How to Study for GP? (4 Easy Strategies )
1. Understand that GP Essay is really about Content + Skills
I will first discuss Paper 1. Students often find GP so elusive because the grading seems so subjective; it is unlike maybe the math and sciences where there is indeed a fixed correct answer. If you are reading this now, chances are, you too feel that GP is pretty intimidating and difficult to master 😅
The good news is I discovered a very simple way to approach and study for GP. Once you break GP down into two components: Content + Skills, your efforts to study it become much more focused 💪🏻
Content refers to knowledge that you can acquire to feel prepared for GP. This is the exact same method of how you would master different chapters for other subjects. I will explain more in the next point how this is done. But the idea is, knowing specific content will give you the material needed to craft a good essay.
Skills is the next tricky part because content alone is insufficient to get a good grade. Often, the reason for not scoring well is because the student has not managed to address some question requirements. Or, they could have mentioned the relevant content but do not know how to show its relevance nor elaborate upon it in a persuasive manner. These all involve skills. And the best part? Skills can be practiced and mastered, which makes GP a lot easier to score than we think! (Quick tip: think of GP like you would think of your other subjects, it’s not that different, the same strategies you use for those can be applied to GP!)
To share a little story, i am often asked why I want to help others with GP. Well, it is because i have been in your seat just a couple of years back and i understand the struggle and helplessness associated with GP. The annoying thing is how GP seems like it cannot be systematically studied for. I was determined to find a solution to circumvent this and thankfully after a while i started to understand that GP is really about content and skills.
Believe me when i say i struggled. I was failing essays back in Sec 4 😥 (came from an Integrated Programme school and we kind of started GP earlier) and early J1. But after i changed my approach, i actually went up all the way to 100th percentile in my school. I was so surprised by the grade i could not believe it but it spurred me to work even harder to ensure that this result could consistently be attained. From there, i developed a specific strategy and method to conquer GP and it makes me really excited to share that with other students who i can so deeply empathise with!
2. Approach Content using Topics/Themes
The first step to mastering content is recognising that there are indeed key topics in GP just like the various chapters in mathematics or economics for example. There are major topics and minor topics, the former being the ones you need to focus on. How do we know what the topics are if there is no set textbook? Taking a look at past year questions and analysing the trends would give us a good idea of what topics are recurring and significant.
I know that every school focuses on slightly different themes but from my experience and detailed analysis so far, i believe the major topics are: Science, Arts, Media, Environment, Politics, General, Individual/Values. The other secondary themes are: Society, Sports, Crime & Punishment, Education, Poverty etc.
The logical question you would be thinking about is: So, how many topics do i have to study for? 😮
My recommendation is that you should know 3 out of 7 of the major topics to get a foolproof repository of knowledge that enables you to answer at least ONE question confidently in the A Levels. The trick about focusing on topics is that you start to get better at it the more you read about this topic and attempt its questions. To better get an idea of these topics, you can check out the article i wrote previously.
I can offer a simple step-by-step approach💯for you to start mastering content:
- Pick a topic that really interests you out of the 7
- Check out some of the past year prelim or A Level questions associated with that topic to understand the entire scope of this topic and what issues it is concerned with
- Read up on the content points for this topic. (Quick tip: to make this easier, i recommend reading some essays OR doing your own research but in a targeted way where you attempt to answer a specific question rather than randomly google stuff about this topic)
- Start writing and answering a question, focus on developing sound arguments and substantial examples
- Repeat this process for more questions and very soon you will master the ENTIRE topic. You have an entire year to do this, so it’s totally possible if you start right now! 🙂
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3. Hone Question Analysis Skills
I will address two major skills that are useful for GP: Question Analysis, Persuasive Explanation
If GP was all about content, then the solution would be real simple: memorise essays and regurgitate them. That’s not the case at all. In fact, memorising is essentially leaving it up to luck and hoping that your answer will somehow address the requirements posed by the question.
Hence, the better way is to be proficient in analysing questions. The trick is to focus on the keywords. (Quick tip: you can practice this skill by looking at many different questions without writing out the essay. Take a look at maybe all 12 questions in a paper and see if you can successfully identify all the requirements!)
Consider this 2019 A Levels question for example: “Can fiction teach us anything meaningful about the real world?”. Take a moment to try and identify the keywords before you read on. ⌛️
The subject focus is of course “Fiction” and the claim is “teach us anything meaningful”. All examples will have to be related to fiction and you would have to think about the different forms of fiction to provide comprehensive examples: books, movies, games, myths etc. If you memorised some general essay about the arts, that would have been out of point because fiction is a very specific type of work among the arts.
Then, you will need to define “meaningful” and think about the various definitions of it – how is it manifested? how do you know something is meaningful? For e.g. it is about providing lessons, value , making an impact etc. But you have to be more specific since it is about “the real world”. We can say that fiction reflects real world problems happening around the world to raise awareness about them. From there, it teaches important lessons that we can take away.
So if you were to regurgitate an essay about fiction’s value, without connecting it to the real world, that would be insufficient 😔 If you regurgitated an essay about “Is it worthwhile to invest in the arts” and listed all of arts’ value, it’s also not accurate because you would miss out on the tension part about fiction being a fake story while having real value to the world around us.
This is not to say that you don’t read model essays; you should, and in fact, i strongly recommend reading essays because it exposes you to new perspectives and better understand the level of persuasion required. But if you go for the memorising strategy without proper skills, then it’s going to be problematic. Check out model essays here!
4. Hone Persuasive Explanation Skills (via paragraphs)
Persuasive explanation means your arguments are impactful and not just giving a lot of information about the topic without relevance to the question.
For the same question, if you were to describe some of the benefits of fiction: providing entertainment value, allowing the reader to become immersed in a different world, or offering a relatable story — all these do not address the idea of “meaning for the real world”. They are not properly explained to connect to the question.
Explaining in a persuasive way to strengthen your argument is a very key skill. It all starts with asking the right questions because when you ask them, you mind effectively receives a trigger 😍
You should think of the SO WHAT. So what if we become immersed in a different world, why does that mean fiction has value for the real world?
Perhaps, it’s because the fictitious world is a reflection of our actual society and presents real-world problems in an accentuated way to better illuminate and emphasise these problems. From the awareness of these problems, readers can become connected to these actual issues and even feel propelled to make a change. An example would be Uncle Tom’s Cabin being pivotal in the Civil Rights movement to evince the cruelty and prevalence of slavery in pre-modern US.
(Quick tip: this technique of elaboration is essentially an essay writing skill of asking yourself a trigger question. The more you practice the better you become at it) And, you should practice using paragraphs. It may feel like a chore writing an entire essay. Hence, the way to go is to simply attempt ONE main paragraph for different questions to see what difficulties you encounter for each question. Check whether you address the SO WHAT to enhance your argument.
Practicing writing just a paragraph is extremely effective, more effective than trying to write out a whole essay and getting it entirely wrong. Paragraphs are good at the start because it exposes you to many questions while still challenging you to develop a cogent argument. Once you get better, you can proceed to try and write out complete essays!
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