The writing of a person bears the mark of one’s personality. What we write on paper goes a long way to show readers how we think, how we argue, and substantiate our viewpoint. This makes an essay a mandatory requirement for most competitive examinations.
In the Civil Services Exam 250 marks are allotted for this paper and yet the essay does not get the attention it deserves. Most first-time aspirants feel that they can write an excellent essay without practice, whereas others think since they study the General Studies Paper essay writing will happen naturally. Collecting quotes, making rough drafts, and preparing notes are important for writing a good essay. Reading Essay Test Series can be of great help.
Given below are some of the points on how the essay paper must be tackled.
What UPSC enumerates about essay paper
The rules for writing the essay are to first all put the ideas together, arrange them in an orderly fashion, and write concisely. Accurate expression of ideas is very important for the essay to be perfect. The essay is distinguished from General Studies on the ground that the essay needs to be more organized whereas GS focuses only on content. The essay must not have spelling mistakes or grammatical errors.
The way to prepare and collect resources
Most of the topics that come for the Civil Services essay contain matter that can be found in General Studies. The other sources that can help reading
A lot of non-fiction
makes our thought process more mature. They not only impart knowledge, but also improve our art of argumentation, content knowledge, rhetoric, and figures of speech. For example in an essay on AI Harari's Homo Deus can be consulted to argue that AI is an imminent threat to humanity.
Referring to relevant magazines
There are several magazines available in the market like Yojana, EPW, Economic Survey, etc. For example for an essay on tribal issues or public health, we can go through issues of magazines to get the latest statistics ( IMR, malnutrition levels, MMR) and also about the positive and negative aspects of Govt schemes.
Collecting good anecdotes, quotes, and stories-
Beginning the essay with a good anecdote or quote which has the essay topic as its underlying theme can set the mood of the reader. Quotes of eminent persons can also be made a part of the essay to make it more interesting and scoring.
Language of the essay-
The clarity in thought process and representation as possible makes the essay more attractive. Before using difficult terms the meanings of the terms must be made clear. The sentences must be short and precise. Long sentences connected by conjunctions should not be used.
Vocabulary
Vocabulary can be increased by reading the newspaper and non-fiction. The language used in an essay should be simple and memorizing a lot of complex words can be of little use. It's always a helpful habit to read a dictionary especially when we come across difficult words. Vocabulary building is a slow process and if a person puts up consistent efforts, anyone’s vocabulary building can become better.
Importance of Rough Drafts and Subheadings
Subheadings can always be made to sound more interesting. For example, instead of a bland subheading like population explosion, the topic can well be ‘ Pros and Cons of Population Explosion’.
An essay must contain elaboration on several points and not just one point. It must be able to provide different points of view and not just a single point of view.
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