Winning Answers - A dissection on Writing Skills

Hey Examiner, It is Important

Hey Examiner, It is Important

Examiners going through hundreds of answers on the same day will not be in the best of their moods and needs to be reminded about the topic in the beginning in the form of an Introduction to Your Answer.

Your introduction should open eyes of examiner, hook him to your answer and force him to read the entire answer without a break. It should seduce & addict the examiner to your answer. The key point you should remember is that if your introduction is good examiner will read your answer, and if examiner reads, he may give you good marks.

But if introduction is not exciting enough, examiner may choose not to read your answer completely and may just skim through your answer and give you a low mark if he didn't recognize the keywords he was looking for, or give you an average mark if he finds key words.

Remember that the purpose of your introduction is to remind examiner about the topic and significance of the topic. So an Ideal introductory sentence should include the 'context' from which the question is asked.

Context or background of the question tells the examiner why the question is asked in the first place or importance of the topic in present situation. This can be represented by a simple formula.

Introducing sentence = Due to Reason X, Topic Y

So, in the introduction you are telling the examiner 'hey, examiner, this topic is important due to this reason and you should definitely read it'. Examiner catches your logic if you write it attractive enough and everything will be fine and you will come out with flying colours.

Just try to contemplate what makes something important. Do you think something assumes importance due to a happening twenty years back? Importance increases with recency of incidents and graveness of the situations posed by the incident, and magnitude of the incident.

So the reason you choose should be biggest in magnitude, posing gravest challenge and as recent as possible.

Example:

Question: Comprehensive Strategy to Tackle Naxalism

The greatest internal security challenge, Naxalism, started from a village called Naxalbari is affecting 40% of India's geographical area despite constant government efforts and warrants for immediate multi pronged strategy.

Dissection:

Reason X: Though it started small it is affecting 40% of India's geographical area despite constant government efforts.

Topic Y : Naxalism needs immediate multi pronged strategy to tackle it.

You can find infinite number of reasons and answer written by each person will differ and shows the individuality beginning from introduction. I shall demonstrate another example for same question.

Recent ambush of politicians by Maoists in Chattisgarh in spite of development initiatives by government and continuing violence demands a comprehensive strategy to deal with the issue of Naxalism in India.

Dissect it yourselves and understand the formula. Decide to apply it. Practice by making introductions for different questions.

Remember that a quotation, a definition or a story while can be interesting and even good, will not be the best introduction. The best introduction gives context of importance for examiner and attracts him.

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EXERCISE 7

Write Introductions for all questions which we have worked on in previous chapters.

Write introductions for

Cybersecurity threats faced by India

Prospects of India-China Relations

Demands for separate states in India