In the minds of ESL exam candidates, e ssay writing is one of the most daunting tasks they are required to complete, regardless of the level of the exam, the administering body or the ease with which they themselves use the language. The same applies to students who are asked to write an essay by their teachers at school. In the previous sample essays posted on the blog, the main point I stress is the need to become acquainted with this form of writing (as opposed to writing a letter, review or report, for instance), to get a feel of what authorial voice is and how to organize and progressively express the arguments you wish to make in a coherent manner. Unfortunately, the best way to prepare for exam writing or learn how to write good essays for school is to read as many essays from as many sources as possible, then write as
You hear "Joyce" and something in you cringes or ruptures or you sense retroperistalsis in its inception. You've had a hor rendous e xperience reading Ul ysses and would rather not pick up another Joyce novel in your life. Well, "Eveline", thank God, is not U lysses. It is a short story, to begin with, meaning that whatever torture Joyce would have us experience, it wa s intended to be a short one. It is a 'normal' short story , to continue, meani ng that it follows in the vein of the other outstanding stories found in Dubliners . Cr itics have demoted th is collection of short stories in that the y have chara cterized it as simplistic , ignoring the fact that simplicity is not always as simple as it seems. Spelling the wo rd "cat" for instance is simple if we are to comp are it to the word "gneissoid", but the cognitive processes involved in spelling "cat" are no less complicated than those employed by the bra...