For some students, and even adults, who have completed their degrees, essay writing has been a challenge. I can remember well the feeling of being in a sort of bewilderment, being lost in a thousand ideas, thoughts, sentences, paragraphs and other stuff. Very often I had to come up to my dad to help me with writing an essay. He has always been a very good essay writer, I must admit. Gradually, step by step, he taught me how to write an essay in a way so that it wouldn't be a burden, but something one can do for fun.

An essay is a piece of writing, usually from an author's personal point of view. The essay must be well structured (i.e. organized) and presented in a way that the reader finds easy to follow and clear: it must look tidy and not present any obstacles to the reader. It must have a clear readable interesting style.

Compare and contrast essay is one of the numerous essay subtypes. In this case, as we can easily deduce, the main objective of this kind of essay is compare any two items, finding similarities between them, and/or contrast them, i.e. analyze them critically finding and pointing out dissimilarities.

When given a task of writing a book report most students give a deep sigh in response. This type of writing, however, is one of the best ways to expand your literary horizons. Most book reports follow a similar format, but your teacher will probably outline what he or she expects from you. Follow those instructions first. Bear in mind that a book report is completely factual. It includes information on the author, title, place and year of publication as well as a summary of the content of the book.