a good idea.
  • Find an example for yourself, and understand why you like this particular writing style, but not wholly copy it, just choose the most significant moments for yourself.
  • Read classics and quality media.
  • Use the advice of the writers. Some of them may seem very strange, but they will still help. For example, one author calls for six months not to use the words: love, hate, be, have, know, think, believe, understand, remember, want, dream, and other mental verbs. It remains to describe feelings, not name.
  • Read books about language, writing skills, and journalism. They often contain useful exercises.
  • Identify and eradicate parasitic words.
  • Keep track of repetitions, pronouns, and the verb "to be" in all forms. They can almost always be removed.
  • Choose a priority genre and study its features. It is sometimes dull and dreary, but it isn't easy to move on without this.

Look For Reliable Information

While writing an article, many pitfalls arise in the path of the author. Sometimes information is difficult to consolidate with reliable sources of authoritative writers. The use of inaccurate data leads to the collapse of the student's reputation. This, in turn, leads to sad results: unprotected essay, loss of the teacher's or professor's trust.

We advise looking for official sources or use several independent ones. The reliability of facts and events can be found, first of all, in encyclopedias, monographs, narrow-profile reference books. Also, look for information on the official websites of figures and their pages on social networks. It is better to be wary of publications in scientific journals. Before using the information from there, make inquiries about this journal's authority and, in particular, the author of the article.

If the topic is controversial, it would be wise to ask for information from the educational institution teachers who hold different views. Thus, the author will objectively approach the description of such issues and avoid gross oversights.

Create a Plan

The last thing to do when preparing to write an article or essay is to make a plan. You can improvise and write whatever comes to mind, but this will make it harder for readers to understand the text and reduce your ideas' accuracy. A structured message is much stronger and more reasoned than a continuous stream of consciousness.

Text written according to plan is more credible. The plan helps not only the author but also the reader. Thanks to the exact structure, it is easy to navigate the content, which means that the perception of information is much more comfortable.

A text plan is needed to write an article faster and better. When everything is structured and transparent, which parts of working on, work becomes more productive. The plan helps the author write the article qualitatively: this means that the reader will easily navigate the content and will find the answer to the question that has arisen - what he opened the material for.

Both the plan and the text itself are usually built based on the question asked. It is often included in the title. Therefore, the question must be answered in the text.

Steps to Writing a Profile Essay

Any essay has a particular structure (introduction, central part, conclusion) of the content's presentation, and this plan must be adhered to when writing. You cannot jump from one question to another and back. If the topic sounds like "Description of nature," you cannot write about how you spend the summer. It would help if you talked about a specific place. Each thought expressed in the essay should be comprehended by you, the expressions should not be twofold, and the images you paint should not be dull.

When describing, do not try to use abstruse words. Sometimes it takes a long time to find the right word. Try to start with a rough draft using the same words as discussing it with a friend. How would you describe something to him? Then you can edit the resulting text by removing the spoken parts and replacing them with more appropriate phrases.

After writing an essay on a draft, read it at least a couple of times, mentally speaking. Make sure the text is complete. Parts of the paper logically passed one into another, and there were no abrupt changes in the course of thought. Avoid repetitions. Check the volume ratio of the main parts of the essay so that you don't get the too long intro and out or insufficient volume of the central part. We've given you a few tips, now let's explore the specific steps.

Write an Introduction

The essay begins with an introduction, where the most important thing is the essay topic's relevance. The introduction contains a description of the importance of the chosen topic. This description should not be too long; 3-4 sentences are enough. Your introduction is a short article designed to grab the reader's attention. The introduction should tell the essence of the composition, what it is about.

There are several ways to write the beginning, first, with a description of the topic's relevance. Tell the reader why you are writing an essay on this particular topic, why it is exciting, and why it is worth writing about it at all. Even if you didn't choose the topic yourself, you could still think of something in this direction. Another way is to start the story with a topic that many writers and scientists discuss, that is, to indicate that this issue is relevant to this day.

Introductory phrase templates:

  • Everyone knows that...
  • Thousands of books have been written about this, and hundreds of films have been shot, and inexperienced adolescents and experienced people speak about this...
  • Probably, this topic interests each of us, so the text is dedicated to the topic

Write Body

You have intrigued the reader. Now your task in this part is to reveal everything that you have written in the introduction. If you need to portray some personality, you should pay attention to the appearance and the character hiding behind it. For example, suppose what kind of person he is: big eyes - dreamy and sweet, stern look - stern and severe, kind smile, sympathetic. When writing a description, it is advisable to highlight different ideas in paragraphs: this way, you will show your literacy and knowledge. The central part should not be boring and complement the introduction. You have to put in a lot of effort to keep the reader's attention and make him read your text to the end.

Describe Vividly

A profile essay should be filled with encouraging words that describe your topic in detail. To do this, you need to use epithets to tell the reader how a person smells, looks, talks, or what kind of colors the place of events is filled with. Let's consider an example of a female student describing her friend:

"Frankly, I have many good, loyal friends. They are my classmates, boys, and girls from my city. But my best friend for more than five years has been Elizabeth. She looks nice, and she is 17 years old. Lisa is not very tall, but she has a beautiful body. Every day she goes in for sports and attends yoga classes twice a week, so her figure is gorgeous, athletic, fit. Of course, the ideal figure is only part of beauty. After all, only a combination of a beautiful body, spirit, and mind can make the person attractive, even if the facial features are generally typical.

Elizabeth has straight, long, blonde hair, which she often gathers in a bun. She has blue eyes and long dark eyelashes and large lips, which she always tints with a transparent gloss: oval face and a small nose. Lisa is still very elegant. She wears clothes in fashion. I can tell her charm is irresistible."

Write the Final Part

The last part of the profile essay is the conclusion. Here you need to set out similar information on the central role but in a short amount. The conclusion is intended to bring the reader to the end of the story and contain several sentences. In conclusion, you should write a few critical words about a place, a person, a phenomenon. This is necessary to make it clear to the reader how the described subject influenced you. Also, in the end, you can use quotes if you don't know how to choose the right words.

The conclusion should reflect your thoughts as well as other parts of the essay. In this paragraph, you will be able to tell whether you achieved the goal set in the introduction, whether you could describe the subject in a way that would inspire the reader. In conclusion, you can summarize all the information, but try not to repeat yourself, and perhaps give some advice for the future to the reader. This concludes the writing of the profile essay, and we wish you the best of luck. Take advantage of all the tips to achieve the goal of your profile essay.

User ratings:

User ratings is 4.8 stars.

4.8/5 (155 Votes)

I studied sociology and marketing at Europa-Universität Viadrina (Germany) and Universidade da Beira Interior (Portugal). When I was a sophomore, back in 2018, I decided to put what I've learned into practice, so I got my first job in digital marketing. I currently work in the content marketing department at Studybay, building strong, effective, and respectful communication between the platform and our clients.

Add Your Comment

We are very interested to know your opinion

Comment
Name Email
Get Help