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Time management during tests (1 Viewer)

alicm

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So for my recent preliminary half-yearly English exam I had to answer short questions, write and essay and a creative writing within 2 hours. I wasn't able to finish my creative writing and only managed about half of it before time ended. I'm really disappointed because this will cost me marks and I wanted to do really well so I could rank first in the year.

How can I manage my time better when writing essays and creatives during tests?
 

sida1049

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For paper 1, prepare your creative writing as much as possible; you want to essentially bring in a finished creative on the day, and just adapt it to the stimuli provided. Practice writing it out to the extent where the creative section of your exam only takes up 30-35 minutes so as to dedicate your time to the other sections.

I used to start with the creative writing first, because my hand wouldn't be tired at the time so I can get it out of the way fast and save time for the other sections. After that, I tend to go for the extended response section. I used to prepare my essays as well, so my approach is to adapt it to the question (as you should) and spend no more than 40 minutes writing it out (this isn't an issue if you've practiced sufficiently).

I tend to leave section 1 last, because in the worst case scenario you can rush that section if you're running out of the time, but ideal you want 45-50 minutes to get this section right. The other reason for leaving this section last is that if you didn't complete your essay or your creative, then you would be handing in an incomplete body of work, and will be marked down heavily for that. But for section 1, not finishing it is just not answering one of two of the questions, and that doesn't impact the completeness, coherence and structure of your work at all, so you'd lose less marks for not finishing section 1 as opposed to the alternatives.

Best of luck!
 

helimentz

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So you remembered both creative and essay? Would it be around 1k words separately?
 

WildestDreams

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So you remembered both creative and essay? Would it be around 1k words separately?
Yes approximately. However, some people tend to make their creatives 600-700 words, and adapt to writing more on the spot. Also this really helps with your time management - spending 35 minutes on your creative as compared to 40 saves a lot of time to do the rest of the paper.
 

alicm

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So you remembered both creative and essay? Would it be around 1k words separately?
I memorised both, yes. However, more-so the essay word-for-word and only the storyline for the creative so I could adapt it during the test. My essay would've been around 1k and my creative a bit less, maybe around 800.
 

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