Struggling to compose your essays? Write your upcoming GP papers like a pro with these effective essay writing tips from our seasoned and experts coaches!
Essay writing is a key component of the GP at JC level, which may make some students a little nervous. While most students will already have experience with essay writing from secondary school, the JC GP is a little different.
That’s because a lot of the secondary school essays are of the narrative or creative type. The JC GP, on the other hand, is largely discursive.
If you’re not sure what that means or how it should affect your essay writing, though, don’t worry. We’ll take you over all you need to know so that you can breeze through your essay.
A discursive essay is a piece of writing that aims to educate the reader about a topic by presenting an informed and balanced view of it.
Note those two words: informed and balanced. The former means you need to have verified knowledge on the subject while the latter means you need to present more than one perspective on it.
A good GP essay thus has the following elements:
Learning how to write an essay so that it satisfies all of these requirements isn’t as hard as some think. To show you what we mean, we’ll present our tutors’ top tips for acing the GP essay below.
You’re given 12 questions to choose from for your GP essay. Read every last one and only choose after that!
The goal is to choose the question with a topic that you know most about. Remember that you’ll have to provide content both for and against the argument in your essay, after all. That will be a challenge if you don’t have basic knowledge about the topic in the first place.
That said, it’s advisable to also shortlist another 1-2 questions. Why? Because you can run into roadblocks, in which case the shortlisted options may be your fallback plan.
It’s very tempting to jump straight into writing, especially if this is a question or topic you are confident in, but try to restrain yourself. It’s better to plan your essay first.
This ensures you have a well-thought-out set of points that flow and tie into each other. Doing a plan also helps you avoid contradicting yourself or wander into other topics as you write, which can very well happen!
Besides, planning lets you list out your examples first so you can better inspect how they support your argument, or which parts of it they support, for that matter. A classic way to do it is via the PEEL method:
Let’s say your topic is capital punishment and why it’s justifiable or not justifiable. Here’s an example of PEEL in use for that:
Planning like this lets you see the strengths and weaknesses of your own points and evidence. It may even tell you if you don’t have enough points for your chosen topic – in which case you can go back to your shortlist and pick something else!
You might feel like you need to start your essay with a bang to catch your examiner’s attention, but trust us – you don’t.
Instead, keep your introduction simple and sweet so you can get to the main part of your essay, where the meat and content points actually are.
It’s actually more important to have a well-substantiated piece that’s properly concluded. This would return higher marks than a piece that opens with a flashy and impressive introduction, so focus your time and effort on where it matters!
We’ve talked about time management before and given more than a few tips for it because it really is one of the most important skills for a student. Even here, it’s critical because it can make the difference between a complete essay and a half-done one.
Try to give yourself a specific amount of time to cover all of your points, do counter-arguments, and wrap up your essay with a solid conclusion. You can even set up a schedule by blocks, allocating 10 minutes or so per point.
We also recommend allocating another 5 to 10 minutes before the end of the assignment for final rereads and touches. It’s a great way to catch grammar, spelling, and punctuation errors too.
There’s absolutely no shame in getting help from a writing tutor. Some people just do discursive writing naturally while others find it a bit more of a challenge.
So, if you think you need more personalised guidance to prepare for your GP essays, look for tutors who can give you consultations. You can even engage the help of tutors like ours at Aspire Hub, as we have extensive experience in helping students with such challenges.
By guiding you through various topics and giving you personalised feedback on how to improve your essay writing, our tutor-coaches will help you ace your papers whether for JC1 or JC2. If you’re interested, learn more about the Aspire Hub GP programme for JC students now!
Essay writing is a key component of the GP at JC level, which may make some students a little nervous. While most students will already have experience with essay writing from secondary school, the JC GP is a little different.
That’s because a lot of the secondary school essays are of the narrative or creative type. The JC GP, on the other hand, is largely discursive.
If you’re not sure what that means or how it should affect your essay writing, though, don’t worry. We’ll take you over all you need to know so that you can breeze through your essay.
A discursive essay is a piece of writing that aims to educate the reader about a topic by presenting an informed and balanced view of it.
Note those two words: informed and balanced. The former means you need to have verified knowledge on the subject while the latter means you need to present more than one perspective on it.
A good GP essay thus has the following elements:
Learning how to write an essay so that it satisfies all of these requirements isn’t as hard as some think. To show you what we mean, we’ll present our tutors’ top tips for acing the GP essay below.
You’re given 12 questions to choose from for your GP essay. Read every last one and only choose after that!
The goal is to choose the question with a topic that you know most about. Remember that you’ll have to provide content both for and against the argument in your essay, after all. That will be a challenge if you don’t have basic knowledge about the topic in the first place.
That said, it’s advisable to also shortlist another 1-2 questions. Why? Because you can run into roadblocks, in which case the shortlisted options may be your fallback plan.
It’s very tempting to jump straight into writing, especially if this is a question or topic you are confident in, but try to restrain yourself. It’s better to plan your essay first.
This ensures you have a well-thought-out set of points that flow and tie into each other. Doing a plan also helps you avoid contradicting yourself or wander into other topics as you write, which can very well happen!
Besides, planning lets you list out your examples first so you can better inspect how they support your argument, or which parts of it they support, for that matter. A classic way to do it is via the PEEL method:
Let’s say your topic is capital punishment and why it’s justifiable or not justifiable. Here’s an example of PEEL in use for that:
Planning like this lets you see the strengths and weaknesses of your own points and evidence. It may even tell you if you don’t have enough points for your chosen topic – in which case you can go back to your shortlist and pick something else!
You might feel like you need to start your essay with a bang to catch your examiner’s attention, but trust us – you don’t.
Instead, keep your introduction simple and sweet so you can get to the main part of your essay, where the meat and content points actually are.
It’s actually more important to have a well-substantiated piece that’s properly concluded. This would return higher marks than a piece that opens with a flashy and impressive introduction, so focus your time and effort on where it matters!
We’ve talked about time management before and given more than a few tips for it because it really is one of the most important skills for a student. Even here, it’s critical because it can make the difference between a complete essay and a half-done one.
Try to give yourself a specific amount of time to cover all of your points, do counter-arguments, and wrap up your essay with a solid conclusion. You can even set up a schedule by blocks, allocating 10 minutes or so per point.
We also recommend allocating another 5 to 10 minutes before the end of the assignment for final rereads and touches. It’s a great way to catch grammar, spelling, and punctuation errors too.
There’s absolutely no shame in getting help from a writing tutor. Some people just do discursive writing naturally while others find it a bit more of a challenge.
So, if you think you need more personalised guidance to prepare for your GP essays, look for tutors who can give you consultations. You can even engage the help of tutors like ours at Aspire Hub, as we have extensive experience in helping students with such challenges.
By guiding you through various topics and giving you personalised feedback on how to improve your essay writing, our tutor-coaches will help you ace your papers whether for JC1 or JC2. If you’re interested, learn more about the Aspire Hub GP programme for JC students now!
