CSS English Essay Preparation by Syed Nasir Jamal Shah sb

1.The first and foremost thing that ensures your success in essay writing for CSS exam is what you present in your essay, your ideas and thoughts. They expect from you a great deal of knowledge about the topic, maturity in your thoughts and ideas, thoughts based on facts supporting or opposing the topic, widely accepted thoughts, multi-dimensional approach to explain about the topic and proper way of expressing your ideas and thoughts.
2. Go through well-written essays by experts in newspapers and magazines, and understand how they frame the ‘Introduction’ and ‘Conclusion’ passages. There should be a logical continuation from beginning to end.
3 The essay should be organized in well-structured paragraphs coherent with the flow of the essay.
Don’t be too aggressive or pessimistic in your tone.
Come up with strong points(arguments) and express new viewpoints elaborately.
Write mock essays and get it evaluated by experts in the field.
Stick to the basics; parts of speech, tenses, punctuation, sentence structure, vocabulary, paragraph writing, and all other basic components of English should be learnt. This can be done by reading a simple grammar book.
There are a few common rules of writing an essay that should be learnt rigorously.
Practising short essays will give you command over essay writing and putting a firm foundation for the full-length essay.
Going through past papers, and by following current trends, shortlist some topics and collect relevant material. How much will be sufficient can be gauged by developing a detailed outline of each topic.
Material for English Essays can be gathered from two sources: One; books, magazines, newspapers, journals, etc. Two; from official documents like Quarterly reports of SBP, Economic Survey of Pakistan; reports of international agencies like WB, IMF, ADB, UN, USAID etc; treaties, agreements, etc. They are significant in order to strengthen your discourse skills.
Practice essay after CSS pattern and get it evaluated. This should be done regularly especially in the months of Dec and Jan. In this way, you will feel less pressure in the actual examination.
The first thing that I would suggest you do and start right now is to start reading DAWN or any other newspaper. Dawn is considered as the BIBLE of CSS. Make a routine of reading DAWN daily, especially its Editorials and Opinion Pages.
Start from English Newspaper. Dawn Newspaper is the best choice in this regard. Start reading daily basis. Go through from your areas of interest. Read headlines and editorials. And note down difficult words. Check there meaning from the dictionary and use them in your own sentences. Reading is the pre-requisite to learn English. You can read books, novels e.t.c based on your interest.
Grammar is the backbone of English writing. The most recommended book in this regard is Wren and Martin English Grammar. Its key is also available on book stores. You can do exercises from this book on a daily basis.
Start writing from your daily routine. At the end of the day try to write everything you have done. Move on gradually to paragraph writing. Read articles from English Newspapers or some paragraph from any book and try to describe that in your own words.
For Essay Topics, go through past papers of at least 15 years. Start writing on simple topics first like Education in Pakistan, Women Empowerment, Terrorism, Role of Media in our daily lives e.t.c. Once you are able to write on these topics, move towards actual topics from the past papers.
Once you have selected a topic for essay writing, do some brainstorming on that topic. Note down all the points and aspects w.r.t that topic. Now re-arrange and organize your points. Make an outline. Describe those headings in outline in one paragraph for each. Again I would say that extensive study can be much helpful in this regard. Read articles, books, paragraphs regarding that topic.
Generally, the format of an Essay should include (a) Introduction (b) Thesis Statement (c) Causes (d) Effects (e) Remedies (f) Conclusion
Read different sample Essays to get a better understanding of what an Essay should look like.
Do not spend all the time on Essay writing. Make a schedule for a week or for month whatever suits you. Choose a topic on a weekly basis. Fix weekend days Saturday and Sunday for writing practice and read and collect material for that essay in other days. You can assign say two to three hours daily for this thing.