Let me share my experience for all you people. I sat in the CSS 2010 exam, and did well in all, excpet for islmaiat, which i failed.

Got 46 marks in essay, the big hurdle. And honestly telling you did not do any real preparation for the essay. The very first 3000 words essay that i wrote was in the exam hall, and that is true.

I am no expert at this but let me share my views with you. Essay had no such syllabus, so you cannot say that you can prepare the essay as such. Yes, you can prepare some topics, but no guarantee any of that topic, or anything near those topics, will come in the exam. So, its all luck when it come to preparing a topic.
The preparation of essay can help you overcome some issues, and develop some skills that will help you during the exam time.

First, you can develop a timing strategy by doing some writing practice. You will be bale to know, whats your writing speed in a long duration. This is important, as writing a page or so, and writing abt 20 pages, and that under stress, are two different things.

Secondly, you will be able to pin point some major grammatical mistake, which have somehow become inherent in your writing. By writing something, and have it checked by anyone, even your self, you will be in a good position to figure out soem such mistakes that you do unconsciously. Now this may make a major difference.

Thirdly, you will develop the skill of collecting the knowledge in your mind, and using it to present a piece of writing as asked by the examiner. Now this is the hardest bit. One can have alot of information, but what matters is how quick you can develop a clear strategy as to what information to use and how to present it.

The above mentioned things have nothing to do with any large repository of information for writing the essay. So, in my opinion the beginners need to start practicing the skill of writing. I would suggest that donot get into huge researches first, rather, just take a topic off your head and write like 3 pages over it. Start doing like this for 4-5 days. Keep increasing your writing on daily basis. Once you have reached the level of writing abt 8-10 pages, now jot down some topics, do some research over them, and then write long essay on them.

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*Whirling Dervaish*