2026 BECE English Essay Tips: Read this before you choose that question

The 2026 BECE starts on May 4th, 2026, with the English language paper. This is why this “2026 BECE English Essay Tips: Before you choose that question” is critical to you from an examiner and English Language (composition) expert.

English language is an important core subject all candidates must pass. One key section of Paper 2 of the English Language paper is the Essay section, also known as the Composition or creativity section, where students are required to write one essay from the questions posed in the examination.

There are very worrying reasons why, as a BECE candidate, you must read this informative piece before you choose that essay question you want to answer in the exam hall on Monday, 4th May, 2026.

2026 BECE English Essay Bonus Tips for Essay Writing

1. Definition and Core Purpose

• What is an Essay?: An essay (or composition) is the act of sharing ideas and feelings through writing.
• Communication is Key: The underlying reason for writing is to communicate. You must ensure the person reading understands your message exactly as you intended, even though you are not present when they read it.
• Permanence: Writing is highlighted as a vital skill because, unlike sign language or speech, written documents stay for a very long time and can be referenced even after the writer is gone.

2. Forms and Types of Essays

The video categorizes essays into two main forms:

• Formal Essays:
  • Formal letters
  • Articles
  • Debate writing
  • Speeches
  • Reports
  • Minutes writing
• Informal Essays:
  • Informal letters
  • Narratives and descriptive essays
  • Stories
  • Argumentative essays (the informal version of a debate)

3. The Six-Stage Writing Process

The instructor emphasizes that students often fail because they hurry to write without planning. You should follow these steps in order:

1. Understand your Purpose: Know exactly why you are writing (see “Understanding Purpose” below).
2. Understand your Audience: Consider the person who will receive and read the message.
3. Plan your Paragraphs: Organize your ideas into distinct blocks.
4. Understand the Outline: Know the specific features/requirements of the essay type you have chosen.
5. The Writing Itself: Begin the actual writing only after the first four steps are complete.
6. Proofreading: Always read over your work to check for errors.

4. Understanding Your Purpose

To identify the purpose of your essay, you should ask yourself four questions:

• What is motivating me to write?
• What is the specific reason for writing?
• What am I writing about?
• Why is it important that I write this at all?

Common purposes include giving information about something/someone or narrating an event to another person.

Let me start with the dangers to avoid. These are red flags that tell you that you are on your way to scoring very low marks in the essay section of the English paper.

Your 2026 BECE English Essay Tips: When you choose an essay question

1. Underline or write the type of essay it is.
2. Underline the main reason for writing the essay.
3. Brainstorm the features quickly and write them on the question paper. Do not skip any of the steps when writing since that can be costly.
4. Brainstorm the points or issues you will be explaining and jot them down.
5. Follow the correct features you have put down and write the essay.
6. Keep in mind the need to ensure correct spelling, grammar, punctuation, creativity, and expressions.
7. Use compound, complex, and compound-complex sentences interchangeably.
8. Use relevant idioms and phrasal verbs in your essays. They must relate to the write-up.
9. Read through your essay and make all needed corrections.

Do not make the mistake of thinking that you are smart when answering essay questions in English, French, or a Ghanaian language. Any student who decides to copy sections of the comprehension passage as an essay for the examiner or paraphrases the comprehension passage—thus changing some words, including names and characters in the passage—and turns it in or submits it will be penalized severely. If care is not taken, you can score 0 out of 30.

BECE English Essay Tips: What the composition paper examination looks out for

As an examiner, I know very well that the composition section of the English language paper is meant to test for the following and awards students’ marks:

1. Students’ creativity
2. Originality of essays
3. Students’ understanding and application of their knowledge for the organization aspect of the chosen essay topic
4. The quality of the content of the essay throughout the minimum of one and a half pages of writing, which starts from the introduction of the essay to the conclusion

Write 250 words but not more than 270 words; however, note that examiners will penalize essays that are either less than 250 words or more than 250 words.

250-word rule you need to know

This is the trick to apply: If your essay ends up becoming more than 250 words, ensure that you do not have errors such as spelling, grammar, or punctuation errors, since these will add additional deductions of scores from your mechanical accuracy. The extra lines after 250 words may not add a significant score to what you get, but they can reduce your score if there are errors as mentioned.

Do not submit your script or paper without reading through the essay. This must be done for the comprehension, summary, and literature sections. Spelling renders literature answers wrong even if the answers you are spelling are correct. The synonyms you provide as replacements for words or underlined phrases will be marked wrong if the spelling is wrong, even by one missing letter.

Do not forget that knowing the kind of essay you have chosen is very important.

• If the question does not mention to “write a letter,” do not write a letter.
• If the question does not mention to “write an article,” do not write an article.
• If the question does not mention to “write a speech or debate or argumentative essay,” do not turn the question into that.

If the question is a narrative, ensure that you know the type of narrative you are to write:

1. Some narratives are such that the examiner gives you the set of words it must end with. For instance, “Write a narrative essay that ends with ‘we all realized we did a big mistake’.” Make sure that you do not write just any story and then end with “we all realized we did a big mistake”; rather, make sure the story portrays, in this case, some wrong choices made or mistakes done by the character in the story. The mistake must lead to a costly loss, a loss of opportunity, or end up creating bigger problems for the character, society, or home, among others, and then you write a sentence that you are able to complete with the ending provided in the question.
2. In other instances, students are asked to write stories that explain expressions. An example is, “Write a narrative essay that explains the expression ‘birds of a feather flock together.’ “Do not use the expression as a title. Understand the expression, since this will help you to write a story that explains the expression. In this instance, the expression “birds of a feather flock together” simply means people with the same mind, character, or behavior are often friends, and they may do good or bad deeds. Now, with this understanding, you should be able to write a narrative essay.
3. Do not use the phrase or expression given for an essay as a title to your narrative.

You must write good paragraphs while paragraphing in the essay-writing journey. This is important if students are to do well. Let me break down the difference between a paragraph and paragraphing using a building block and the art of construction.

In essay writing, a paragraph is one distinct section of the essay that speaks about and relates to only one specific idea in the entire essay. It has a topic sentence, which is also known as the main idea, followed by one or more supporting sentences that add details to the main idea or sentence. It also has a concluding sentence. A paragraph always starts after a breath space is left. This breath space is not supposed to be more than a 2 cm gap. Your paragraphs should not be overly long. Some students write an entire essay without paragraphs and get penalized under organization. As an examiner, I have advised candidates to always keep the paragraphs between six and seven lines.

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Paragraphing, on the other hand, is the orderly organization of the writing or the essay into blocks. It is the skill used to determine when a new paragraph should start and how it should flow and connect to the previous paragraph. Linking phrases are very important when writing paragraphs. Use linking words such as “first of all,” “furthermore,” “also,” “in addition,” etc., correctly in your essays.

These 2026 BECE English essay tips will go a long way to help students do well. Put everything you have learned in this 2026 BECE English essay. Put these tips into action when answering your essay questions, and good luck.