Final Essay (Итоговое сочинение) common mistakes
Final Essay (Итоговое сочинение) · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
Writing an essay that could be submitted under several different topics because the student avoids naming or unpacking the specific key words of the chosen prompt (e.g., never defines what aspect of the theme they are arguing).
Under time pressure students reach for memorised universal arguments and a safe 'broad' thesis, so the opening paragraph never commits to the particular question the topic asks.
What to do instead
Before writing, spend 5 minutes turning the prompt into a one-sentence question and an explicit thesis that names the key concept; check every paragraph against that sentence and cut anything that would still fit a different topic.
Restating the topic as the introduction and then moving straight to a literary example without any thesis or roadmap of the argument.
Students confuse 'introducing the topic' with 'answering it' and have been taught to 'start with the topic sentence', so the first paragraph contains no claim to defend.
What to do instead
Use a fixed intro template: (1) one line situating the question, (2) an explicit 'I believe that...' thesis, (3) a signpost naming the two works to be used; verify the thesis is a debatable claim, not a fact or a paraphrase of the prompt.
Retelling the plot of the chosen novel for most of the body paragraph, with the analysis and the link back to the thesis compressed into a single closing sentence.
Retelling is easy and feels safe, and students have the plot more firmly in memory than their own argument, so the paragraph drifts into summary.
What to do instead
Cap the plot at one or two sentences; use the structure 'claim -> specific episode/quote -> what it shows -> therefore it supports my thesis', and make the commentary at least as long as the retelling.
Citing a work only by title and author's name ('As Pushkin shows in Eugene Onegin...') without quoting, naming a scene, or referring to a concrete character action.
Students remember that the criterion requires 'a literary work' and assume naming it satisfies the requirement, and they fear misquoting.
What to do instead
For each work, prepare in advance two or three short, accurately memorised quotations or precisely described episodes; in the essay, anchor every reference to one of them and explain its relevance.
Using a factual error about a literary work - wrong author, wrong character name, misattributed quote, or an event that does not happen in the text - as the basis of an argument.
Students draw on film adaptations, summary websites, or half-remembered school lessons instead of the text, and do not verify details under exam pressure.
What to do instead
Only use works you have read and can verify; keep a short revision sheet of author–title–character–key episode per work, and if unsure of a detail, paraphrase the episode you are certain of rather than inventing a quote.
Writing body paragraphs with no topic sentence and no concluding link, so the essay reads as a chain of loosely related observations and the reader cannot see where one argument ends and the next begins.
Students write 'stream of consciousness' to fill the required word count and have not planned paragraph boundaries before starting.
What to do instead
Outline before writing: two body paragraphs, each with a one-line claim, one piece of evidence, one line of analysis, one line tying back to the thesis; make the first sentence of each paragraph state its claim.
Producing a conclusion that merely repeats the introduction word for word, or that introduces a brand-new argument or third literary work in the final paragraph.
Students treat the conclusion as 'restate the intro' and, if they run short of words, dump leftover ideas there.
What to do instead
End with a synthesis: restate the thesis in the light of the evidence ('Thus, both works show that...') plus one sentence of wider significance; ban new evidence from the conclusion and check it echoes the thesis without copying the intro verbatim.
Writing in a register that is either colloquial and conversational ('ну, как бы, автор нам показывает') or inflated with clichés and borrowed phrases that the student cannot control.
Students imitate spoken speech when brainstorming on paper, or imitate 'essay-speak' from model answers without understanding the phrases, producing awkward, vague prose.
What to do instead
Use a neutral academic register with concrete verbs ('the author shows/depicts/contrasts'); replace any phrase you could not explain with a plain equivalent, and read each sentence aloud to catch spoken-language intrusions.
Systematic spelling errors concentrated in predictable categories: -тся/-ться in verbs, не with different parts of speech, н/нн in participles and adjectives, and unstressed vowels in roots checked by the wrong word.
These are rule-based, not memory-based, and students rely on 'how it sounds', which fails precisely in the endings and suffixes that carry the marks.
What to do instead
Do a targeted rule drill on these four categories, and reserve 5–7 minutes at the end to proofread only for them, applying the question test (что делать?/что делает?) and the participle-dependency test rather than intuition.
Punctuation errors in the recurring structures of essay prose: missing commas around subordinate clauses and participial/deepriparticipial phrases, missing dash between subject and predicate, and missing commas in introductory words and in compound sentences.
Long sentences with several clauses overwhelm working memory, and students punctuate by pausing rather than by grammatical boundaries.
What to do instead
Practise finding the grammatical base of each clause first and marking boundaries before inserting commas; write shorter sentences in the exam, and proofread specifically for introductory words, participial phrases, and clause boundaries.
Breaking grammatical agreement and government: mismatched case after prepositions, broken subject–predicate agreement in long sentences, and inconsistent tense/aspect when retelling a plot.
Long complex sentences and translated-sounding constructions cause the writer to lose track of the subject, and plot retelling shifts between present and past tense.
What to do instead
Keep sentences shorter, check each verb against its subject after writing, and choose one tense for plot summary (conventionally the present) and hold it throughout; verify prepositional case with a quick 'which case does this preposition require' check.