Writing 5723

Praxis Core Writing essays: how the two essays are judged

October 18, 2026 · 5 minute read

Writing 5723 has two parts. The 40 selected-response questions test grammar, usage, and revision. Then come two essays: one argumentative, where you take and defend a position, and one informative or source-based, where you explain a topic or work with given sources. Candidates often prepare hard for the questions and barely practice the essays. That is backwards, because the essays are the part you can improve the most with a small, steady routine, once you know how they are judged.

The four rubric areas

Readers judge each essay on the same four areas. Learn them and you know exactly what to practice.

• Ideas and analysis. Is your position or explanation clear, and is it developed with specific reasons and examples? Vague agreement with yourself earns little. Concrete support earns the points.
• Organization. Does the essay have an introduction that sets up the point, body paragraphs in a logical order, and a conclusion that follows from what came before? Readers should never have to guess where they are.
• Language use. Is the language clear and precise, with sentences that vary instead of marching in one rhythm? Word choice matters when it sharpens meaning, not when it shows off.
• Conventions. Grammar, usage, spelling, and punctuation. The standard is not perfection. It is that errors do not pile up or interfere with meaning on a final read.

What this means in practice

Most essay losses are not knowledge losses. They are routine losses. A candidate writes a decent position with no examples, and ideas and analysis suffer. Another writes strong paragraphs in a scrambled order, and organization suffers. Another runs out of time and leaves the last paragraph half finished, which hurts everything at once. Each of these is fixable with practice aimed at the rubric area, which is why grading your own work against the four areas is more useful than writing essay after essay with no review.

A weekly routine that works

1. Write one essay a week, timed, to a fresh prompt. Alternate argumentative and informative.
2. Take five minutes to plan before you write. A position, two or three reasons, one example for each. Planning is the cheapest organization points you will ever earn.
3. When time is up, stop, then read the essay once as a reader, not the writer.
4. Check it against the four rubric areas with a short checklist. Name the weakest area.
5. Write down the one thing you will fix in the next essay, and fix that one thing next week.

Six weeks of this routine produces six essays, six checklists, and six specific fixes. That beats a single anxious weekend of writing with no feedback at all. The study plan guide shows where the weekly essay fits in a full Core plan, and the FAQ covers how Kudosli handles essays.

How Kudosli handles essays

Kudosli gives you 40 prompts, a quiet writing space with a word count, and the rubric for each prompt as a self-check checklist. You save your response in the app, check it against ideas and analysis, organization, language use, and conventions, and keep a revision list for next time. One thing Kudosli will never do is assign your essay a test score. Rubric-guided practice is honest practice: it shows you what to fix, in the same terms readers use, without inventing a number nobody can back up. More on the rest of the Writing test and the whole Core is in What is the Praxis Core.

The takeaway

You do not need to become a different writer. You need a clear position, developed with examples, organized so a reader can follow it, in clean language, finished on time. That is a routine, not a talent, and a routine is something you can practice.