Essay Writing for Public Service Exams

This course is for Brazilian public service exams (concursos públicos) and the lessons are taught in Portuguese. In the written essay stage, many candidates lose points not for lack of content but for straying from the prompt, leaving an item unanswered, going over the line limit or piling up Portuguese mistakes that the exam board deducts one by one. This course starts from zero and shows the method with Professora Helena. Part one explains how the board grades: the two axes of the score, content and command of the language, the per-error deduction in the Cebraspe formulas, and what gives a zero, such as straying from the topic, a blank text, illegible handwriting or a mark that identifies the candidate. Part two teaches how to read the prompt: the verbs that say what to do, numbered items with their own points, how to split the lines and the draft that becomes the final text. Part three covers structure and the most common genres: the essay with items, the case study, the technical opinion and the argumentative essay. Part four deals with cohesion, coherence and progression: referring back to ideas, choosing the right connector and making each paragraph move forward. The last part covers the standard Portuguese that costs the most points: agreement, verb government, crase, punctuation, pronoun placement, official spelling and word choice. The questions follow the exam-board style, with True or False and multiple choice, and every answer is explained.