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Organising your writing time
- Divide your time sensibly between the questions,
- According to how many marks are available for each.
- Stick to the time limit you’ve set yourself for each question, so you can do justice to the entire exam paper.
- Once you have chosen your essay question(s), give yourself 5–10 minutes to write an essay plan.
- You may wish to plan all your answers right at the start of the exam.
- It may help to brainstorm
- Everything you remember about the topic,
- Then select the points you want to make in your response.
- Turn these points into a bullet-pointed outline for your essay.
- As you write, tick off the points in your plan.
- Make sure you are not wandering off topic.
- Keep an eye on the clock.
- Depending on your preference,
- You could either write the introduction to your essay immediately,
- Or leave a blank space to write it after you’ve completed your main body.
- If you run out of time to answer your last question(s) properly,
- Write an essay plan in the remaining time. It may be possible for you to receive marks by doing so.
- The essay plan illustrates that you know how to answer the question, but that you lack time to develop your ideas further.
Answering the exam questions
- Pay attention to the terms used in the essay questions.
- For instance, ‘discuss’ and ‘compare’ ask you for different types of responses.
- Leave a blank line between your written lines:
- By doing this, you will have enough space to add other ideas later (if needed), and you will make your marker’s reading experience easier.
- Where appropriate, define and make clear your understanding of the key terms in the essay title.
- Consider what other scholars and theories say about these terms or concepts. Reflect on the assumptions made within the essay question itself.
- Whilst writing the essay, bear in mind the title or question at all times.
- All your ideas need to be clearly related to it.
- Follow conventional essay writing techniques.
- For instance, only develop one idea per paragraph, and use signposting phrases to guide your marker through your line of reasoning.
- If you do not have time to write the conclusion
- For an exam question, leave some blank space and move to the next question. You may find some spare time later to fill in the gap.
