ESSAY WRITING

In our previous articles, we explained briefly ways to achieve excellence and high grades in writing essays by following the appropriate steps required.

Today, we shall discus essays writing and areas of focus (AOF) students are expected to know before attempting or making a choice on the options given.

In the course of choosing what to write in essays; there are series of options given to students to choose a suitable and convenient topic for better understanding. The major ones among them are:

Informal letter writing.

Article writing.

Formal letter writing.

Speech/debate writing.

Story writing.

Now! Let's begin with letter writing.

One of the advisable topic required to be done by students is informal letter due to its simplicity and how relating it is to students' lives.

If you come across letter writing in your exams,  especially informal letter and you desire to choose or write on it; kindly follow these steps and guides as it is very vital to note them down and understand them because they are your KEY to its (informal) door.

Extracted questions from 2019 May/June WAEC ESSAY.

1.The first thing to do is for you to prepare the format necessary to write a successful informal letter , likewise the points needed to be discussed must be gathered. For instance, the 2019 Waec question on informal letter is:

"You are about to graduate from secondary school and you held the position of library prefect. Write a letter to your friend telling him/her your experiences and how they have contributed to your life in a positive way".

Once you choose this topic,  the ideals you need during the BODY of the letter will have gathered and it will make your letter more comprehensive. Here are the formats of informal letter:

Address of the writer.

The address of the writer must be at the right hand corner of your sheet. As for the layout of the address,  we have the indented style and the blocked style. Here is a sample of writing the address.

St. Gregory College,

P.M.B 7586,

Victoria Island,

Lagos.

12th July, 1999.

In the above sample, we use the blocked because it is mostly used and widely recognized. So it is also advisable to choose this style.

You will note that the beginning of each sub location in the address denotes capital letter,  this means that the places are classified as proper Nouns not common nouns. So if you are to write yours,  note those areas because they are one of the AOCs (area of concentration) of the examiners.

Secondly, try and observed the use of punctuation marks in the address. If you are telling us your address and you know it has areas, street, bus stop, and states. Then use the comma (, ) until you get to the last location or main point of recognition; then you can use the full stop.

N. B if you are writing a letter to someone outside your country, it is strictly recommended to attach your country as the final point of location where the full stop is needed to be inserted.

St. Gregory College,

  P. M. B 7586,

     Victoria Island,

        Lagos.

12th July, 1999.

The above format is called the indented or slant style. This is not commonly used due to its strictness in usage.

2. Date: According to some linguists,   Date can he written in two forms. For instance:

12th July, 1999 and 12th of July, 1999.This two ways are preferable to use but first one is more former while the second one less former.

3. Salutation: as informer letter is concerned, even from its title, we can detect it is less former and loose language is permitted to be used as it is not formal. Moreover, it is written to ones' relations and closed ones. Based on the salutation, we can say DEAR RICHARDSON, DEAR... SO AND SO. Regardless of the name of the person we are writing to.

N. B Having written the salutation, it must end with comma.

3. Paragraph: this is the short space left before writing the main points of the letter,  it begins when one gets to the points of writing the greeting. It is expected of students to prepare ad create at least 5 to 6 paragraphs depending on the amount of points requested by the questioner.

4. Greeting: This is the point where you are required to introduce few of your points with the initial steps of greeting whosoever you are writing to, depending on the purpose of the letter and how close you are to the person. For instance, if you are to reply s letter your friend sent to you some months ago; you can begin by apologizing for replying late to his previous letter.

5. BODY of the letter: Here as we mentioned that the ideals you need must be gathered before initiating the letter. This is where those expected ideas and points are needed and to be writing down in the format of demarcating the points with paragraphs. For instance, if you are to give 3 points why ....... It means once you get to the body of the letter, you will have to use 3 paragraphs to show those 3 points required.

6. Conclusion: here, you can just summaries the points you mentioned in the body of the letter and conclude it with any suitable and delightful words such as " Best wishes, Yours sincerely, Yours lovingly" and so on. This should be followed by your name.

Article writing

If as a student,  you decide to choose an article as what you intend writing; you are also on the right track. We shall explain here how an article should be written and steps to take in writing a good one.

According to the given article of  2019 May/June WAEC Essay,  the topic given on article was " write an article suitable for publication in a national newspaper on the growing incidence of drug abuse among the youth,  stating the cause and suggesting ways it can be curbed".

1.The first thing you need to observe is to locate the central focus of your article, which is the main topic. Try and gather points necessary for backing it up before proceeding with it.

 Here the basic discussion you are required to write is drug abuse and ways of curbing it.

2. Introduction: Write the topic in a more formal way with the use of upper case .Give a full definition of your main focus.

N. B this definition should be done in the first paragraph.

3. Paragraph: This is very vital and mostly required when writing an article.

4. Points/ Body of the write-ups: You are to discuss the points required and mention in full details all that are required to be mentioned. In this points; paragraphs are needed outline the points in order to avoid interlocking of information.

Conclusion: You are to round up your points with summary of all that you have mentioned in the body. Then you conclude it with your full name.

Revise: should there be time for cross checking, kindly go back to your write-ups for verifications.

Our subsequent articles will be based other essays required in WAEC. Kindly comments and ask questions for clarifications. Thanks for reading.