In many American films, high school and college students write essays. But what is an essay? The word essay originates in the Latin exagium (or Old Latin exigent), and it denoted weight or (if we stick with the older version) emphasis and importance. The aim of the essay is thus to assess which of the parties to the dispute is right or wrong, put the disputants' arguments on the scales, and pass judgment. From Latin, we can see the transition to Old French (essayer) and English (essai), which means examination. An essay is thus not just a passive weighing but a test, an active stepping into a context, choosing a thesis and making a decision. Just as gold is tested by fire, so ideas are tested in the essay.

The essay appears in literature thanks to Michel de Montaigne, who published his book Essays in 1580. Among the authors who are certainly worth following in the field of essays, we should mention the recently deceased Umberto Eco, Neil Postman, Robert Christgau, Harry Levin, Václav Bělohradský or Václav Havel. This list alone suggests that the genre of the essay is quite popular and broad so that it can accommodate shorter texts in newspapers and longer treatises.

The word essay comes from French (from the word essai - meaning test). It has an interesting dialogical character in Czech, both masculine and feminine. When we say essay, we think of a specific reflection, often on a socially topical and important topic. There seems to be no sharp line between the review we write in high school and the essay. Generally, we sometimes speak of the French essay, an extended essay, often the length of an entire book, and the more punchy, sharply delineated and formally precise Anglo-Saxon essay.

The aim of this module is not a literary excursion but rather a practical demonstration of how to write one form of essay - the argumentative essay. This activity develops critical and creative thinking very well, allowing for a balance between the two.

The Czech philosopher Ladislav Hejdánek claimed:

Writing is different from speaking. It's a more dense, precise, and accurate way of expressing yourself. But what kind of writing style is he referring to? We can trace two lines to which he turns. The first is the habit of writing itself, which the former Czech president Václav Klaus describes as extracts from reading - the practice of sitting at a table reading, thinking, writing things down, evaluating what is interesting, new or what you disagree with.

The statements then lead to being able to formulate our thoughts. What we think or talk about will always be vague and fuzzy. Writing is the activity that allows us to sort things out, clarify, and formulate. It's not essential to always have the publishing platform or the purpose of writing right before our eyes, but we have to write because writing clears our thoughts.

The second line is the overall thought training. Writing forces us to proceed logically and critically on the one hand, but simultaneously gives us the tools to formulate our ideas - initially and creatively. And that is something we rarely get to experience outside of writing. People who write a lot often claim that ideas are born in the text in front of them and that they think as fast as they write. It is this dimension of self-cultivation that is important in essay writing.

We can say that literature is the mother of research and any creative intellectual human activity. Tomas Spidlik was tasked with preparing Sunday meditations (sermons) for Vatican Radio. He worked for the radio from 1951 until he died in 2010, and every week, he had to come up with something clever, exciting and profound, in about two pages. A colleague from another language radio station once met him and said, "I've been doing this job for two years, and I have nothing to say..." Tomáš Špidlík's reply contained a clear accent - you have nothing to say because you don't read enough!

This anecdotal introduction is not given without meaning but to show that the quality of the essay stands and falls on how well-read the author is . Even the most intelligent and creative person cannot write well without daily practice in thinking. Just as the training in writing that Hejdanek spoke of is essential, so is the activity in reading. The basis of a good essay is to be adequately read.

In a school environment, we don't usually expect students to be able to write something genuinely groundbreaking because their experience and outlook are pretty limited. However, we can expect the ability to find appropriate sources, read some of them, and then look for a way to put it all together cleverly.

In general, very narrow topics are suitable for an essay - the more limited the issue, the easier it will be to write about it, but also to find excellent sources (unless you're writing a French monographic essay, like Levinas). So, the essay starts with a choice of literature and topic. The topic is engaging in an essay because it is used only at the beginning. The aim of the essay is not to write about Sigismund of Luxembourg at the Council of Constance or about Bohr's contribution to quantum physics but rather to move away from this topic in search of sources and, above all, a thesis to be discussed in the essay.

The thesis is what forms the initial transparent core of the essay. We have discussed that the word essay comes from weighing, measuring, and grading, and right here we can see why. We aim to formulate a claim (i.e., a thesis) that we will go on to prove and seek arguments for. A thesis statement is usually a simple and punchy sentence used as the title of an essay, other times in the first sentence of a text or at the end of the first paragraph.

In our medieval example, the thesis could read, "Sigismund at the Diet was concerned with maintaining his political influence, not with the question of the religious discipline of Jan Hus." The Council of Constance had several sub-issues - from the question of Hus (which led to the rise of Protestantism) to dealing with the issue of papal schism to religious matters. For example, the question of Jan Hus is emphasized in Czech historiography. In German historiography, the political influence of Sigismund and the resolution of the schism, the topic of the schism and the sacraments was essential for Italian historiography, etc.

The thesis should ideally be attractive, surprising, controversial, and catchy. A good theory is not, for example, that smoking causes cancer or that going to kindergarten increases the chances of school success. Everybody knows that, and the tools to report on this matter may be statistical studies, but not essays. Coming up with a good thesis statement is challenging; it's probably the most complex task we face when writing an essay. It forces us to take one side or the other, to think, to debate. We will likely fall into a flow when we succeed in this step. And we'll enjoy writing. If not, writing is usually a formalistic annoyance.

So, if we formulate a thesis statement, we have completed the first stage of essay writing. Various creative techniques, such as mind maps, can be used to find a topic or a basic outline for your thesis. Usually, we have a particular issue in front of us, for example, the Emperor Sigismund of Luxembourg, and with the help of a map, we try to capture different aspects of his life, what we find attractive about him, or reveal connections that are not very familiar or usual. If we succeed here, we are halfway there. However, prepare for more systematic logical work for the actual formulation of the thesis.

So, once we have a thesis statement and an essential experience with the professional background, we can move on to creating the essay structure. Here, first of all, we need to decide what strategy we want to apply in our writing. There are two basic ways:

Sometimes, we can also encounter certain intermediate types that, for example, make arguments in favour in the first half and refute the objections in the second half, so it is up to us which way we go. However, it is important to stress that the essay is not about completeness or reference. The essay aims not to summarize the literature's findings or make a survey study but to take a distinct position. This should be clever and sufficiently defended but, at the same time, sharp and provocative.

The rule of thumb for essays is that each paragraph not only carries a specific idea but is also titled in some way with a specific argument. Thus, a section might begin with sentences such as "In his analysis [2], Čornej emphasizes that... One can agree with this statement because..." etc. We do not usually form arguments without support in the literature, arbitrarily, on our own. This is because we risk working with a dummy or a straw man instead of an authentic argumentative essay, i.e., arguments that no one is advocating but that we find tremendously helpful in an essay .

The essay's core is thus a sequence of arguments that pursue a specific goal, paragraph by paragraph. Often, one proceeds from the weakest to the strongest argument, or vice versa. If the ideas can be structured in some way, i.e. grouped, this is an excellent way to clarify the essay. Although we have said that the choice of arguments is up to us and that the essay is a somewhat subjective discipline, this does not mean that it should not be clear and readable.

We recommend tools such as GinkoApp for working with arguments. It allows you to create text with arguments in individual cards - one card, one statement - and then move them around, change their order, and add them quite easily. At the same time, keeping the literature based on the arguments for each card is a good idea, as additional tracking is not the most fun or easy activity.

We can do the final sorting and write the conclusion if we have enough material with arguments. This usually summarizes the whole argumentation process in some way and ends by returning to the thesis, which it frames and delimits in some way.

When we are done, a new reading enters the process of working with the text - try reading the text aloud. Does it make sense? Are the sentences well-constructed? Are we repeating ourselves? Would it convince us? Don't be afraid to change and delete text as you make these edits. The result is usually a more persuasive and explicit essay that is much easier to work with.

Try drawing a mind map of your text and check whether it looks as it should, whether you have forgotten something - a context or an argument - or whether it has fallen apart into two or three not-very well-connected parts. This can help you revisit literature or topics that can be worked on further.

Probably few people enjoy these final touches, but the more time and care we can devote to them, the better the result will be. The same applies, of course, to formal editing, spelling and language. The latter is essential for an essay and is also one of the things that sets excellent and mediocre writers apart. The better the linguistic devices, the better the quality of the essay can be, of course. At the same time, these linguistic devices are not just phrases or breadth of lexis, but ideally also wit. This does not mean telling jokes about blondes, but intellectually sophisticated humour that an expert on your writing topic will appreciate. This is not easy, of course, but a certain wryness, wit or detachment can appear in such texts and certainly adds significantly to their quality.

And above all, remember that training makes perfect. In American literature, 10,000 hours is often used to become good at something. An essayist has undoubtedly spent over 10,000 hours training, writing, rewriting, and reading other writers. Don't be afraid of feedback or of failing at the beginning. It's the same as in many different fields - the opening is hard, then comes rapid improvement, stagnation, and moderate long improvement.