Prepare for the H1 General Paper essay: Choose a few themes or topics to specialise in

Choose a few themes or topics to specialise in for your GP essay paper.

The first secret of successful preparation for General Paper is to choose a few themes or topics to specialise in, and concentrate your energies into mastering a few related topics for your essay.

You will work hard to becoming a mini-expert in a few related thematic or topic areas - and this will give you an edge when crafting your essay.  

An extensive range of topics are covered in GP A Level essay questions such as science and technology, religions, arts and culture, international politics, society, history, economics, and current affairs. 

However, quite naturally, GP Paper 1 can be on almost any theme or topic, and sometimes these essays are very general in nature, and sometimes these topics can straddle and be cross-thematic or cross-topic in nature, such as the intersection between science and technology and religion, or history can be combined with society and economics.

Some suggested thematic or topic areas for GP students to prepare for are:

• Science and technology, and the ethics of science
• Religions and comparative religion
• Arts and culture, literature
• International politics and politics in general (political science)
• Society and sociology
• History
• Economics and current knowledge

Essay questions will not necessarily be set on every topic area. In fact, it often tends to be the case that essay questions will be general in nature and require candidates to draw on their prior knowledge from across disciplines, draw the links between various subject areas, as well as to show an awareness of current, global and significant local or national issues. 

All these skills will fundamentally depend on students having mastered or really deeply thought about a few related themes or topics in the first case. 

As I shared earlier on JC General Paper Essays, for example, I am more of a humanities and social sciences person, so I chose a history and current affairs related topic, which was on whether history is only about wars. For students from a more science background, choosing a topic about science and technology, or on environmentalism might make a great deal more sense to them. However, choosing only one topic for the GP essay is rather dangerous, so choose more than one area of specialisation. I chose humanities, social sciences, arts and culture, and literature.

Remember, the first secret of successful preparation for General Paper is to choose a few themes or topics to specialise in, and concentrate your energies into mastering a few related topics for your essay.

JC General Paper Essays – how to prepare for GP