ATAR Notes: Forum

VCE Stuff => VCE English Studies => VCE Subjects + Help => VCE English & EAL => Topic started by: luceaaay on October 20, 2012, 01:09:30 pm

Title: Timing!
Post by: luceaaay on October 20, 2012, 01:09:30 pm

Hi guys!
I'm having a bit of trouble keeping within the time constraints for each of my essays, I was just wondering if any of you had any tips or maybe any past experiences in dealing with timing that could be helpful?
Thanks in advance! :)

Title: Re: Timing!
Post by: Lasercookie on October 20, 2012, 01:16:29 pm

Don't look up / get distracted - you can kill 5 or 10 minutes that way.

You should have a think about what's actually holding you up. Is it starting the essay? Is it finishing off a sentence/spending too much time thinking about wording? Do you get stuck thinking for ideas what to write about? It's probably easier to fix the problem when you start to think about the specific issues.

Title: Re: Timing!
Post by: pi on October 20, 2012, 01:25:07 pm

I found that the adrenaline rush you get in the exam helps you write a lot faster anyway, so don't stress too much imo. If timing is a really big issue, I'd tr and knock off as many essays as possible and when sitting the exam, do your strongest sections first.

Title: Re: Timing!
Post by: Mr Keshy on October 20, 2012, 04:50:03 pm

I think this is obvious (don't know why I'm posting this  :P), but since you get 15 minutes of reading time, you'd probably spend a maximum of 5 minutes figuring out what statement and prompt you want to address for text response and context. Spend the next 10 reading and annotating (mental notes) the LA article(s) and start on it straight after writing time begins...

Title: Re: Timing!
Post by: luceaaay on October 21, 2012, 10:26:27 pm

Thanks for all the helpful advice! Much appreciated :) i'll definitely try and work on improving specific parts of my writing process, I think it might be a bunch of different things that are holding me back!

Title: Re: Timing!
Post by: Yendall on October 22, 2012, 12:01:10 am

This is my structure, and tends to work pretty well:

For three paragraph pieces:

• 5 minutes: Planning
• 5 minutes: Introduction
• 15 minutes: Paragraph 1
• 15 minutes: Paragraph 2
• 15 minutes: Paragraph 3
• 5 minutes: Conclusion

For four paragraph pieces:

• 5 minutes: Planning
• 5 minutes: Introduction
• 11 minutes: Paragraph 1
• 11 minutes: Paragraph 2
• 11 minutes: Paragraph 3
• 11 minutes: Paragraph 4
• 5 minutes: Conclusion

Title: Re: Timing!
Post by: luceaaay on October 22, 2012, 12:13:05 am

Thanks yendall, that's really helpful! I think I need to work on my planning and working on getting that down to 5 minutes..