Why Good Essay Writers Lose Marks in Précis

Something strange happens to a lot of good candidates, and almost nobody warns them about it.

You write well. You read widely. Your essay marks come back respectable. Then the précis and composition result arrives and it is bad, sometimes the worst number on your sheet. Nothing about it makes sense, so you decide the passage was unfair, or the checking was harsh, and you move on.

It usually is not either of those. What actually happened is fixable, and you can fix it in a few weeks once you can see it.

The two papers want opposite things

We put essay and précis in the same mental folder because they sit together on the timetable and both involve writing English. That folder is doing real damage.

The essay asks you to produce. Take a position. Build it. Bring evidence. Make an argument that did not exist before you sat down. Every habit it rewards points outward: more support, a sharper example, a better way of saying it.

The précis asks you to remove. Nothing may be added. Not your opinion, not a new example, not a point the author never made. You carry somebody else's argument, whole, into about a third of the words. Every habit it rewards points inward.

So a candidate who has trained the first skill for four months walks into the second paper and does what he has taught himself to do. He does it well. It is still wrong.

What the examiners see

This is not a theory of mine. FPSC's examiner reports describe it.

Their observation on the précis paper is that many candidates approached it as though it were a summarising question, and that although a précis should come to roughly a third of the passage, candidates spread their answers across several pages.

Sit with that for a second. Spreading across several pages is not laziness. It takes effort. It is what a person does when everything he has practised tells him that filling the page shows he knows something. In the essay hall that is loosely true. In this paper it is the mistake being measured.

The same reports describe the language on that paper bluntly, with the errors gathering around tense, subject and verb agreement, and pronouns. Those are not unusual mistakes. They are what happens when somebody writes fast in a mode he has never rehearsed.

Six habits to switch off

Here is the damage, plainly. In each pair, the first one helps you in the essay and costs you in the précis.

1. Taking a position. In the précis, the position belongs to the author. Whether you think he is right does not go on the page, however obviously right you are.
2. Adding evidence. Nothing may be added. An example that would strengthen the passage still counts against you, because it is not in the passage.
3. Developing the point. Development means expansion, and expansion is the one thing this exercise forbids.
4. Reaching for the memorable phrase. Précis prose should be plain and useful. Elegance costs words you do not have.
5. Writing at length. In the essay, length roughly tracks substance. Here, length is the fault.
6. Using your own voice. You do need your own words, because lifting sentences is penalised. But the voice carrying the argument is not yours.

None of these are things you do badly. They are things you do well, in the wrong room.

The part that does carry over

It would be neat to tell you the two papers share nothing. That is not true, and the exception is the useful bit.

Both papers live or die on finding the central argument. In the essay you build one. In the précis you find someone else's, and the title you are asked to give it is really a test of whether you found it at all. Somebody who cannot say a passage's argument in one sentence will write a poor précis for the same reason he writes a poor essay.

So essay practice is not bad for you. The comprehension half helps. The expression half gets in the way. Nobody tells you where that line falls, which is why this catches people who are otherwise doing everything right.

How to practise the switch

The fastest drill is one most people never try, and it uses work you have already done.

Take an essay you wrote. Cut it to a third.

You know its argument completely, so nothing hides behind not understanding the passage. Compression is the only thing being tested. You will find out fast which of your paragraphs were carrying the argument and which were decoration, and that same judgement, pointed at somebody else's writing, is exactly what the précis paper wants.

Then do it the ordinary way. Take a serious newspaper column, count the words, cut to a third, and check one thing at the end. Has any part of the argument gone missing? Not any fact. Any part of the argument. Facts can go. Steps in the reasoning cannot.

Twenty minutes, three times a week. Very little else moves that paper as quickly.

Where to put your hours

One practical note, because this is where people misjudge it.

The essay is one shot and a volatile one. The précis and composition paper is several separate sections, and some of them, grammar and idioms and pairs of words, pay back steady effort in a way the essay never does. The marks there are more reliable. Plenty of aspirants pour months into the essay, treat this paper as something to survive, and are then surprised by which one actually sank them.

For the essay side, how to write a CSS essay covers what the paper asks for and where scripts run thin, and why the essay paper fails most candidates covers what goes wrong before you write anything. To practise either against real papers, start with the past paper drill.

Why one course teaches both

People ask why the essay and the précis are taught together instead of separately.

This is why. The interference is the subject. Teach them apart and you produce a candidate who has been trained twice, properly, into a habit that helps him in one room and quietly costs him in the next. The CSS Essay & Précis Masterclass is built around moving between them, not around each one on its own.