It is a fact implicitly acknowledged: if there is anything scarier than the idea of appearing for an entrance exam, it is appearing for an entrance exam with a descriptive section! And like any issue under the sun, there are two ways to handle it: one may become a part of the anticipatory frenzy around this newer addition. Or one may decide to approach this critically and dismantle the fear factor systematically. And guess what, this article shall espouse the latter way of handling even though former seems to have its own charm.
Let’s first begin by understanding why has the descriptive writing section been added to the TISS MAT exam? The answer to this requires no treasure hunt to be solved. It is available on the TISS website: To evaluate the thought process, multifaceted viewpoints, and conviction of the candidate on the topic. The idea hence should be to match this evaluation objective with the way you approach descriptive writing.
Firstly, the term ‘descriptive writing’ itself needs to be holistically understood. There are two stages in writing, both equally important and strictly chronological: thinking and then writing your thoughts. It can be argued that the term descriptive writing is misleading since it captures only the second stage of the process. The importance of organizing one’s thoughts and opinions before starting the essay however cannot be possibly over-emphasized. Since thoughts are what you will be evaluated on, it is sensible to invest and earmark some time to decode the topic in question; read, re-read it in an objective manner; find key words and phrases and then finally begin writing along those lines. This approach is suggested since it has its set of merits.
Pre-organized thoughts lead to an organized write-up. Unstructured thoughts might make a good diary entry but hardly a readable essay. As already stated, thinking is just the first step of the exercise. The next one should be to jot these thoughts (keywords) down in the form of a correlated chain and then the write up must be built on that. Either one can confer this coveted structure to one’s write up by following the classic introduction-body-conclusion framework or some other analytical framework such as PESTEL can be adopted depending on the topic.
Another factor that impacts the readability of the essay is language. Although secondary to the content, language undeniably plays a role in the overall quality of a write-up. This last sentence might lead most of us to draw a faulty inference: good language is correlated to good language speaking skills, heavy vocabulary, jargon and so on. But usually, the simplicity and lucidity of expression is what enhances the essay’s quality. So, the temptation to simply sound smart must be defeated by well, actually writing smart.
A good essay must be content-centric and not be heavily language-dependent. Believe it or not, this part of preparation is the easiest since there is no two way about it: to have more content, read more content. Reading here must not be limited to a specific genre or area of interest. It must be done eclectically to broaden one’s area of comfort with various topics. Also, an interesting exercise that can be done alongside reading is analysing the way any piece of writing is written. The analysis could consist of studying how the argument was built in the essay, how were the points structured together and lastly, how were language and tone used to compliment the topic in question. Reading, however (including this piece on how to write) can translate into a well-written essay only upon the practice of all the suggestions (but not limited to the ones) given regarding enhancing writing skills.
Practising how to write on diverse topics helps one become relatively comfortable in writing essays in a timed setup. But the goal of quality improvement can be truly achieved by seeking continuous feedback on what has been written as part of the practice. Peer review can be the way to go here since it is always easier to find faults in the work of others. Inculcation of previous feedback in the next piece of practice writing can help one improve upon the quality of one’s work albeit in a piecemeal manner. This finally leads to the last leg of this essay and perhaps the primary prerequisite cum disclaimer for your descriptive writing preparation: patience for results. Although we are wired in a way that we need constant assurance in form of tangible results to know if something is working, with writing, it has to be driven by patience and faith in the process of constant inputs and subsequent improvement. The key is to be consistent and the results shall eventually show!
About the Author
Shreya Sidana is a first-year student of Human Resource Management & Labour Relations at TISS Mumbai. She is a Literature graduate and an erstwhile Verbal Aptitude Coach with a strong affinity towards books, coffee and daydreaming.