When I did my Latihan Ikhtias, I taught form 4 students Directed and Continuous Writing [English class]. For Directed Writing, there are three types of essays: Letter, Article (Report) and Speech. For letter, there will be divided into formal and informal letters and for article, there will be divided into formal and informal articles. Formal articles are articles that one writes to give feedback or complain which will be addressed to certain individual. For informal articles, the articles are for wide range of audiences which one find in magazines or newspaper. A good example is an article that you can find in school magazine.
For Continuous writing, there are five types of essays: Narrative, Argumentative, Factual, Descriptive and Reflective compositions.
Narrative composition is a story-telling kind of composition. It has 5 plots: Exposition, Rising action, Climax, Falling action and Resolution.
Argumentative composition is a composition where you state your stance either agree or disagree about something. A good writer can include the agreement and disagreement in one composition and able to balance both arguments well. But for novice writers, it is better if one sticks to one side of an argument i.e. either agree or disagree.
Factual composition is based on facts and hard-core reality. In this case, students must know facts and reality and cannot state hypothetical information or evidences.
If they want to state hypothetical assumption or views, it is when they write reflective composition. So, the differences between factual and reflective compositions are not much. One is based on facts and another is based on hypothetical assumptions (as long as it is logical).
Lastly, for descriptive composition, students write either to describe an event, a place or a person. It is kind of straight forward yet many students struggle in this task.
But I gave them some tips and techniques to differentiate the different compositions and examples of compositions for each type. Some of the compositions are based on my own experience so, they cannot find it from elsewhere. It makes my class a bit special because I wrote the examples myself. No duplication even though I learn the characteristics of each composition by referring to the various books. Just to make sure my essays are in compliance with the characteristics 😀