You can’t do worse than to turn your opening paragraph into a think-aloud section, strewn with random sentences on the topic, moving like flotsam and jetsam in the Lyari nullah in Karachi. Once you have lost the examiner’s respect for your introduction—and that can happen within the first 30 seconds—it would be hard to regain their attention favourably, no matter how stellar the rest of your essay is.
Another sure-fire way to lose the examiner’s interest in your essay is to begin with a cliché. Let’s say, you are writing on ‘The suffering soul in the scientific age’ and you begin: “Science and technology have been a great blessing to humanity… (The examiner yawns). Yet, they have also been a curse in many ways as people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki can testify to this day” (The yawn becomes bigger!).
Another bummer is a done-to-death quotation or proverb vaguely related to the topic. Avoid such an opening like COVID-19! Given the topic ‘Justice delayed is justice denied’, let's say you kick off by saying: “There is a proverb in English, Honesty is the best policy. No one can deny the universal truth of this maxim”.
Well, to be honest, you will find folks to question the validity of the proverb itself. But with an opening of this kind, you won’t find an examiner in the world eager to read the rest of the essay!
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