The most “disgusting” topics for essays for admission to the Unified State Exam have been named

For many, the beginning of December marks the coming New Year with its cheerful long holidays. And for 11th grade school students this is the beginning of the Unified State Exam. On December 6, schoolchildren across the country write a final essay, which serves as admission to the unified state exam. They also need to register to participate in the Unified State Exam, that is, decide on the subjects that will be taken in the spring along with the Russian language and mathematics.

There is an opinion that the final essay is not so difficult. After all, in theory, all eleventh graders must write it in order to get into the state exam. This essay is not assessed on a point system; based on its results, it is given a pass or fail.

But otherwise, perhaps, the essay is not inferior in complexity to what needs to be written on the Unified State Exam in Russian. The assessment criteria for admission are strict. Compliance with the topic, argumentation, use of literary material, composition and logic, quality of speech and literacy. Flights of fancy and revelry of artistic thought are strictly regulated by the requirements for the structure of the text.

The essay must have an introduction, main part, and conclusion. The introductory part should not occupy more than 15% of the text, but at the same time contain a quote or thesis on the proposed topic.

The main part must include at least two logical arguments based on sources. And also a micro-conclusion – this is what most tutors advise in preparing for the Unified State Exam.

In conclusion, it is necessary to generalize everything and round it off logically, using cliché phrases: “Thus, we can conclude…”, “To summarize, I want to say that…” However, USE trainers recommend using such cliche phrases in other parts of the essay. The recommended number of words is 350 (definitely no less than 250). Time to write the final essay is 3 hours 55 minutes.

Everyone, of course, is interested in topics – what will admissions be written about in the 2023-2024 academic year? This season, experts and methodologists have proposed three directions for essays: spiritual and moral guidelines in human life; family and society, Fatherland in human life; nature and culture in human life. Specific topics are never known in advance. It is known that there are six of them, and schoolchildren will see them only on December 6.

Here are examples of topics for last year’s final essay. “How do you think the concepts of honor and conscience are related?”, “Language and linguistic personality”, “Man’s knowledge of himself”…

“The essay was introduced as an admission to the Unified State Exam quite a long time ago, in 2013-2014,” says Larisa Panina, a teacher of Russian language and literature from Moscow. – During this time, I formed some advice to students. The main thing is that it is almost impossible to write an essay from scratch; you need to prepare for it, write test papers. And then count the words and analyze your mistakes. Next is reliance on literary sources, that is, you need to read. Not necessarily voluminous volumes, the classic stories of Chekhov, Tolstoy, Bunin are quite suitable for argumentation on almost any topic.

You can and even need to take care of theses, conclusions and quotes in advance, because the directions for essays are known. You can choose something universal. Another piece of advice – despite the many “technical requirements”, you should not get bogged down in bureaucracy, because the style of speech plays a role when checking. It is clear that this is difficult. But on the final essay and on the Unified State Exam, you need to try to make the text lively and literary.

Every year, graduates vigorously discuss submitting the final essay. They write about “nasty topics”: they usually mean something confusing, like “The present century and the past century”: the causes of the conflict.” Or such a “unexpected” one, for example: “Why in Rus’ were criminals often called “unfortunate”? Or topics on Radishchev, Gorky, Martin Eden, which most simply have not read.

It is believed that the most “disgusting” topics come across to schoolchildren in Moscow, St. Petersburg and other large cities. But, one way or another, about 40% of 11th grade students fail to complete the final essay the first time. It’s good that there are two retakes.

As for the choice of additional items, for most they are already known. The choice was made based on the requirements for the Unified State Exam of universities. And, along with the main ones, these subjects are repeated “from start to finish” from the beginning of the year, or even from the 10th grade. Judging by information from Rosobrnadzor, last year the most popular additional subjects for the Unified State Exam were social studies, computer science and biology.