Reading through the MUET Writing sample essays and looking at how the writer write the content points will improve your writing for MUET question 2. This is simply because the content points for your essay determine the band you will get for the paper. Get this right!
So, in this article we are going to look at how you can come up with relevant content points and also how to expand your ideas in your elaborations. The sample paragraph for each content point and later the sample of the complete essay will also be provided. The topic of this essay is Academic Excellence.
In this article we are going to cover:
- the task that you need to complete
- the suggested response that you can choose from to complete the task
- the content points for the topic
- their elaborations
- and also, the sample paragraphs and the sample essay.
The topic of academic excellence is one of the topics that could be included in the writing question 2. For this topic, the question could be focussing on certain aspects like academic achievement versus skills, distractions in a student’s life in achieving academic excellence and is certification important in this digital era to name a few. This is the topic that we are going to be working on in this article:
The MUET Writing Sample Essay Question
This is how the question for writing question 2 is worded in the writing paper. Before going any further we need to first of all understand the question given. We can do this by carefully reading the rubric [rubric: the instruction found in the question] and understand what is needed of you to fulfil the task.
I would like to advise you not to rush through this very first step of reading and understanding the question as I always see this easily done by students. You really need to understand the topic and the task first in order for you to answer the question correctly and to answer it well. I have seen so many times that students have misunderstood the question and so failed to fulfil the task. So read and understand the question first.
The question starts with giving a realistic setting for the task which is ‘during a career day, a guest speaker made a comment…’. This could of course be replaced with other situations like ‘during a talk, the school counsellor said….’or others.
The speaker would be making a comment that would be inviting some kind of discussion from different points of view (POV) and which is going to be the topic of the essay you are writing. The question requires you to write an essay in continuous writing of more than 250 words expressing your personal opinion on this statement.
The Topic of the Sample Essay
The statement made by the guest speaker is ‘employers only look for academic excellence when hiring’. The topic is giving the situation that could happen during a job interview when employers are looking for employees to hire. Here in this statement, the counsellor feels that employers during interviews will be putting a lot of importance on academic excellence.
There are two ways that you can respond to this statement.
The first is when you totally support the statement. What this means is you totally agree that employers do only want to hire people who did very well in their studies. You are 100% for this statement so all your content points will be showing and expressing your POV of why you believe that employers look for academic achievements before agreeing to hire someone.
The second way of responding to this statement is to partially agree to it. You partially agree to a statement when you support the statement but only to a certain extent.
This means that you will say that the statement is partly true because you feel that employers do look for other qualities in a future employee. Next you will be adding in your own ideas as to why you feel that way.
Let’s look at the content points to support the first response when you totally agree to the statement.
The First Response
All content points would be giving the reasons as to why the employers are doing this. Keep this in mind that you believe that what the employers are doing are correct and you will have to sound like you support their actions. You will have to be convincing and try to show the readers [the examiners] in a clear way the rationale for the employers only choosing future employees with academic excellence.
To come up with logical points to support your view on why it is right to select future employees with academic excellence, you would need to put yourself in the situation of the employer.
What is the importance of academic excellence from the employer’s point of view? What line of business do you think and what post would the future employee be filling that would need an employer to be looking for a person who has excelled in their studies? What is it that the person with academic excellence has or is that a person without academic excellence would not have or is not?
First Content Point
So, the first content point for this is you’re going to say that academic excellence especially in tertiary education [tertiary education: above school level education like in college, university and vocational level] shows that the person is an expert in their field. Certain jobs would demand a person to be a specialist in certain areas.
Elaboration
For this content point you can first of all determine who are the people who possess academic excellence and how they are the best choice for the employers to employ.
Also it would be making it clearer the importance of hiring a person with academic excellence by including the effect of hiring the wrong person to do the job. This is for instance done by hiring a person who is not knowledgeable in that particular field.
I am providing sample paragraphs for the three content points stated for the first response. I would like to advise you to:
- copy these paragraphs onto a piece of foolscap paper just to get the feel of writing out the content points on paper.
- then only by referring to the content points and elaborations given write out your own paragraphs
Here is a sample of the content paragraph.
The Sample Paragraph
First and foremost, the reason why employers put academic excellence as the first criterion for choosing future employees is because academic excellence especially in tertiary education signals a certain level of expertise. Employers do this because there is a particular need in certain professions that demands a person to have attained this academic excellence. These are the types of jobs that require specialised knowledge like the technologically demanding occupations of the future. In light of this the employers would even before the process of hiring, would specify very clearly in the job requirement what they would be looking for, for the purpose of narrowing down the future candidates who will be applying for the post. From the many gleaming resumes that come their way the next process would be to sieve through and hand pick the crème de la crème which are those who possess academic excellence and the expertise the employers are seeking for. Otherwise, the effect of employing someone ineligible for the job would be detrimental for the future of the company.
Second Content Point
The second point is great academic achievement shows that the person is very hardworking. You believe this to be very true because you feel that great academic achievement doesn’t come easy as it requires a lot of hard work and determination.
A person’s excellent achievement in their studies shows that a lot of hard work and time had been put into improving themselves especially when they were in university. This criterion of not shying away from hard work is what employers are looking out for in future employees.
Elaboration
As the elaboration you can add that achieving academic excellence would be a feat that is not easy to achieve. Stress on the fact that it will involve a long process that would involve a lot of hard work.
However, the person with the excellent achievement in their studies would be ready to roll up their sleeves and get on with working to better themselves.
Sample Paragraph
Secondly, employers seek academic excellence in future employees because the ability to achieve academic excellence indirectly shows that the person is very hard working. Diligence in the part of the employee is certainly vital for the future of the company and the fact that these people were able to achieve greater heights in their studies show that they have worked really hard for it and would expectantly practise the same diligence at the workplace. One thing for sure is that achieving academic excellence for the majority of people is not an easy task to accomplish. It may even have involved sweat and tears. The person who possesses excellence in their studies may have invested in long hours at the library that would most likely include burning the midnight oil. What this translates to the employers is that the person is someone who is ready to work hard and give it all in their pursuit of achieving excellence and when employed, would put in the same productiveness for the benefit of the company. Hence this is one of the reasons why achieving excellence in a person’s studies would be the quality that employers are looking for when hiring.
Third Content Point
The third content point is you can say that achieving academic excellence shows that the person is driven and this gives a very positive picture of the future employee as someone who is very motivated.
The excellent achievement in their studies shows that, if the person has set his or her mind on something he or she is going to work for it and try very hard to achieve it.
Elaboration
Academic excellence is something that is not easy to come by. So, when the person has achieved excellence in his or her studies it shows that the person is fully driven and is fully motivated. The person could drive himself or herself towards that one goal that he or she wants to reach which is achieving academic excellence.
Sample Paragraph
Thirdly the reason why employers seek academic excellence when hiring is because it shows that the people, they are potentially hiring are very driven. They are perceived to be very motivated and really determined to succeed and this is evident in their achievements in their studies. Because of the hard work that is involved in achieving their level of excellence in their studies the candidates applying for the job would be viewed as people who are used to working hard and going the extra mile to accomplish their goal. They are ready to go above and beyond for the sole purpose of excelling in their studies. From this the employers might view them as the people who the employers could rely on to put in the dedication and perseverance to bring the company later to the next level like during their studies previously. Employees who are driven to achieve success would be ready to sacrifice their time and energy for the company too. They will aim for one main goal which is success and will be ready to put in the work required to achieve it. Therefore, possessing academic excellence would certainly be the basis on why employers would want to hire them.
Ultimately, achieving academic excellence is one quality that employers are looking for as this is going to be very valuable in a working environment. Being driven is something that is going to help make the company a success.
The Complete Sample Essay
Here is the complete sample essay for the topic of academic excellence. Read through the introduction, content points and the conclusion to see the flow of the essay.
Take note of the way I have written the introduction and conclusion. Do drop me a line if you want me to focus on how to write an introduction and a concluding paragraph for your essay.
The librarian kept looking her way and wondering when she was going to pack up and leave as it was nearly 10 o’clock in the evening and fast approaching the library closing time. Nevertheless, he has seen this time and time again and understood the pressure that final year students in this university would be under as the final exam dates are looming near. Scenes like this is normally seen with most students wanting to do well in their studies. This is because they have understood the fact very well that getting very good grades could land them their dream jobs that promise these young adults a better life in the future. This is true to the fact that employers do look for academic excellence when hiring as certain jobs demand the person to be excellent in their studies as they are perceived to be better at what they do. Here I would like to state my total agreement to the statement that employers do look for academic excellence when hiring.
First and foremost, the very reason why employers put academic excellence as the first criterion for choosing future employees is because academic excellence especially in tertiary education signals a certain level of expertise. Employers do this because there is a particular need in certain professions, that demands a person to have attained this academic excellence. These are the types of jobs that require specialised knowledge like the technologically demanding occupations of the future. In light of this the employers would even before the process of hiring, would specify very clearly in the job requirement what they would be looking for, for the purpose of narrowing down the future candidates who will be applying for the post. From the many gleaming resumes that come their way the next process would be to sieve through and hand pick the crème de la crème which are those who possess academic excellence and the expertise the employers are seeking for. Otherwise, the effect of employing someone ineligible for the job would be detrimental for the future of the company.
Secondly, employers seek academic excellence in future employees because the ability to achieve academic excellence indirectly shows that the person is very hard working. Diligence in the part of the employee is certainly vital for the future of the company and the fact that these people were able to achieve greater heights in their studies show that they have worked really hard for it and would expectantly practise the same diligence at the workplace. One thing for sure is that achieving academic excellence for the majority of people is not an easy task to accomplish. It may even have involved sweat and tears. The person who possesses excellence in their studies may have invested in long hours at the library that would most likely include burning the midnight oil. What this translate to the employers is that the person is someone who is ready to work hard and give it all in their pursuit of achieving excellence and when employed, would put in the same productiveness for the benefit of the company. Hence this is one of the reasons why achieving excellence in a person’s studies would be the quality that employers are looking for when hiring.
Thirdly the reason why employers seek academic excellence when hiring is because it shows that the people, they are potentially hiring are very driven. They are perceived to be very motivated and really determined to succeed and this is evident in their achievements in their studies. Because of the hard work that is involved in achieving their level of success in their studies the candidates applying for a job would be viewed as people who are used to working hard and going the extra mile to accomplish their goal . They are ready to go above and beyond for the sole purpose of excelling in their studies. From this the employers might view them as the people who the employers could rely on to put in the dedication and perseverance working in the company like what they did during their studies previously. Employees who are driven to achieve success would be ready to sacrifice their time and energy for the company too. They will aim for one main goal which is success and will be ready to put in the work required to achieve it. Therefore, possessing academic excellence would certainly be the basis on why employers would want to hire them.
In conclusion, employers do look for that one important quality in a future employee and that is having academic excellence. This is true for most employers as could be seen currently happening in our country when there are 2 candidates or more applying for the vacant post the person most likely to get the job would be the person showing up with very good grades during their studies. This is sad but true that candidates with academic excellence tend to have very high success rate during an interview. The reasons for this have been discussed earlier on in this essay where employers tend to hire people who possess academic excellence because they are perceived to be an expert in their field and possessing positive characteristics of being hard working and very driven. Consequently, these are the reasons why academic excellence is very much sought after by employers and why ever not when what the employers get from it is only going to bring a positive outcome to the company. On a final note, this would be a wakeup call for students to take their studies seriously and put in more effort in trying to make that grade and hopefully succeed in getting a career of their dreams.
Academic excellence may be what employers are wanting in future employees for certain positions but not all the time. This is because there are positions that demand talents and skills in certain aspects to fulfil certain other positions.
So really my true stand would be to partially agree to the topic. Here you can see that what I have written in my essay may not be entirely what I personally believe in.
This is because I have chosen to totally agree to the topic because I believe that I have more to say about it if compared to if I were to choose to partially agree. It is going to make me write faster and points for my elaborations would become easier to write.
This is exactly what I would advise you to do during the exams. Put aside your personal beliefs if you think going the other way would make you write your essay better and faster.
Personally what I truly believe is that there is a place for everyone in the job market. All we need to do is to make sure that we are better today than we were yesterday and tomorrow we will be better than we are today. What is important is we need to keep on getting better at what we do.
The Second Response
Another response that you can have about this question is for you to partially agree to the statement mentioned. Your stand here would be that you support that the employers do look for academic excellence when hiring but not just solely for that because they will be looking for other qualities in the future employees as well.
Here you are going to come up with content points on why you feel that employers do look for other qualities in future employees as well.
You will agree that employers do look for academic excellence but often they will be focussing on other qualities that tend to be more important than simply getting good grades.
First Content Point
So, you can say that apart from looking for a person’s academic achievements, the employers will be looking for experience on the job that the job seekers are applying for.
Job experience here would mean that the person would have done the same job before during a previous employment. This experience will determine that the person will be able to perform the job well from day one he or she is employed.
Elaborations
Having the few years’ experience is highly regarded in the job market. This could be seen when there is a better chance of a person being hired if they come with several years of on-the-job experience.
The importance of having job experience could also be seen when employers go as far as listing the number of years they require a person applying for the job to have in the job requirement.
Experience on the job will determine that the person applying has had the chance of learning certain aspects of the job that they would not have gotten during their studies.
Second Content Point
For this point you can highlight the fact that apart from academic achievement being able to speak in a certain language is going to be a very important aspect to increase the chance of someone getting hired.
Having language proficiency would mean that the person is able to use the language well to voice out opinion in a clear way.
Elaborations
To elaborate this point you can state that certain companies would require the future employee to be able to have the ability to speak in another language.
This is especially so when the company has a business relation with companies from monolingual countries. [monolingual countries: countries that speak mostly in one language only] These countries are such as China, Japan and Spain to name a few.
The company would be relying on this language proficiency to make sure that day to day business transactions would go on without any difficulties and problems.
This is because the lack of language proficiency here could cause the company to experience a big loss and a missed opportunity for the company.
Third Content Point
For this point you can point out that there is a necessity also for the employers to put a lot of emphasis for the new employee they would be hiring to have soft skills.
What is this soft skills that is so highly prized? It is the ability to interact with another person well. It is the person’s interpersonal skill that includes communication skills and the ability to handle certain situations well and with some sensitivity.
Elaborations
For the elaboration for this point you can stress how important it is for a person to have this soft skill. This is because the person will be interacting with other colleagues and clients on an every day basis.
Having this soft skill would certainly be useful as there would be some instances when the person would need to use some tact [tact: the skill and sensitivity in dealing with people in certain difficult situations] when handling certain situations.
Having soft skill could even avoid confrontations and this would lead to a positive work environment. You can also add on how important it is to have a positive relationships between colleagues in the work place as this could determine the success of the company when people are working together as a team.
This is the end of this article. Look out for more articles focussing on other topics of discussions.
