First of all, it is necessary to distribute your time properly during the exam. Practice shows that you should allocate at least 1-1.5 hours for writing an essay out of the 3.5 hours allotted for the USE in social studies. It is most expedient to start writing studybay reviews after all other CMM tasks have been solved, since this type of work requires a maximum concentration of the graduate’s efforts.
Carefully read all suggested topics.
Choose topics that are understandable, i.e., the student should have a clear idea of what the statement is about and what the author wanted to say with that phrase. In order to remove doubts as to whether he/she understands the topic correctly, the graduate should reformulate the phrase in his/her own words, identifying the main idea. The student can do this orally or on a draft.
From the selected understandable statements, one topic should be chosen – the one that the student knows best. It is necessary to note the fact that often examinees choose easy, in their opinion, topics, but which turn out to be difficult in the disclosure of the topic due to the limited scientific and factual material on the subject (in other words – the phrase itself says everything, nothing can be added). In such cases, the essay is reduced to a simple statement of the meaning of the statement in different variants and is evaluated by the experts because of the poor evidence base is low. Therefore, it is necessary to choose the topic of the essay so that the student when writing it could fully show the completeness of his knowledge and depth of his thoughts (i.e. – the topic should be a winning one).
When choosing the topic of the essay, it is necessary to pay attention also to what social science is referred to the given statement. Practice shows that a number of phrases can refer to several sciences at once. For example, J. Goethe’s statement “Man is defined not only by natural qualities, but also by acquired qualities” can belong to philosophy, social psychology, and sociology. Accordingly, the content of the essay should differ depending on this, i.e., it should correspond to the indicated basic science.
It is not necessary to write the essay entirely in draft form. Firstly – because of the limited time, secondly – because of the fact that at the moment of writing the essay some thoughts come and at the moment of rewriting – others, and it is much more difficult to redo the ready text, than to create a new one. On the draft, the graduate makes only an outline of his/her essay, approximate brief sketches of the meaning of the phrase, his/her argumentation, scholars’ points of view, concepts and theoretical positions that he/she is going to bring in his/her work, as well as the approximate order of their arrangement one after another taking into account the semantic logic of the essay.
It is obligatory for the student to express his/her personal attitude towards the chosen topic in a clear formulation (“I agree”, “I do not agree”, “I do not quite agree”, “I agree, but partially” or phrases similar in meaning and sense). The presence of personal attitude is one of the criteria on the basis of which the essay is evaluated by the experts.
It is mandatory for the graduate to state his/her understanding of the meaning of the statement. That is, a high school student explains in his/her own words what the author wanted to say with this phrase. It is advisable to do it at the beginning of the essay. And if you combine the requirements of this paragraph with the provisions of the previous one, then, for example, this is how the beginning of an essay on philosophy would look: “Before we talk about the good of needs satisfaction, it is necessary to determine what needs constitute the good”: “I completely agree with the statement of the great Russian writer of the second half of the XIX – early XX centuries. I fully agree with the statement of the great Russian writer of the second half of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, L.N. Tolstoy, in which he speaks of genuine and imaginary needs.
Related Resources:
How to write a social studies essay in 2021
Choosing a topic and posing a problem
There are two common types of written work in high school: essays and abstracts.
