Paper 2 advice (1 Viewer)

[maxc16]

Hi, the exam i am worried about most is paper 2. This is due to the time constraints. I am not a particularly fast writer, although in the previous assesments all my prepared essays were ~ 1000 words.

Should I be forcing my essays to be around 900-950 words to give ample time for manipulating essays to questions?
Atm my mod A is 981, mod C 1085, mod B 975. That's 3041 words. Should I be trying to shave off more? It is hard to reduce the length anymore.

Any extra advice would be appreciated.

 

[SpreadTheWord]

I'd say between 750-850 words. saying that quality is better than quantity. Make it less. In my opinion, I doubt you would be able write all that; let alone learn it all. Look through your essays and cut out words/ sentences that don't need to be included.

Try and reduce each of those by 100-200 words. The teachers know that you only have short period of time, and therefore are not going to be expecting the best peace of work you have ever done. However needless to say, they will expect some quality.

 

[anne1010]

aim for 950. 900 if youve struggled to finish in past assessments. get your teacher to check it if you can. theyre to best at cutting out waffle. my teacher gets mine from 1050 to about 900-950.

 

[x3Reii]

I tend to find my friends try to save words from abbreviating "do not" to "doesn't". This doesn't save time and you never, ever abbreviate in an essay.

This is what I'm plan on doing. I'll use my belonging essay as an example.

Intro
Prescribed text - Idea One
Related text - Idea One
Prescribed text - Idea Two
Related text - Idea Two
Conclusion

That should be 900-1000 words if its sophisticated. Usually people go for three ideas but thats way to long to be able to write in 40 minutes. Hypothetically, if I'm in the exam room and I'm running low on time - I would scrape Idea Two of my related text and contrast my idea two in my prescribed text with my idea one of my related text. If your essay has sophistication then even if its 750 words, then it should be fine. Quality > Quantity

 

[Tacitus]

Are you getting that out in two hours? That seems like the crucial part.

 

[slyhunter]

What's wrong with a 1000?

 

[anne1010]

I tend to find my friends try to save words from abbreviating "do not" to "doesn't". This doesn't save time and you never, ever abbreviate in an essay.

This is what I'm plan on doing. I'll use my belonging essay as an example.

Intro
Prescribed text - Idea One
Related text - Idea One
Prescribed text - Idea Two
Related text - Idea Two
Conclusion

That should be 900-1000 words if its sophisticated. Usually people go for three ideas but thats way to long to be able to write in 40 minutes. Hypothetically, if I'm in the exam room and I'm running low on time - I would scrape Idea Two of my related text and contrast my idea two in my prescribed text with my idea one of my related text. If your essay has sophistication then even if its 750 words, then it should be fine. Quality > Quantity

what about the person thats sitting there thats writing 1000 words of sophistication as opposed to your 750? write as much as you can. the more examples, the more techniques shows more understanding and a better mark. never sit in an english exam doing nothing or checking over your work when u could've added in another paragraph.

 

[aphorae]

Yeah I wouldn't be cutting down to 900 unless you are usually a top A-range student.

If you're a low A student, cutting down crucial points might get you down to a B, or a high B to mid-B etc. Obviously, BOS says sophisticated (in terms of ideas/concepts/language) responses only need to be 800 etc.etc.etc. but obviously, that's only if you are actually 'sophisticated'.

Just write faster. If other people can get out 1100 words in 40 minutes I'm sure you can too? Practise! You have 2.5 months! Generally they wouldn't be so mean as to place difficult questions for all three modules. You get a bit of reading time to think about it, and you should be thinking on the spot (while you're writing your intro, for instance) about how to manipulate the question/what to write next, not stopping to think for a minute or two halfway through your essay (that's what planning time is for!).

I would read all the questions during the reading time and get out the ones you can easily adapt to first as fast as you can (e.g. 37 mins for 2 modules = extra 6 minutes for a 3rd module!), while possibly thinking about how you're going to work with that dodgy text type in Module B or whatever.

 

[oyuck]

I would say you need quality and quantity. There's no use writing 800 words of waffle.

But 1000 words of okay essay will always be beaten by 1000 words of a sophisticated essay (that's if your essay is actually sophisticated, as someone above wrote).