How to write faster?

[Andiio]

I'm a Year 11 student and have no problem with the content; only the time.

Just wondering if people had any advice on how to improve your writing speed? (When writing language analysis pieces)

I have an Eng exam on Tuesday and am ready for it, but am just worried :S

[Chavi]

It often comes down to the thinking process. Sometimes it's handy to memorize a few general sentences for easy use, and also learn as many synonyms as possible for the Lang analysis (e.g. the author denigrates, typecasts, critiques, urges, compels . . . readers, listener's, constituents, etc).
So when you're in the middle of the exam, you're never stuck for words!
Hope that helps/

[kyzoo]

Don't worry about writing speed right now ^.^. I wrote 600 words each of my my pieces in the 3 hour Y11 English Exam, and ended up writing 23.5 pages total for the real 3/4 English exam. Y11 isn't really indicative of Y12.

[LOVEPHYSICS]

Besides, you will be surprised how exam adrenaline can pump up your writing speed and ideas. There is absolute no point in thinking about timed conditions in Year 11, and even in Year 12, you will still need to give yourself time to write about 8 carefully prepared, marked-quality pieces on the text you are studying before thinking about doing it at the 1 hour mark. Or else, there is simply no point, and you would only be wasting your time.

To tell you the truth, for my practice exam this year, I struggled to get the 3 pieces out in time, and although I got 2 9s for the other two sections, my Context wasn't completed which results in a low score. But six weeks later, I found that I am able to write faster and put the ideas down to paper a lot quicker. And English is not all about how fast you write and how much you can churn out, in the end it is how insightful you approach the question and analyze the ideas. Thus, planning different types of questions are off utmost importance.

To end it, you will find that the quality and speed of your writing is ultimately reflected by the time you dedicated to for the entire year, be that writing essays for your teacher, planning questions at your spare time or simply by wider reading.

Good Luck!

[EvangelionZeta]

The fundamental principle for learning to write faster is just practice - and early practice, at that.  You don't want to be cramming like 30 essays right before the exam next year - start now by doing a timed essay here and there.  After even two or three you're guaranteed to see improvements.  =)

[Aden]

In year 11 I was still using the old 800 word 3-body paragraph essay, so don't worry about writing those 1000+ four-body paragraph ones just yet. Your writing speed tends to adapt to your needs during an exam due to the immense tension and stress that you'll be feeling, which is why I generally finish an essay around the same time whether its 800 or 1000+ words. To put it into perspective, at the end of year 11 I was still writing 800 words in an hour, but by the week before the english exam in year 12, I could hit around 1350 words in fifty minutes.

If you're just trying to write faster in preparation for Year 12 rather than the Year 11 english exam (ie. writing 1000+ word essays in less than an hour when you've never done this before), then I would advise you against this. Do not under any circumstances attempt to bolster your amount of content by writing faster when you could still improve on the quality of your previous (albeit less in quantity) work. You have a whole year to write faster, it's a physical thing and can be trained; however, once you hit a certain stage in Year 12 you'll find that you will have a set structure and way of writing for each essay that you'll keep for the rest of the year. This structure and way of writing is the thing you're trying to improve on now in Year 11, so don't harbor on quantity just yet, focus on quality.

[kyzoo]

Adding on to what I was saying, it's fully possible to magically boost your writing speed just before exams - I did it =D. At start of term 4 I took 1:40 to write a single essay (~1300-1400 words), even when I was trying to write as fast as I could. But in the last week before the exam, I found I could write at a pace of 1400 words in 60 minutes.

[EvangelionZeta]

STOP TRYING TO RECOMMEND CRAM TACTICS GUYS IT'S UNNECESSARILY STRESSFUL. 

(yes you can do it Aden/Kyzoo's way, but I think having the timing issue down ASAP is a good confidence booster)

[kyzoo]

STOP TRYING TO RECOMMEND CRAM TACTICS GUYS IT'S UNNECESSARILY STRESSFUL. 

(yes you can do it Aden/Kyzoo's way, but I think having the timing issue down ASAP is a good confidence booster)

=/ I tried having the timing issue down ASAP, I really did, but it didn't succeed until 2 weeks before the exam. I only wrote like 15 essays total (including exams) in the whole Y9-11 period, so maybe that explains why I had to use "cram tactics." EZ wrote 50 essays for exam prep for Classics X.X

[Aden]

STOP TRYING TO RECOMMEND CRAM TACTICS GUYS IT'S UNNECESSARILY STRESSFUL. 

(yes you can do it Aden/Kyzoo's way, but I think having the timing issue down ASAP is a good confidence booster)

I was advocating cram-style tactics?

[EvangelionZeta]

STOP TRYING TO RECOMMEND CRAM TACTICS GUYS IT'S UNNECESSARILY STRESSFUL. 

(yes you can do it Aden/Kyzoo's way, but I think having the timing issue down ASAP is a good confidence booster)

I was advocating cram-style tactics?

Sorry, I was preoccupied with kyzoo - on second thoughts, Aden's method complements mine, wooo~

[Chavi]

Cram with one year left to go, ye. that'll learn 'em

[Andiio]

Wrote another lang analysis this afternoon
Tanked it in 43 minutes (with 10 mins reading)

But mm.. I think I saw the article and image briefly a long time ago so :S

Guess I just have to keep practising!

Will type up the essay some time after exams and hopefully, get some criticism and advice on how to improve

[ninbam1k]

So... ultimately, practicing your writing makes your writing faster?