Composition: Essay, Letter, Report and Précis
Four tasks, one discipline
The composition question offers a choice: upanyasam (essay), kathu (letter), riportu (report) and saaram (précis). Each has a fixed frame, and the frame carries marks before your content does.
Frames
- Essay (200–250 words): aamukham of two or three sentences defining the issue, three body paragraphs - one idea, one example, one comment each - and a forward-looking conclusion.
- Letter: sender's address, date, receiver's address, salutation, subject (formal), two or three body paragraphs, closing, signature. Informal opens പ്രിയ സുഹൃത്തേ and closes സ്നേഹത്തോടെ; formal opens ബഹുമാനപ്പെട്ട ... with വിഷയം: ...
- Report: headline, place-and-date line, lead answering what/when/where/who, then details, one eyewitness quote, conclusion. Third person, past tense, no ഞാൻ.
- Précis: about one-third of the original, one paragraph, own words, no examples or quotations, argument preserved, title added.
Worked example
A 120-word passage argues that Kerala's paddy fields are being abandoned. A précis of about 40 words keeps only: the extent of abandonment, the causes (labour cost, land value), the consequence (food dependence) and the writer's demand. The statistics, the farmer's anecdote and the rhetorical question are dropped. Reasoning: a précis preserves the argument's skeleton, never its decoration.
Traps
Overshooting or badly undershooting the word limit; a letter with no date or subject line; a report written in the first person; a précis that copies whole sentences; an essay that lists points without a single example.