Falling into the illegibility trap (2 Viewers)

[Irskin]

Ok so i just got my trail paper back and for the 3 module sections in Paper 2 i received 16/20. I thought that my essays were much better than this and contained a lot of great ideas that related to the quetsions. However, my responses were lengthy (8 pages) and all the teachers commented that my work was hard to read and in some places illegible. People who had written much leass received better marks in some cases.

So i pose the qusetion..... Is it better to write 5-6 pages of clear and concise work with some good ideas OR 8-9 pages with lots of great ideas but messily written? The thing is even if you have all these great ideas, they may be lost on the marker if they cant read your work. Wat are your ideas on this issue?

 

[jest]

teachers get frustrated after reading heaps of essays and they come across one with messy writing. you don't want to aggravate your marker more so you're better off writing neater. this was one of the comments we got when we received our exams back

 

[mica]

Play it safe by making sure the markers can actually read it and then focus on the length. Theres no point in writing heaps if it cant be read (wasted time).

Fingers crossed you get in the hsc english exam and write eight neat pages. Fingers crossed i can do that too .

 

[alcalder]

Practice writing bigger, in print not cursive and with big circles for o's etc. Use double spaced writing, so you can go back later and add in bits and pieces if need be.

But shorter, neater and with gems of info is better than long and messy and rambling.

Good luck!

 

[shazeh]

i guess i might help you here as had been an english teacher too. ( of little kids though)
in my point of view ( talking as a teacher) it is better to write short essays but try to fit all your points and ideas in it.
when teachers see lenghty essays they get tired of reading and i myself checked such essays always at last as i usually got bored of it.
the phrase "short and sweet" expalins everything.

 

[glitterfairy]

A shorter but better-structured essay is far better than the longer one which brings up lots of good ideas, but presents them in a higgeldy-piggeldy fashion. Half the trick is bringing the good stuff to the table - the other half is knowing how to make it look appetising

In all likelihood you're probably able to keep all the paragraph topics you've got, but you need to work more on being succient/cutting out waffle

 

[DShadow]

Wow... i still get 17/20 for 3-4 pages... don't know why people write so much.