How to write essays in the ICSE English exam ?
The key to tackling the essay section in the ICSE paper is staying within the bounds already established. The absolute basics are – keep your grammar and spellings in order. Each error, however tiny, has a cascading effect not just in lowering the marks, but also creating a wrong impression in the mind of the examiner. In a subjective area like essays, this is quite important.
What points should I keep in mind while attempting essays in the ICSE English exam ?
Sticking close to the prescribed word limits is another important point. While you are not expected to count the words you have written, you need to be over the minimum limit set. Again, do not write more than necessary because you end up wasting precious minutes and more importantly, you expose yourself to more chances of spelling or grammatical errors.
Remember, that this is not a creative or abstract or even a short story writing competition. Ultimately, this is a test of your command of the English language and whether you can structure your thoughts on a random topic and express yourself coherently with no linguistic mistakes.
The essays are expected to follow a typical pattern of an introduction paragraph where you set the context or premise of what you will describe in the next few paragraphs. The body of the essay contains your thoughts and expressions about the topic or story. Finally, you close off the essay with a concluding section.
What are the common essay topics for the ICSE English examination ?
Now coming to the type of essays that you find in the Class 10 ICSE examination we see a distinctive pattern emerging. Over the years, the ICSE exams have had essay topics which can be broadly described as follows:
Narrative essay: In these types of essay questions, you are expected to narrate an experience or an event. You can write from the perspective of an observer or you could put yourself in the shoes of a central character. Again, the basics of writing coherently and sequentially are key. The examiners want to see how well you can stitch your thoughts together and express them in a few words within the time limit. As a tip, you may benefit from jotting down a few rough thoughts in the first few minutes, putting them in a coherent sequence and then begin writing the essay.
Imaginative essay: For imaginative themes and topics, the examiners want to see how you interpret the topic and where you can take it. Remember that this is not a creative writing competition, but an English examination, meant to test your grasp of the language. Keep the basics of grammar, spellings and the word and time limits in mind.
Argumentative essay: In argumentative essays, the aim is to provide your opinion based on facts and logic based on your life experiences. Your aim is to be convincing with the thoughts and opinions you will end up expressing.
Descriptive essay: Like a narrative essay topic, you are expected to describe a scene or an event from a third person perspective or as a central character involved in the scene or event. Once you select a topic like this on, spend a few minutes structuring your thoughts and then start off writing.
Original short story: This is a common type of essay topic which you can choose to interpret as you like. The aim from the examiner’s perspective is to spark off a chain of creative thought and see how well you can express that in a written form. Bear in mind the basics of time management and word limits in the examination setting. A lot of students find this form of essay writing very easy while a lot of other students see this as typically too abstract to attempt.
Picture composition: A picture composition is defined by the bounds of the image in the exam paper and the how you interpret it. You can try to do an objective narration of the situation shown in the picture and your thoughts around it. You can also try and weave in the image as a part of a short story. Unless you are comfortable attempting this form of essays, you might be better off attempting some more topics.
Each ICSE paper contains a bunch of essay topics together. Always try and see if you are comfortable writing on at least one or two of the topics out of the total set. In rare cases where all the topics seem difficult or unrelatable, remember that you are being tested on your English language skill; writing out the number of words expected while keeping more or less to the theme of the topic and minimal linguistic errors on any one of the topics is good enough. Lastly, remember to stick to the basics:
- No spelling or grammar errors
- Stay close to the word limit prescribed
- Structure your thoughts and coherently express them (spend a few minutes on making rough notes initially if needed)
- Stay within the theme of the topic
For really good practice papers where you can check sets of essay topics and identify how you want to approach them in an exam setting, try any of the following books (available on Amazon).
- Model Specimen Papers for English 1: ICSE Class 10 – Oswal publication
- ICSE Sectionwise Chapterwise English Language Paper 1 (Class X) – Arihant publishers
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