English, writing 3 page essays, how?

positivealf

I'm doing Higher Level English and im only just realising that a majority of students i know from other schools can write a 3 page story in an hour and a half and it takes me like 3 hours. Now my teacher is forcing us to write like 4 page stories to catch up with the rest. In my mock paper the examiner said "Really high standard but answers too short!". I honestly don't know how i'm going to do this,

MomijiHime

It only needs to be 2-2 1/2 pages long

DublinArnie

How much doesn't matter. I only wrote 2 1/2 pages in 40mins on my mocks, and I got 58/70, I didn't even plan it, I only planned the OP and then I changed everything else, and one of the best English teachers in the country corrected it, so yea. Just write good, not alot.

Dingle_berry

The volume isn't the most important aspect of an essay. Try to think of it from an examiners point of view; would you like to read x amount of 4 page essays with terrible grammar and spelling? It is so much more important that what you write is coherent and easily read. The examiner knows nothing about you, your school or your life. What they do know is there's another two hundred papers after yours to trawl through.

Having said that, there are ways to "flesh out" essays. Use adjectives in groups of three (I was told that. Apparently for some reason it seems better). Use adverbs too. Cut down on conjunctives - use the extra words to link sentences. This also reads better.

Very important: make your writing legible. If I were correcting exams I wouldn't spend too much time trying to decipher some unknown students chicken scrawl. If this means making it larger, all the better!

Bazinga_N

You need to write enough to ensure you're examiner can critique your writing. When you feel you've wrote something that is worth the marks you want, then stop. Don't expect an examiner to look for marks in something you wrote when they could of better been given to something else you could of wrote. I'd never write less than 4 pages for a Personal Writing essay.

positivealf

Bazinga_N wrote: »

You need to write enough to ensure you're examiner can critique your writing. When you feel you've wrote something that is worth the marks you want, then stop. Don't expect an examiner to look for marks in something you wrote when they could of better been given to something else you could of wrote. I'd never write less than 4 pages for a Personal Writing essay.

great advice, thanks! my problem is thinking of what to write, i guess i have to practice making plans

Bazinga_N

positivealf wrote: »

great advice, thanks! my problem is thinking of what to write, i guess i have to practice making plans

Honestly, be as creative as possible. Think LOST, the TV show. How crazy was that? Every episode was something completely random, but it all linked in. That's what you need to do!