Essay and Language papers

 

Life is one and each one of us want to live it with a purpose and a sense of satisfaction. 

Convincing myself of the existence of such life, I embarked on making UPSC mains strategy which I am going to share before you, the patient readers. 

ESSAY

As a beginner when I used to take a look at the question paper, I used to wonder how much knowledge do I need to gather in General Studies to be able to write 1200 words in an Essay. Believe me, the real hurdle is not the knowledge gap but our inhibition to start writing the first essay. During the first two years of my preparation and failing at Prelims had made me focus more on qualifying prelims, everything else was on a backseat. In order to break this inhibition, I took help of some four online lectures on Essay by Smriti Shah Ma'am of Vision IAS. I happened to write my first essay after qualifying the 2020 prelims. However, I believe the earlier you start writing Essays, the more you will get to know yourself and will have more time and scope to improve upon it.

Like every other subject, I read the syllabus first

• Notice that one needs to keep their Essay close to the Subject of the Essay it means minimizing the possible digressions. I used to ensure this by reading the topic of the Essay from time to time while writing it, used to signpost if there has been some digression. Signposting is a technique by which you re-iterate the topic after writing your argument. (For example: ......Thus Education is a leveler in the society).
• Next Line says 'to arrange their ideas in orderly fashion'. This means one must give a proper structure to  their essay. I followed a broader contour of Introduction, Linking Para, Body, Penultimate conclusion, Ultimate conclusion. One can approach it differently too.
• As stated in the syllabus, an important requirement is concise writing. It means judicious use of words i.e. you are able to express yourself in few words rather then long vague paragraphs. 
• And last but not the least, it says credit will be given for effective and exact expression. It means that one is able to express their ideas, arguments in unambiguous manner and demonstrate their understanding or interpretation of the Essay.

Now, I looked at the past year question paper for Essay

There are two sections with four topics each. One has to select one topic from each section and attempt two essays in total. One must observe that the first section contains Imaginative/Creative Essays and second section contains General Essays. Since one needs to select one topic from each section, there is no escape and one has to prepare for both.

SECTION-A IMAGINATIVE/CREATIVE  TYPE ESSAY

I used to find this section somewhat difficult. Writing 1200 words on topics which sound so abstract used to get me over thinking😛. But here too, bit by bit, the fear can be conquered by believing in your thoughts, ideas and expressing them head-on. 

For boosting my confidence, I made a list of all the books/ stories/movies  that I had come across or read, either in School/College or in general and made a 2-3 page write up of learnings from them (For example: Autobiography of Gandhi ji, some well known shlokas of Geeta, Yuval Noah Harari's book Sapiens, Paulo Coelho's Alchemist,  Teachings of Buddha,  movies like Padman, Tare Zameen Par etc). Second regular source that I tried to utilize was Newspaper (gathered anecdotes, examples from here) . And, third is experiences of life (by reflecting on my internships, trips to places, conversations with my father etc). 

After having some basic fodder, now I started reading the topics of such essays and started interpreting them, scribbling the various dimensions on a sheet of paper, that I could think related to that topic . This exercise used to help me identify the broader structure of the essay- intro, body, conclusion and the various examples by which I would substantiate or establish my arguments, so that it is persuasive to the reader. 

For example: I attempted the essay 'Life is a long journey between human being and being humane', and I tried to establish this statement at Individual level (Apathy, Untouchability and discrimination, hatred), at Societal level ( Mob lynching, communal riots, increasing inequality) , at National level (Slavery, Minority rights) and at international level (anti-refugee sentiments world over). Giving these negative examples, I also pointed out some positive examples like teachings of Gandhiji, his Talisman,  brotherhood in society etc. Para wise inter weaving and conciseness comes with practice. Notice that you can get fodder for essays from anywhere and everywhere. The skill of using them needs to be practiced.

SECTION-B GENERAL STUDIES TYPE ESSAY

I call this General Studies type essay because it just looks like a big GS answer. This is relatively easy to start with. As I gathered knowledge about the several topics of GS and revised them along with current issues, I felt I could write something relevant. Also, in order to understand how to make one pager notes for essay topics I referred to Anudeep Durishetty Sir's Blog (Rank 1, CSE 2017) which was very helpful. I made theme based notes on Education, Health, Women etc. and compiled some famous quotes from different sources too. Initially I started with topics I was more comfortable in and gradually tried the difficult ones. I wrote 5-6 Essays before the exam and also got it reviewed by a friend.  

These essays topics may seem to be more closer to one GS but while writing try to bring or open up multiple relevant dimensions. And, if there is a statement then you can have a broad contour of justifying that through your arguments. For example: I attempted 'There can be no social justice without economic prosperity but economic prosperity without social justice is meaningless'. Took around 10-15 mins to brainstorm on this topic.  I tried to justify the first part of the statement by establishing that the economic pie needs to grow for everybody to prosper, and for the second part of the statement I brought out the issue of increasing income and wealth inequality in society. 

A last word on writing quality Essay in time is 'practice on diverse topics' and 'don't hesitate to express your thoughts and ideas freely'. It will truly help you know of what you think which is extremely important to persuade the reader in an Essay.

ENGLISH LANGUAGE PAPER

Although most students do not have any difficulty with this paper as it is qualifying in nature. Yet, I want to highlight a few things for those aspirants who may need help. 

• In this paper also, you need to write an essay of around 600 words. Similar strategy as mentioned above can be adopted. 
• There are questions on passages. Here, you need to carefully understand the essence of the passage first and then read in between the lines to extract the answers to those questions. 
• There is precis writing which is about writing the passage in a concise manner in your own words without loosing its essence.
• Sentence correction questions require your careful attention to the grammatical error in the sentence.
• Synonyms and Antonyms are also asked which can be done from your knowledge base.

Overall, the paper is simple and doable in time. 

HINDI LANGUAGE PAPER

This is also a qualifying paper which requires answers to be written in 'Hindi'. 

• These is an Essay question to be written in 600 words. Because we continuously consume English content, we loose track of Hindi Vocabulary. Hence, you can choose to attempt the passage question before writing Essay. It helps you familiarize with the basic fluent Hindi.
• Passage question, 
• Precis writing,
• Translating from Hindi to English and vice versa.
• Sentence correction
• Anulom-Vilom, Muhavare- If you are not comfortable with basic terms then you can refer to any Hindi book which has such compilation. 

This paper too is simple and easily sailable!

Please stay tuned for the next post on DAY 1 of the General Studies..