How is everyone approaching the English exam?

[Coolgalbornin03Lo]

I personally haven’t put pen to paper in ages because all our essays including  the SAC Comaparitive have been online.

How are you guys and your schools approaching it with timing etc?

[The Cat In The Hat]

We just started a revision lecture. Myself, I have not started revising for English, but I plan to write each individual section separately and target my weak areas (mostly LA and TR, because they are my weaknesses). I'll start by typing in a restricted time limit and then switch to handwriting once I've fixed some errors I know I'm making. But I've not done handwriting except for each of the SACs so far, no handwritten practise or anything.

[Coolgalbornin03Lo]

We just started a revision lecture. Myself, I have not started revising for English, but I plan to write each individual section separately and target my weak areas (mostly LA and TR, because they are my weaknesses). I'll start by typing in a restricted time limit and then switch to handwriting once I've fixed some errors I know I'm making. But I've not done handwriting except for each of the SACs so far, no handwritten practise or anything.

Omg really??? How do you manage to write to time?? Does your school have ages for SACs? We have 1 hour 40 minutes for SACs and even then I only finish because I’ve done at least 2 times practises! Most people at struggle to finish in that time. Our online sac was four hours last time and this time it’s only 1 hour 50 minutes! I know that means people will be less likely to cheat BUT I’m not sure I can write an essay that fast since I’ve only done one comparative so far....

[Chocolatemilkshake]

Omg really??? How do you manage to write to time?? Does your school have ages for SACs? We have 1 hour 40 minutes for SACs and even then I only finish because I’ve done at least 2 times practises! Most people at struggle to finish in that time. Our online sac was four hours last time and this time it’s only 1 hour 50 minutes! I know that means people will be less likely to cheat BUT I’m not sure I can write an essay that fast since I’ve only done one comparative so far....

Wow! We only get 70 minutes for all our english SACs with no reading time. Practicing timing is different for everyone, but I think the best way is to practice planning in short periods of time with an intro and perhaps a first body paragraph (you might start with 25 minutes for planning&intro now and then try and get it down to 20 min and then maybe down to 15 min, etc). There's no need to practice writing FULL essays all the time (especially when you have other subjects to think about) and honestly, practicing planning and doing an intro can be really beneficial. For me personally, the first 15 minutes of an english exam can make or break the rest of my essay (If I start confidently, I tend to do a lot better, otherwise stress slows me down).

For my essays under time, I usually do 15min for intro and planning, then 10 minutes for each body and a 5 minute (or maybe a 2 minute aha conclusion) which fits into 60 minutes (it's a struggle though!) Obviously going from an hour and 40 minutes, it'll take you a bit of time to get it down to one hour but you still have 2 months and with practice (and a little bit of pressure) it will come. I think what's really important is that in 2 months you have developed a plan for how you'll approach the exam and how long you'll spend on each paragraph (and have a bit of leeway if you need an extra five minutes for one paragraph).

[The Cat In The Hat]

Omg really??? How do you manage to write to time?? Does your school have ages for SACs? We have 1 hour 40 minutes for SACs and even then I only finish because I’ve done at least 2 times practises! Most people at struggle to finish in that time. Our online sac was four hours last time and this time it’s only 1 hour 50 minutes! I know that means people will be less likely to cheat BUT I’m not sure I can write an essay that fast since I’ve only done one comparative so far....

For the comparative, we handwrote it with 1hr 40mins like you; I practised by typing in timed 1hr conditions. I did the SAC and had fifteen, twenty minutes to go at the end. I also did several practices with good advice and feedback from others; when I did the first one I finished and sat back in shock because I had genuinely not believed I could write it in an hour (I barely finished). However practice even just a few really helped me, I got to having five minutes at the end of each one to check. It really did help. So I'd say practise is the thing you really want to be doing. It seems to speed it up quite a bit.

For SACs we generally get a double period, so ~100 minutes I think.

[J_Rho]

I havent done anything for english in a hot minute! My plan is to (starting in the holidays) collate quotes, phrases and ideas in a document (and read a page before bed) and aim to write 3 essays a fortnight under timed (1hr) conditions as I have always been able to write essays in an hour so timing doesn't seem to be an issue, more worried about improving the quality. I've got about a C+ average across all 3 types of essays (sad creative isnt in the study design thats by best topic) which I'm worried wont get me the 30 i need let alone the 40 i want Also thinking a month out from the exam im going to try and do a practice exam a week, because truly english is one of my weaker subjects!

WOW our teachers only give us an hour, which has been bumped up to 70 min in online learning!

[ArtyDreams]

I'm going to start focusing on the English exam after my comparative SAC finishes next week. I'm not too worried about the timing, as for some reason in an exam by brain kinda just knowss that I don;t have much time, and I tend to write less. What I really need to work on though is planning essays quickly.

I've done handwriting here and there so I'm not worried so much about that. We've ony had 2 online SACs for english - they were all timed to about 75-90 minutes.
The first thing I'm going to do in terms of revision though is text response. I'm doing my creative text which I haven't touched since term 1, so I really need to get onto that! Comparative will probably be revised last as I've been doing that a lot of the last few days

But yes - definetely stressed. I started the year saying I'll write an essay a week, thats barely turned into an essay a month oops.

EDIT: I don't think I'm willing to do many full 3 hour practises. Our school runs practise exams so I'll be def doing one, and maybe another if I really feel like it. I'm mainly going to work on 1 essay in 1 hour.

[whys]

Our SACs are always an hour with 15 minutes reading/planning time apart from AA which was 30 minutes reading/planning time, so I've got timing pretty downpat. My issues lie with text response, so I'll need to do a lot of work with that. Seconding choco - full essays might not always be the best way to go all the time! Creating a timed plan, intro or just a body paragraph often will keep your writing skills in shape and help you improve a lot. This is what I'm planning to do - timing a body paragraph and trying to do one within about 13 minutes in time for the exam (we'll see how this goes though).

I definitely recommend practising the full 3 hour exam at least 1-2 times so you can figure out what essays you want to prioritise and how you're going to set up your time, as well as which essays you might want to spend more time on and which essays you can finish quickly. Before diving straight into timed practice though, I think it would be more beneficial to focus on improvement essays so you can get your essays to a high standard using feedback from others before trying to imitate that standard in timed conditions.

[Coolgalbornin03Lo]

When you guys practise paragraphs in 10 or 13 minutes is it to an unseen prompt or something planned? I find it awkward simply writing paragraphs out of thin air but maybe trying to take one from one of my full essay plans will be easier? I have trouble planning ONE paragraph to a prompt because I need a contention to subtly keep linking back to etc.

[ArtyDreams]

When you guys practise paragraphs in 10 or 13 minutes is it to an unseen prompt or something planned? I find it awkward simply writing paragraphs out of thin air but maybe trying to take one from one of my full essay plans will be easier? I have trouble planning ONE paragraph to a prompt because I need a contention to subtly keep linking back to etc.

I usually do a full essay plan (timed, say 5-10 minutes), take one of my paragraph ideas and then time that separately.

[Chocolatemilkshake]

When you guys practise paragraphs in 10 or 13 minutes is it to an unseen prompt or something planned? I find it awkward simply writing paragraphs out of thin air but maybe trying to take one from one of my full essay plans will be easier? I have trouble planning ONE paragraph to a prompt because I need a contention to subtly keep linking back to etc.

Usually an unseen prompt... but I never just pull a paragraph out of thin air, rather I plan my entire essay (in 10 minutes) then write the intro and conclusion (in 15min). This means I don't have to spend an entire hour writing an essay if I don't have the energy/time. In my opinion there is no downside to planning out the entire essay, as it will allow you to get used to the time frame required for planning and developing your ideas and contention directly in response to the question. This also means that you can return later and maybe take another 10 minutes to write another paragraph and so on.

If this timing is till too tricky (which it certainly can be) give yourself extra time (maybe 15 minutes or 20 minutes for a body) and then try to cut it down. Also, to get used to the timing you could do it to a seen prompt or an idea you're super comfortable with, because you will find it a lot easier to write on topics you've written on before and this should help to boost confidence. I did this to start with (eg. for your first timed essay in an hour don't pick an impossible prompt that you know that you're going to find hard to do under time, as you're likely to lose confidence in yourself. Instead, pick a topic that you're relatively comfortable with. Then, as you get better with timing you can start trying some of the harder topics).