WASSCE English Essay Writing Tips: What You Must Know About

Essay writing is aimed at testing a candidate’s ability to use simple, clear and correct English to express his ideas and thoughts. Essay writing forms an important part of the English Language Paper 2 and carries 80 marks out of a total of 150 marks for that section.

The WASSCE English Language paper is divided into two papers: Paper 1 (Objective Test) and Paper 2 (Essay, Comprehension, and Summary). Paper 1 is worth 30% of the total score, while Paper 2 accounts for the remaining 70%. Specifically, Paper 2 includes a section for essay writing, comprehension, and summary writing

WHAT EXAMINERS LOOK FOR IN WASSCE ENGLISH ESSAYS:

Examiners mark candidates’ essays based on four principles, namely:

1. Content – 10 marks
2. Organisation – 5 marks
3. Expression – 15 marks
4. Mechanical Accuracy – 10 marks

TOTAL – 40 MARKS

Having got an idea of the 4 key principles involved in essay writing, let us now discuss each of them:

1. CONTENT: The content of an essay is the subject matter or ideas in the essay based on the topic. The examiner tries to find out whether the candidate has actually written about the topic in the essay. Irrelevant ideas should be kept out of the essay.

The examiner also tries to find out whether the candidate has adequate points or materials on the topic, in most cases, examiners expect that candidates present at least three points, which should be well developed.

2. ORGANISATION: Under organisation, the examiner tries to find out how well your essay is organised.

An examiner tries to find out whether the materials have been well developed and arranged. The examiner also tries to find out whether the materials are presented in a logical order through the use of correct connectives or paragraphs and if the paragraphs are linked through the use of correct connectives or not.

A given essay topic may require that the candidate follows a laid-down procedure of presentation. The examiner will want to find out whether the address, the date, the salutation, the subscription etc. used are properly linked with the given essay topic. For instance, the format of an informal letter is quite different from that of a formal letter. The same applies to Speech Writing and Narrative or Descriptive Essay.

3. EXPRESSION: This aspect is very important because it carries the highest marks – 15 marks. It deals with the candidate’s use of language.

Under expression, the examiner will like to find out whether the candidate has used the right expressions or language in the formal, informal or semi-formal letter. For instance, words like I’ve, I’d, you’re etc. may be used for informal letters whilst full word expressions like “I would like to helight”, “I wish to bring to your notice” etc. The examiner will also look out for the use of vocabulary, idioms, figurative expressions, proverbs, excalmatory sentences, similes etc.

4. Mechanical Accuracy

Under this aspect, examiners look out for the following errors and penalise the candidate accordingly:

1. Wrong use of grammar or tenses
2. Wrong use of spelling
3. Wrong use of capital letters
4. Wrong use of punctuation

Candidates are reminded that for every mistake they commit, they lose half mark, therefore the more mistakes a candidate commits, the more marks he loses. Often, candidates punctuate unnecessarily and do not place full stops at the end of their sentences, other use capital letters, commas, colons, exclamation marks etc. at places where they are not needed.

Note that this is an area most candidates score zero, therefore candidates are advised to work hard to correct their weaknesses in this area.

SOME GUIDELINES ON ESSAY WRITING

1. Always make sure that you understand the topic or wording of the question.
2. Choose the topic you can handle effectively.
3. Plan your essay before you write.

Do not rush to start writing, spend about five minutes to plan what to write. Write down your ideas on the question paper and later arrange them on the answer sheet in pencil and cancel them out after you have finished. Your essay should have a beginning, the main part and an end.

4. Your work should be neat and your handwriting should be eligible. A student who normally uses short sentences has a better chance of avoiding mistakes than the student who resorts to long sentences. A long sentence is more likely to contain wrong spelling and grammatical errors than a short sentence.

5. Read over what you have written. This will reduce a lot of errors committed. Use between three to four minutes reading over your essays to enable you correct your mistakes on grammar, spelling, punctuation, wrong use of capital letters, etc.

6. Make sure you satisfy the number of questions you are expected to answer. Do not spend too much time on a question and leave others unanswered. Divide your time wisely and stick strictly to the division. It is advisable to leave questions uncompleted when the allotted time is elapsed and tackle other questions, than to spend all the time on one question at the expense of others. You can tackle those unfinished questions when you gain some time.

7. Make sure that you are able to meet the length of the essay as demanded by the question.

Normally, according to WASSCE requirement, a candidate is expected to produce between 400 and 450 words in an essay. Make sure that you do not write either much more or much less than required. If your essay is below the required number of words, the examiner would reduce the maximum marks allowed proportionately under content, expression and mechanical accuracy. This is because a candidate who writes carefully for only one page might not have written so well if he had completed two other pages in the same time frame, therefore does not deserve the same maximum marks as other candidates.

A candidate should not bother to count the number of words written during an examination, that would be a waste of precious time. All that the candidate ought to do is count the average number of words per line and then count the number of lines he has written. He then multiply the number of lines by the average number of words on a line. The candidate ought to practise this strategy during exercises before the examination so that he can easily know or guess the number of pages of the answer sheet he would need to fill in an examination to get the required words.

8. Never use a word if you are not sure of its spelling and meaning.

9. When reading over your letter, check for the following:
10. Is your address properly written and punctuated?
11. Is your date properly written and punctuated?

iii. Is the salutation appropriate and well punctuated? Have you written a heading for formal letters?

1. Have you used paragraphs to develop your topics sentences? Are your sentences grammatically correct and well punctuated?
2. Is the subscription appropriate and is the first word capitalised? Do other words begin with small letters?
3. Have you written your first name for informal letters, full name for semi-formal letters and a signature and full name for formal letters.

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TYPES OF ESSAYS

Questions are normally set on the following types of Essays:

1. Letter writing (Informal, Semi-formal and Formal)
2. Article writing
3. Speech writing
4. Narrative Essay
5. Report writing
6. Descriptive Essay
7. Argumentative Essay etc.

Each type calls for a particular line of approach. Look out for the posts on all the essay types above soon.