• Best of luck to the class of 2024 for their HSC exams. You got this!
    Let us know your thoughts on the HSC exams here
  • YOU can help the next generation of students in the community!
    Share your trial papers and notes on our Notes & Resources page

Writing Faster - TIPS (1 Viewer)

MJ13

New Member
Joined
Sep 10, 2008
Messages
10
Gender
Male
HSC
2009
Look, whatever you dudes may say, I found an epic way to be getting consistent 40+ pages in 2 hour exams. Writing quickly is a skill that most people refuse to acknowledge but it is so incredibly helpful - got me a sweet ranking in english :p

Anyway, so pretty much, the first thing you have to do is select a pen. This sounds pretty stupid but for real it is so important. At the start of the year (just finishing hsc now) i chose Pilot Medium blue pens as the pen i was going to use all year. They are a little bit more expensive then the standard kilometrico pens but they are so much better. They write so much smoother, never miss a stroke and more importantly weigh about half as much as the kilometrico and as such reduce strain on the hands when you write allowing a greater speed.

Secondly, you can say that studying more will allow you to write more. Good sirs and madams, it is important, no, vitally important that you already know what you are going to write about before you enter the exam. So, for me that meant word for word memorising my belonging essay and memorising my essay plans for Mod A, Mod B, Mod C and Ext One. If you already know EXPLICITLY what you are going to write, there is no confusion - you go in and just churn out the stuff like no tomorrow.

An essay plan helps so infinitely much. As annoying as they may seem, write your main essay in class for your teacher and then spend like one or two hours for each one. Lift the introduction and the conclusion and place then in the plan. Then just make little sentence dot points of each of your points.

Thirdly - PRACTICE. Truth be told, I only started studying english like this for my trial but I wish I had done it before hand. For practise, time write your essays. When I started out for my trial belonging essay, I set aside 6:45 to 7:30 each night where my family knew not to disturb me and I timed wrote the AOS essay. At the start, I was writing my 2000+ word essay in about 45 minutes. Everyday though, I timed it and noticed that I knocked a minute or two off each time. If you practise with the essay plan in front of you, you learn how to string two sentences together coherently and VERY quickly without having to think about it.

For the modules paper however, it is quite a bit harder. Ultimately, you want to set aside a two hour block every day and go to work on that bad boy, but it is quite hard starting out. For trials, I was new to this method so I wrote two at a time in one hour twenty minutes. Then the night before the modules paper wrote all three. But come actual HSC time, I was writing all three every morning from 8am until 10am.

I understand that these methods can seem quite extreme, but the work incredibly well. If you know waht you are writing about to a T then it becomes so much easier in exams - plus, you get to watch as your stress over english just diminishes so rapidly.

Anyway, just as proof that this method works, my speed at my peak using this method was 2000 words in 32 minutes.

Hope this helps :D
 

zaefr

Member
Joined
Feb 12, 2009
Messages
108
Location
the cbrook
Gender
Male
HSC
2009
I learned to hold my pen in different ways so that when certain muscles get tired, I can switch to another pen grip. Works pretty well actually - have managed to get about 1700 words in 40 mins.
Anyway, just as proof that this method works, my speed at my peak using this method was 2000 words in 32 minutes.
*bows down in shock*

to OP: HAI min! tis ryen :)
 
Joined
Oct 28, 2006
Messages
3,635
Location
Under an invisibility cloak
Gender
Female
HSC
2008
(a bit late now but..)

when it came to english, my teacher advised to have 3 pens of different width and change pens to avoid your hand cramping - since your hand would be focusing on holding onto that same, damn pen for two hours straight.
I do this as well, I think it was suggested to me by a rheumatologist.
 

duckcowhybrid

Member
Joined
Dec 20, 2008
Messages
959
Gender
Male
HSC
2010
How do you write 2000 words in 32 minutes? that's not humanly possible. i do about 900 words per 40 minutes and that's flat out. Even after heaps and heaps of practicing, I can't go faster without cracking my wrist.
 

zarni2

New Member
Joined
Jul 26, 2008
Messages
14
Gender
Male
HSC
2009
Yeah I think a universal tip is to invest in a good pen that has padding and flows well. If you're facing the problem of getting heaps of words in versus the legibility of your writing, get a blue pen with a fat nib. Personally, I have hideous handwriting but i found that pens which write really thick allow you to write neat enough while being able to get enough writing in.
 

Users Who Are Viewing This Thread (Users: 0, Guests: 1)

Top