Effectively Using Reading Time in English/Literature Exams?

[Snow Leopard]

Hey,

I was wondeirng if anyone had any tips on how to use Reading Time effectively for English/Literature Exams?

[caffinatedloz]

I always use the reading time to plan out my key arguments or points for the essay about whatever we have studied. I try to pick a topic and see how many ideas and quotes I have about it. I then move on and read over the passage we have to analyse. As soon as we are allowed to start writing I spend five minutes jotting down all the ideas I had and then begin.

[brothanathan]

This is what I used in Year 10 English/Literature Exams last year:

1. Think of all the points/ideas you can come up with for a certain question.
2. Picture your whole essay using the best idea you've come up with, from the first sentence to the last, (for body paras just roughly, for me every sentence came to me naturally once I started describing the point I had).
3. Think about how you can write this idea with the best of your abilities in the limited time frame and make sure to give yourself at least 5-8 minutes to check.

This technique gave me a 29/30 on these sort of freestyle essays, I lost one mark because of the need for further expansion on some apparently excellent points that I condensed slightly too much.

Hope this helps, feel free to adjust this formula to your own gameplan