D. Education Projects

 

Writing Compositions Techniques

In the exams

 

REMEMBER

The teacher who is going to read you composition should understand what you have written, very easily. That’s why you must express your ideas clearly. DON’T write very long sentences, it’s much better to write smaller sentences that can be easily understood. DON’T use words or expressions without knowing their exact meaning.

If you write a wrong word or phrase, it might destroy the whole composition.

Always follow the “SVOA”  -> Subject – Verb – Object – Adverb.

For example: write -> Peter and Tony went to Greece last year.

DON’T WRITE -> Went to Greece last year Peter and Tony.

 

Do NOT copy your work out

It is an exam in the English language, not in handwriting! It is madness to copy your composition out again, so whatever you do, don't! Time that you might spend copying it out must be spent on essential things, such as those checking for mistakes.

Many people, in fact, make their writing harder to read, not easier, when they copy out, because they do it in such a tearing hurry. What is more, many people make mistakes in copying that were not in their original. Write carefully the first and only time, making sure the examiner can read your writing.

 

NEVER COUNT THE WORDS

 

There is a little practical trick you can use to count the number of words you have written, not only in your compositions but in any parts of an exam where you need to know how many. Never actually count each separate word you write in an exam. That is a terrible waste of valuable time. Instead, long before the exam, in fact when you first start preparing for it, find out how many words you personally write on average in three lines. Then, when you want to know at any time how many words you have written, you need only quickly count how many groups of three lines there are.

 

Don’t write irrelevant things – stick to the subject

You must write about the subject set in the examination; don't change the subject and write about something slightly or completely different. Of course you can mention some examples to support your opinion but they must always be relevant to the topic.

 

Write what you KNOW IS RIGHT

You cannot pass with lots of mistakes, however clever you intend your sentences to be. Remember that you must show the examiner what you know, not what you do not know. If you do not make mistakes, and you write on the subject they ask you to write on, you are certain to get fairly good marks at least, even perhaps very good marks. So if you are not absolutely sure that what you want to write is correct, do not write it. Write something different.

In a composition nobody makes you write particular words, so don't make yourself do so. It is quite true that the examiners will want you to use English that suits the subject. But your English will not suit the subject if it is wrong.

It is an examination in English, not in philosophy or originality.

For this reason, too, if you have a choice of subjects you should not always choose the subjects that interest you or that you like. Choose the subjects that you know most English about. If you are crazy about boats and the sea, for example, and one of the subjects given happens to be 'sailing', do not write about them unless you know the English words you must use. Choose another subject.

 

Check for mistakes

If at the end of 90 minutes you find you have written too few words, you will have to add a few more. But finish as quickly as you can.

You should spend as much as possible of your final period on checking. This may make the difference between you passing and not passing the whole examination. It is more important to finish the paper and check than to have beautiful, perfect endings.

Please, whatever you do, never leave the examination room early. There is always important work for you to do.

 

Don't make avoidable mistakes through being too ambitious

There is something very important to bear in mind about the Proficiency essays.

One of the worst things you can do if you are not confident is to try to be clever. You will almost certainly get low marks for your Proficiency essays if you try to do what you cannot do because you feel you have to write very 'advanced', very elegant, very sophisticated language. You may be impressed by the high standard of Proficiency. But an essential way in which it is high is that you must quite simply not make a lot of mistakes. Mistakes that are allowed in lower level exams are not permissible at the Proficiency level.

 

Use simple language

So again and again we must come back to the truth that it is no good showing the examiner what you cannot do. And do not despise short sentences and simple language. Two of the finest twentieth-century writers in English on the sort of subject you will often be asked to write compositions on were Bertrand Russell and George Orwell. They both wrote simply and clearly, often in very short sentences. You will find you can often keep yourself out of trouble by remembering that the full stop is your best friend.

I must also give a special warning against building too many sentences around nouns. Sentences based on nouns are not only often unEnglish; they tend to be much more difficult to get right. Much more knowledge is needed to fit nouns correctly into a sentence, because for them the linguistic conventions tend to be far stricter. One has to know the particular verbs, the particular adjectives, the particular prepositions that fit a given noun. One usually has far greater freedom if one makes verbs the key words of one's sentences; one is much less likely to make mistakes with sentences based on verbs.

 

 

Essay construction: don't waste time on it

The Syndicate say that the language rather than content is the main concern in the marking of the compositions, and that marks are not deducted for unorthodox opinions. But it also says that candidates are expected to present their arguments logically, and that the material should be well organized, both "as a whole and in terms of individual paragraphs." There should be a clear pattern of connected ideas. Essays do not have to be particularly original or interesting, but the examiners may criticize candidates for not dealing with the subject properly, or for jumping suddenly from one point to another.

However, do not forget that examiners' judgement of these things is to quite a large extent subjective. No two examiners are going to mark a composition exactly alike in these respects.

It is therefore impossible to know in advance how the examiners are going to judge your compositions as regards organization and the development of your ideas. So in your preparation for the examination, I believe that spending time and effort on essay organization, if you are still making a lot of mistakes in your grammar and vocabulary, is a luxury you cannot afford. A sense of proportion is needed here. Please get your grammar and vocabulary right first.

Grammar and vocabulary are objective problems. You can know definitely whether you are right or wrong. Concentrate on this area of certainty, not on the vague uncertainty of beautifully constructed essays. If you can write largely without mistakes, and keep to the subject, you will be very unlucky if you do not get at least reasonable marks. You might even get very good ones. But you won't if you make bad mistakes, however well your essay is organized.

Once again you must be firm with your teacher. If your composition teacher spends time on essay construction, talking to you about how to produce striking beginnings, elegantly developed middle sections and effective endings, and about details like paragraphing, you should ask her or him whether these things are going to make the difference between passing and failing for you personally; whether she or he is confident that you have already shown that your practical command of grammar and vocabulary is so good that there is no doubt that you will pass as far as they are concerned; whether all that is needed to tip the balance is some training in essay construction.

(My advice should perhaps be modified in one respect here, however. If you can master a small set of elegant opening sentences that you know are absolutely right and that can be adapted to a variety of subjects, and can use one of them at the beginning of each composition in an exam, you may well influence the examiner in your favour. Exam markers are human too. While a single superb sentence right at the end of an otherwise mediocre or downright poor composition is unlikely to do you any extra good, at the very beginning it will very possibly make the examiner think more kindly about the rest. But you must be careful. Don't use such prepared sentences unless you are absolutely sure they fit the context.)

 

 

Summing up

The biggest mistake you can make in the composition paper is to aim too high. We can finally put this aspect of the Proficiency essays another way:

If you try to be "ambitious in concept and approach" and try to use "natural language", and fail to do so, the best you can hope for is precisely that: that you fail to achieve those things.

But the worst and more probable result is that your mistakes will cause you to lose far more marks than you would have lost if you had not been so ambitious.

So wherever you are not absolutely certain of yourself: KEEP IT SIMPLE.