Exam tips: Writing compositions

Some of the most important tips to write good compositions, not only in exams, but in any case, are the following:

·         You have to take into account who the type of person that may read your composition. Knowing who could be the reader is going to help you to choose the language, the style, the structure, and other things that will do your composition more interesting.

·          You have to know if you are writing a formal composition or an informal one in order to adapt the style and the main structure to readers.

·         The writing style is very important if you want to give a clear message to readers. Also, a good type of writing helps you to organize the ideas in the correct way so they are interesting and easy to read for the reader.

·         You should make a plan to organize the ideas in order of importance. It is going to be useful in the moment of developing them.

·         You have to take into account the requirements of the composition to logical write logical things according to the purpose of the composition.

Next, there is an example of a great composition:

What Happened to the News?

When television news started out, back in the 1950’s, it occupied less than a thirty-minute slot. Ten or fifteen minutes would be granted to local stations for their news, and then the networks would say all there was to say about national and world news in the remaining fifteen to twenty minutes. There were very few advertisements during the news; it wasn't regarded as appropriate to sponsor news about floods and fires and political disasters. Life must have been simpler then.

Nowadays many television stations set apart ninety minutes for local news alone, and that's just for the early evening news show. On March 17, 1998 (St. Patrick's Day), we watched a local news show in Hartford for one hour, from 5 to 6 p.m., and kept track of what seemed to be really news and what was — well, not news.

First of all, during this one hour of news, there were 35 advertisements. Among other things advertised, there were ads for cars (sometimes competing car companies would follow nose to tailpipe), lots of pharmaceuticals (with dreadful warnings about side-effects), fast-food chains (no warnings about side effects), mutual funds, feminine hygiene products, cheese, utility companies, phone service, shampoos, and deodorants. Most of the ads were fast paced, colorful, slick, and sometimes funny. They seemed to do a lot in their thirty seconds. Graphically, they were the most interesting part of the hour. In addition, there were ten advertisements apparently produced by the television station itself that advertised programs and services of the station — sometimes featuring what was coming up later that evening, sometimes touting the virtues of the station's news team and weather forecasters.