Following is my take on English Essay paper, my observations and few suggestions to tackle it. Hope it helps. Why so many aspirants fail essay? Following is FPSCs official take on the quality of English Essay scripts of C.E. 2009 Majority of the candidates had produced crammed knowledge obtained from available stereo-type sources. They had invalid and expired pieces of information/knowledge without any sense to update it. However, 5 percent candidates showed commendable originality of approach, precision of comprehension and clarity of expression. MORE IMPORTANTLY, ONE THIRD OF THE TOTAL CANDIDATES WHO APPEARED IN THE SUBJECT HAD NO LOGIC OF THE BASIC ENGLISH GRAMMAR, PUNCTUATION AND SENTENCE FORMATION If one third had NO LOGIC of Basic English Grammar then it is quite safe to assume that at least 70-80 % of candidates, even if had SOME logic of grammar, made frequent Grammar mistakes. Another established fact is that around 80-85% aspirants fail the Essay or Précis paper. If we correlate these points, we see that lack of knowledge of Basic Grammar is the prime reason for failure in these exams. So there are no demons in the Essay paper. For those who lack basic English grammar knowledge, their essay scripts are nothing less than a bounty for the examiner who feasts sumptuously on their scripts, bludgeoning them red. And again, no surprises because if one can not write more than 5 error free lines, expecting to pass Essay paper is sheer folly, no disrespect. I teach CSS aspirants and let me tell that more than 50% make blunders while writing, and more than 80% make mistakes continuously which I keep on rectifying. Enough said about primary causes of failure in essay, let me share with you what I think Essay is and what one got to do to tame this monster. What follows is purely my very own opinion and not some standard/official benchmarks. Others have a right to disagree or add to what I am writing. Feel free to use that. Essay is a marathon. Some of the things you are being tested for are: Your knowledge of the topic; Your argumentative and opinion based writing skills; Your grip over English grammar and vocabulary; The organization of whatever you put on the paper; Clarity of expression; Flow/Fluency in your writing; The outline you make; Your presentation; Whether you have corroborated your opinion or stance with relevant stats or not. Before running, one has to learn how to walk properly. You must start by writing one-paged articles and getting them checked by some competent and sincere teacher for comments on your sentence formation, written expression, and most importantly, grammar. Essays is merely a collection of mini articles, you need to set the basics straight. When you learn to write articles, you do NOT need to learn to write essays. An essay is a mere compendium of articles. For essay you need to get 2 things right. 1- Ability to draw a comprehensive, inclusive outline 2- Firm grip over the topic you are writing on, in terms of knowledge The real deal is how you develop an outline, how comprehensive it is, how you organise it, which dimensions you touch, whether or not it is relevant to the topic. Writing the essay is nothing more than mere expansion of these outlines What I did, and recommend, is: 1- Spend around 10-15 minutes choosing one out of ten given topics. Choose the topic which you can elaborate well and you believe you possess most knowledge about. 2- Take around 45-50 minutes sketching a rough, crude outline. I recommend you draw it on the backside of the question paper because if you do it on the last page of answer sheet, you are going to have to ruffle through pages maniacally, while writing the essay, looking for points, every now and then. That is going to waste a lot of time and might take its toll on your mood. If you sketch it on the backside of the question paper, you can keep it in front of you, in your one hand, while writing the essay, reading the points and elaborating them on answer sheet. Outline sketching is purely a function of brainstorming. The deeper, the wider you can think, the better is your outline. Give your thoughts free reign, do not restrict your mind, and do not refrain from putting on paper what you think. You might write irrelevant points but mere writing them might cause you to come up with a more relevant one. Explore various dimensions of the given issue, adding bits and pieces from every dimension, relating them to your essay statement, coming up with stats, examples etc to justify your stance. Make sure your outline is VERY COMPREHENSIVE, make major headings (1,2,3...), sub headings (i, ii, iii ...) and sub sub headings (a,b,c...) inside every major heading, just like you add bullet points in a MS Word file. Also if possible, use different coloured markers/fonts for Major headings, sub headings, and sub sub headings. (Mega font for major headings, minor font for sub sub headings). Such organized presentation will make it easily navigable for the examiner, plus will occupy lots of space, and will make your outline appear hierarchical and well-organized. A detailed outline, spanning around 4-5 pages, means that if you can expand each point into 4-5 lines in your essay, you are easily going to cross 2500 words threshold. Plus, once you have a very detailed outline in front of you, you KNOW what you got to write, in what manner, and you will not have to write and pause to think and again write and again pause. This write-pause phase can be detrimental, do your best to avoid that, and the best way to avoid that is to chalk out a comprehensive outline. Practise drawing outlines of difficult to expand topics which are as distant from current affairs, as possible. If you can develop outlines for such topics, you can raze the current affairs topics. Have a look at Faisalabad Re-exam Essay past paper (2013). It contains many such intimidating topics. 3- Once done with outline, leave few pages on the answer sheet, and start with your essay. Elaborate each point in your outline in around 5-7 lines, starting from Intro to Conclusion. This should not take more than 1.5 hours. While writing the essay you will come across many points which you did not write in your outline. As it happens, include those points in the rough outline. 4- With half hour at your disposal, now come to the beginning of your answer sheet where you left blank pages and transfer the outline on those pages. The point of doing this exercise in the end is that you will come across many points while inking the essay, and had you written the outline right at the beginning, you would miss those points. When you write the outline later on, it will include the points you missed while sketching the outline and conceived later on. The very best of luck to all of you. Essay, no doubt, is bane of every CSS aspirants existence, but you got to take it by the scruff of the neck rather than allowing it to get better of you. There is either Do or Die, no middle path, I suggest you take the former.
Posted on: Sun, 13 Jul 2014 17:42:50 +0000
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