Abbas, as I have mentioned before, clarity of expression matters a lot. And that comes with having good writing skills. Having adequate knowledge about the issues in papers like CA and PA is very important, agreed, but equally important is the skill of articulation: being able to express yourself in not more than 40 min (The avg time you get to attempt a single question).

One might have massive knowledge about issues but if one is not able to sum it up in the allocated time and fails to address the question because he could not express himself (because his writing skills are poor), it is not going to do much good. So English writing skills matter BIG TIME. Accept that, and do whatever you got to do, to attain that.

In recent years, more or less all the optional subjects, plus compulsories, are exhibiting a shift of trend, from cramming-based questions to analytical, opinion-based questions. That means that any notes you have crammed, or books, are not going to come handy. You are going to have to CONSTRUCT an answer of your own, using all the knowledge you possess. No cramming will help you there. You wont be able to construct a valid or sound answer which addresses the question entirely, if you do not possess good writing skills. End result: Despite having all the knowledge, you will feel lost.

Apart from that, if you think that you can pass English Essay and PRecis paper with superficial knowledge of English, you are mistaken. I know many guys with 750+ scores, failing either essay or precis. Make no mistake there.

Hope it makes sense.

Why so many aspirants fail essay? Following is FPSC's 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 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 and philosophical topics which are as distant from current affairs, as possible. If you can develop outlines for such topics, you can cream 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 aspirant's 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.

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"And how can man die better than facing fearful odds, for the ashes of his fathers, and the temples of his Gods?"

sir i am waiting for your reply on my question, please ...

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Calm and Composed.

For paper 1: Rakhshanda Shahnaz (BA Psychology, part 1)

bhai it is in urdu what should we do? whether we should attempt paper in urdu or english

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not faliure, but the low aim, is a crime.( Quaid e Azam)

IT is available in English as well. Psychology paper can not be attempted in Urdu

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"And how can man die better than facing fearful odds, for the ashes of his fathers, and the temples of his Gods?"

Janaaab.....

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''Watu izzu Mantasha, Watu zillu mantasha"

Sir! what was your approach towards P.A, C.A, Isl and EDS. kindly tell us your approach to these subjects and especially how did you managed to cover these subjects in too short span? In short i want to know your recipe for these subjects including study plan for each.

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By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.
Benjamin Franklin

Dear Sir Rubraiz ,

Thank you so much for your kind support and effort for the new aspirants to crack the nut shell of essay paper. I have one question if you could reply please!!
In crux ,an essay should be well equipped with sound knowledge , burgeoned phrases with floury language and supporting statistics with tactics of organisation.
while my question is that if any one attempts in simple manners without grammatical mistakes and contains outline, so essay will be considered according to standards or not ?
Or is it necessary to support arguments with statistics?
Can we draw charts or graphs as a weapon of strong support of our arguments or expressions?

though paradigms being changed by FPSC is clearly a sign of strong analytical approach required in the essay paper. cramming will not work at all.So what you will suggest to do.

Thanks with Regards

sir i done bba hons i have two question kindly guide me
1)either it is necessary for business degree holder to pass ba english paper like medical and eng student or not as i am searching for this question but not find any answer regarding this
2)secondly i choose my optional subjects psychology,sociology,journalism,pa and muslim law...i had brief knowledge almost for all subjects except journalism..these all my opt are good or not..because i am very new in this forum and for css prepration
plz do reply because i am very confused
thanks

Can i answer to your first query if you dont Mind ?
it is not necessary to pass ba english paper for any one , he must be a graduate in any subjects to be eligible for css with at least 3rd division i guess !