What will be the directions of the final essay in the 2017-2018 academic year

In December, eleventh graders will have to write the final essay that has already become traditional. And only those who successfully cope with this task will be allowed to pass the exam - "credit" in the essay is an indispensable condition for admission to exams. The directions within which the themes of the compositions will be formulated were officially announced on September 1. What should graduates prepare for?

Open directions of the themes of essays in 2017-2018

The final essay in Russia this year will be written for the fourth time, and the "rules of the game" can already be called established. As in the past year, all thematic areas will be based on a combination of two polar concepts, the “collision” of which can become a matter of serious thought - and attract a wide variety of literary material (recall that the composition is meta-subject in nature, but citing examples from literary works is a prerequisite).

Thematic areas for 2017-2018, approved by the special council, were announced on September 1 on the air and published on the official website of FIPI. The list traditionally includes five items:

• "Fidelity and treason";

• "Indifference and responsiveness";

• "Goals and means";

• "Courage and cowardice";

• "Man and society".

Within each direction, a variety of interpretations of the topic are possible - and the range of examples from the literature is extremely wide.

1. "Fidelity and treason. " This topic can be interpreted very broadly - from love and marriage to loyalty to the homeland or one's own ideals. Ethics, psychology and philosophy of these manifestations excite many - and attract writers of all times and peoples. "Thunderstorm" Ostrovsky, "Quiet Don" Sholokhov, "Taras Bulba" Gogol, "Anna Karenina" Tolstoy, "Captain's daughter" Pushkin
   .

   Even if we confine ourselves only to Russian classical literature (which is not obligatory), the choice of examples that can form the basis of the work is very wide.

2. "Indifference and responsiveness. " Egoists and altruists, who demonstrate “ice and fire” of souls in relation to those around them, are found quite often on the pages of books, and understanding their motives and actions is a rich ground for thought. Heroes of essays on this subject can be "extra people" - such as Pechorin or Onegin, and characters with warm hearts - for example, Danko or Don Quixote.

3. "Goals and means. " The goal may be good, but are all the means good for achieving it? And is it permissible in this case to cross the moral and ethical boundaries, and where are these very borders? In many works of domestic and world literature, heroes, realizing their life aspirations, face a difficult choice and sometimes choose the wrong means. And often in the same work we can meet people with different selection strategies. For example, Raskolnikov in “Crime and Punishment” by Dostoevsky in order to save his sister from a marriage of convenience, kills two people, and Sonechka Marmeladova sacrifices her purity to save her family. As regards the selection of material, this thematic direction largely overlaps with the two previous ones: betrayal becomes a way of achieving success or happiness in love (as, for example, in Andriy’s “Taras Bulba”), and indifference leads to the fact that a person is “scattered” by other people's fates to satisfy their own whims.

4. "Courage and cowardice. " These opposite sides of human nature are often described on the pages of literary works. This is Pontius Pilate in The Master and Margarita, who did not obey the voice of his own conscience and accused Ga-Nozri of cowardice; and Onegin, who killed a friend in a duel for fear of being misunderstood by the light; and Cornet Zherkov in "War and Peace", due to cowardice in the battle of Shengraben many people die. Often in literary works, daredevils and weak-minded people are opposed to each other - like Grinev and Shvabrin in The Captain's Daughter.

5. "Man and society. " Their interaction is another extremely popular issue in the literature. Personality and society, influencing each other, can be in a variety of relationships: from complete harmony to acute conflict. Almost all writers affected these interactions and their consequences in one form or another. In Lermontov’s lyrics, the romantic hero suffers from loneliness amid heartlessness and injustice; in Dostoevsky, the “poor man” is crushed by society; Griboedov’s Chatsky and Famusov turn out to be antipodes — one sharply denies the “laws of light, ” the other dissolves in them.

What will be the wording of the themes of the final essay

The wording of those essays is kept secret, and will become known only a quarter of an hour before the start of the test. To avoid “information leakage”, a special set of tasks will be prepared for each time zone of Russia. All five directions will be presented in each of them, however, the wording will be narrower.

The final theme of the essay is always formulated in the form of a “for thought” question, devoted to one aspect of the problem, sometimes participants are asked to express their agreement or disagreement with any aphorism on a given topic. For example, last year, as part of the opposition between friendship and hostility, adolescents were asked to think about such questions:

• can friendship be frustrating

• do contradictions between people always lead to enmity,

• why there is enmity

• Are they always to blame for the emergence of hostility between people?

• whether differences of character or dissimilarity of views hinder friendship.

In any case, the wording does not contain requirements to disclose the topic on the example of the work of any particular writer. The authors of the essay can use examples from works of their own choice to confirm their point of view, and it is completely optional to limit oneself to only domestic classics - you can refer to foreign literature, the work of modern writers, and children's books. The Hunger Games by Susan Collins or the most popular Harry Potter epic - all this can be figured in the composition, provided, of course, that we are still talking about the literary source, and not about the film adaptations.

An exhaustive list of “correct answers” ​​also does not exist. The main task of the essay is to test the ability of graduates to reason, to formulate their own point of view. And the possibility of a wide selection of literary works to reinforce your own opinion is a prerequisite for any topic included in the list.

Evaluation criteria for the final essay

The essay verification system is very soft. The final grade is “offset” or “non-offset”, while students who failed to write the composition in December the first time will be able to rewrite it in February or May. The same applies to those who could not write a work for a good reason.

Work is evaluated according to five criteria:

• relevance to a given topic,

• argumentation and attraction of literary material (there should be references to at least one work);

• composition (presence of introduction, conclusion and main part);

• quality of speech (the ability to clearly and clearly express your thoughts in writing);

• literacy (spelling, punctuation, grammar).

At the same time, the evaluation criteria are very soft - for example, according to the last two criteria, “negligence” is set only if the number of errors is so large that it interferes with the understanding of the text.

The first two criteria are considered basic - if the work is written off-topic or it does not mention any of the literary works, the composition is not checked further. In addition, in order for the work to be "credited", it is necessary that its volume be at least 250 words (the recommended volume is from 350), and the text was written independently. If a participant is "caught" in plagiarism (even in a situation where he did not write off the paper or the screen of an electronic device, but reproduced from memory an essay learned from a collection memorized close to the text), such work will not be evaluated. Of course, quoting texts from memory with an indication of the source is permitted - however, the total volume of citations should not exceed the volumes of text written independently.

Pupils who received a "standoff" in the final essay are allowed to pass the exam. The essay does not affect the results of the Unified State Examination in Russian or literature - however, when you enter some universities (as a rule, humanitarian), you can get extra points for a well-written essay. In such cases, the work is re-checked by experts appointed by the university.