Yesterday I met Deputy Secretary of ---- I can't mention name, ---- and she shared a damn scary, harsh but somewhat a true notion about that Essay paper we all badly want to rock at.
"It takes years, Dear! It takes a year and a half to learn how to write a good essay."

My expression: Palm faced.

Why? Because discouraging a css aspirant is a major sin. Atleast in my world and also at this forum, as well as anywhere in public.

I suddenly remembered the words and experience of Werewolf. A senior member here who told that he wrote essay in the paper for the first time without any prior practice or writing improvements. That too with winning luck.

That was an exceptional case. I know. But whats wrong in being less dramatic and m0re alive during tiring hours of preparation. 1.5 years? Ah! Horrible !
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Dear the member you mentioned Werewolf(Faisal karim Qureshi), he is my university senior, I had met him before announcement of result and yes he had no prior practice of essay and expansion writing yet he passed and got allocated too..

Its no coincidence, its his strong educational base that not everyone in Pakistan and especially Sindh is lucky to have... after essay paper he was not appearing in other papers because he thought he would fail essay but his friends convinced him to take other papers for experience... to everyone's surprise he passed it..

So the thing is don't follow others just prepare well and be yourself in the paper you would succeed InshaALLAH..

Regards
Stay Blessed

__________________
Hope sees the invisible, feels the intangible and achieves the impossible.

[QUOTE]Learning the art of writing, no doubt, is ongoing process, but you have only 3 hours to demonstrate what you are capable of. Sometimes you hit the essay with proper words, and sometimes you waste 1.5 hours on just making outlines; your pen doesn't want to write the first word of the intro; your mind is constantly under the pressure whether you will complete the outline in required time. The only thing which activates your pen towards right words, structure and styles is practice, but this paper is not that boring to worth 1.5 years of practice.

__________________
اللَّهُمَّ إِنِّي أَسْأَلُکَ عِلْمًا نَافِعًا وَرِزْقًا طَيِّبًا وَعَمَلًا مُتَقَبَّلًا

I have heard similar things about all the subjects from a joint secretary and an abc source at FPSC the other day. He even mocked on the idea of luck factor.

Alrite, then lets gather points which make up a good essay.
I want to be clear about few things.

Should it sound serious or witty? Or perhaps both ingredients make up a great essay?

Secondly, Some say flowery language does the job, while many strongly disagree. Have your say please.

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Not neccessarily, I must say. For some it mayu take years but for others just a mere piece of advise. I remember my exams days back in 2010 when I wrote 1st essay in my life "Religion has caused more harm then benefit to society", that literally was my 1st 100 marks essay and without knowing the rule or anything. I just throwed my heart out denying the statement and I passed.

I second,

please would you share your essays' scores and strategy...

Thanks in anticipation....

The 1.5 years thing is pure exaggeration. Let go of it.

Werewolf is a respected to-be fellow commoner. And he was able to pass it despite it being his debut attempt at essay writing because he possesses exceptional articulation skills. He was able to stay composed during those fateful 3 hours and he nailed it. No surprises there.

I wrote one essay before my Essay exam, one night before the exam, and I wrote it because I was low on confidence. I was not sure if I can write upto 3000 words. So I simulated examination hall situation, and to my own surprise, I was able to write more than 2500 words in 3 hours. My attempt in exam hall was my 2nd Essay ever, and I got through

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?"

I totally agree and standby each and every word you said. What an excellent explanation of word Essay and its ingrediants this is.

Hats Off to you Sir

If you are capable then 8 months are more than enough for whole preparation of CSS exam including all optional and compulsory subjects, she exaggerated that mastering how to write a good essay takes One and half year, don't pay heed to such people who belittle your ambitions.

I myself had appeared in exam with only 32 days of prep and no preparation of essay at all, I never practiced a single outline even yet thanks to almighty Allah I passed the essay securing 43 marks, I attempted essay on Energy crisis and its being most attempted essay in CE 2012 dwindled my chances of scoring high.

Anyone who writes good English with minimum mistakes, lucid and succinct expression and clarity of thought can go through the essay paper with ease. It doesn't take an year or so if you are good at English, if not then find a good mentor and ask him how to improve your English. Work hard but in a direction, directionless effort takes you nowhere and goes wasted.

So in nutshell according to me following things should be done:

• Endeavor to learn grammar from its basics, because only a strong foundation can guarantee a good edifice.
  
• Learning the grammar will remove your mistakes, work on your structure and syntax to make your sentences look awesome and nicely fabricated.
  
• After ensuring strong foundations, you have to adore it with precise and felicitous vocabulary with correct usage.
  
• Having the right tools will bring you in a good position, now you need data. You must read good news papers and Journals like Wall street Journal, Economist and Military studies Quarterly and publications of IISS (International Institute of Strategic Studies).
  
• Just read them and emulate their style, you must analyse the topic in your essay. Writing stereotypical material given to their aspirants by KIPS, Officers and like academies result in failure when examiner sees no originality and gets irritated when everyone is writing the same.

P.S: My focus is on originality of thought and clarity of expression, I recommend it to you as well. However practice can also be beneficial, Aristotle says "We are what we repeatedly do, excellence then is not an act but a habit" So do practice and do so in right direction.

Best of Luck

__________________
Ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.
But when love is one sided, holding off is no more an option.