How do you people write so fast??

[Samueliscool223]

Yo
I'm doing Units 1 and 2 right now, but I'm not very good at writing essays... I'm not naturally good at writing, I probably should've picked general but it's too late now Anyway, I've seen people write essays with 1000 words in 1 hour each that are highly detailed... and it blows my mind because I could barely write this in 30 minutes:

(My interpretation of the meaning of 'Where the Wild Things Are')
The ‘Wild Things’ are symbolic of Max’s internal emotional state and serve as a reflection of his character. Max’s initial crazed temperament and in-compliance with the household boundaries and expectations are reflected through the Wild Things’ attitudes upon Max’s arrival at their habitat, with them ‘[gnashing] their terrible teeth’ and ‘[roaring] their terrible roars’. The Wild Things are subsequently subdued and submit to Max’s authoritarian status, once again embodying his pursuit for a form of purpose and belonging in a society he refuses to conform to. His resignation as a leader of the Wild Things, following his realisation that his role lacks true fulfilment, signifies a shift in his ‘wild’ temperament- he reverts to a nonchalant state: symbolically, he leaves behind his inner wild emotions, or the Wild Things, establishing a duality between the Wild Things’ crazed mentalities and his contemporary one.

I have no clue how people are able to write such lengthy essays in such short periods of time. Please tell me how it's done and how I can get faster at writing! Thanks

[Implicxty]

Yo
I'm doing Units 1 and 2 right now, but I'm not very good at writing essays... I'm not naturally good at writing, I probably should've picked general but it's too late now Anyway, I've seen people write essays with 1000 words in 1 hour each that are highly detailed... and it blows my mind because I could barely write this in 30 minutes:

(My interpretation of the meaning of 'Where the Wild Things Are')
The ‘Wild Things’ are symbolic of Max’s internal emotional state and serve as a reflection of his character. Max’s initial crazed temperament and in-compliance with the household boundaries and expectations are reflected through the Wild Things’ attitudes upon Max’s arrival at their habitat, with them ‘[gnashing] their terrible teeth’ and ‘[roaring] their terrible roars’. The Wild Things are subsequently subdued and submit to Max’s authoritarian status, once again embodying his pursuit for a form of purpose and belonging in a society he refuses to conform to. His resignation as a leader of the Wild Things, following his realisation that his role lacks true fulfilment, signifies a shift in his ‘wild’ temperament- he reverts to a nonchalant state: symbolically, he leaves behind his inner wild emotions, or the Wild Things, establishing a duality between the Wild Things’ crazed mentalities and his contemporary one.

I have no clue how people are able to write such lengthy essays in such short periods of time. Please tell me how it's done and how I can get faster at writing! Thanks

I don't have any tips on how to get faster at word choices and sentence structuring but I heard somewhere that taping batteries to your pen while writing practice papers will help with your writing speed when you take it off. It might work lol might as well give it a try   

[brenden]

Write things to a lower standard. Build the standard back up later when you're writing enough. Build the quality once you've got the speed.

[dream chaser]

Hi Samuel,

When I did English(General English) last year, I was really terrible at the start. I was not confident at all and was not good at writing essays. Also, I always took a long time to think and thus, took me hours just to write one single essay. However, by the end of the year, heading to the English Exam, I felt way more confident and was able to write quickly. There are a few reasons that got me to that position:

1. Knowing your texts
You need to have an indept knowledge of your texts if you really want to smash your SACS and Exam. Also, in doing so, it helps to think faster as well.

2. Planning
Try and plan as many prompts as possible for each text so then when you get the actual prompt, you straight away know how to answer it.

3. Untimed Essays
Before writing timed essays, what you first need to establish is how to write a decent essay first. Whenever, you finish an essay, you should always ask your teacher to mark it and what ever feedback the teacher gives you, take it on board and re-edit the essay and then show it again until you get at least 85-90% on it. That way, you know you are confident to write a great essay. By doing this to 4 to 5 prompts first, it will definitely benefit you.

4. Timed Essays
By doing the first 3 steps, it should help you when you eventually do timed essays. When starting timed essays, aim to do it within an hour and 5 minutes(with 15 minutes reading time). Then cut it to 1 hour(with 10 minutes reading time) and finally 50 minutes(with 5 minutes reading time). Even though the Exam is 3 hours, you will probably need 15 minutes altogether for the 3 sections to plan. Hence, by writing essays in 50 minutes(with 5 minutes reading time) early on, it will definitely help you in the long run and makes you less stressed out heading into the Exam.

Doing this approach really helped me in English, especially me being a below average English student in Year 11.

I hope my tips help.

 

[Samueliscool223]

Hi Samuel,

When I did English(General English) last year, I was really terrible at the start. I was not confident at all and was not good at writing essays. Also, I always took a long time to think and thus, took me hours just to write one single essay. However, by the end of the year, heading to the English Exam, I felt way more confident and was able to write quickly. There are a few reasons that got me to that position:

1. Knowing your texts
You need to have an indept knowledge of your texts if you really want to smash your SACS and Exam. Also, in doing so, it helps to think faster as well.

2. Planning
Try and plan as many prompts as possible for each text so then when you get the actual prompt, you straight away know how to answer it.

3. Untimed Essays
Before writing timed essays, what you first need to establish is how to write a decent essay first. Whenever, you finish an essay, you should always ask your teacher to mark it and what ever feedback the teacher gives you, take it on board and re-edit the essay and then show it again until you get at least 85-90% on it. That way, you know you are confident to write a great essay. By doing this to 4 to 5 prompts first, it will definitely benefit you.

4. Timed Essays
By doing the first 3 steps, it should help you when you eventually do timed essays. When starting timed essays, aim to do it within an hour and 5 minutes(with 15 minutes reading time). Then cut it to 1 hour(with 10 minutes reading time) and finally 50 minutes(with 5 minutes reading time). Even though the Exam is 3 hours, you will probably need 15 minutes altogether for the 3 sections to plan. Hence, by writing essays in 50 minutes(with 5 minutes reading time) early on, it will definitely help you in the long run and makes you less stressed out heading into the Exam.

Doing this approach really helped me in English, especially me being a below average English student in Year 11.

I hope my tips help.

 

Thanks, I'll take on board this advice!

[dream chaser]

Thanks, I'll take on board this advice!

No problem Samuel. I am glad if I have helped in anyway 

[Sine]

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It kinds of depends on the content some people can definitely do 1k-1.5k within an hour but very little thinking actually goes into this. Once you get to the end of the year it is possible that students have prepared enough that whatever essay they write is extremeley simialr to something they have written before as a whole or they have taken sections from multiple essays they have written in the past. So if you aren't really "thinking' during that hour it is quite possible to really increase your word count.

Adding onto that word count is definitely not everything. A well-written essay of 800 words will always beat a mediocre essay of 1500 words. But two essays of the same quality generally the longer one would be able to go in more detail in breadth and thus would be more likely to score higher.

[colline]

Hey! Considering it's still very early on in the school year, and you're in U1/2, you still have almost TWO YEARS to work on improving your writing speed. 1,000 words in 1 hour is the speed VCAA expect from students at the very end of Unit 3/4. If someone at the start of 1/2 is already writing 1000 words an hour, they're probably either exceptionally talented or writing absolute waffle.

The replies above me pretty much covers it all but just to reiterate, to write a high quality essay in an hour you would need to
- know every single part of your text inside out
- have thoroughly brainstormed and analysed your ideas
- read and dissected countless essays from not just previous high scoring students but also academic sources
- and have written PLENTY of practice essays before hand.

Finally assessors would always (within reason) prioritise quality over quantity.

Once you get to the end of the year it is possible that students have prepared enough that whatever essay they write is extremeley simialr to something they have written before as a whole or they have taken sections from multiple essays they have written in the past.

Absolutely. It should get to the point where you recognise the prompt, what it's asking for, and have 3-4 main arguments in your head within 10 seconds of flipping open the exam booklet, because it's something you have already written on in the past, even just as a short practice.
Very rarely would you be thinking up NEW ideas during the exam!

Write things to a lower standard. Build the standard back up later when you're writing enough. Build the quality once you've got the speed.

I'm not so sure about this advice. Quality of writing style is something that accumulates over time and it's a lot harder to work on than how fast you can write. If OP is already incredibly confident in their writing quality, then obviously speed is first priority, but otherwise writing to a lower standard should always be avoided especially if you just want to inflate the quantity of words.

[KatherineGale]

Hi Samueliscool223,

This was something I had issues with when I did Literature. I have arthritis but it wasn't diagnosed at the time so I didn't have any allowances for it and I really struggled writing quickly.

Not sure if this will help, but it's the advice that I got:
My teacher pretty much told me that it's a matter of quality of quantity. I was told to spend the first couple of minutes planning on the first page, so that it could also be scanned. This meant that if I didn't finish the last paragraph in time, the assessors could look at my plan and have a better idea of where I was headed. My teacher said that I would still lose points if I didn't finish, but probably not as many if I wrote a complete but poorly written rushed essay that was illegible and difficult to follow.

By the time exams came around, I had built up to writing a reasonable amount in the time period, but I still wrote the plan on the first page because it was my back up if things went poorly or if I was having a bad day.

Also, I would suggest developing your own essay structure for paragraphs in particular over your year(s) of study.

I think mine was (author) said in a (something tone) that (quote from text) to the effect of (blah blah) using (such and such) technique to the effect of (blah blah) which relates back to (authors) main idea of (blah blah blah). On my plan, I would quickly write down the things needed in the brackets above for each paragraph and then just worded it better and filled in the blanks, changing the order every paragraph to keep it interesting.

Hope this helps

[Sine]

I'm not so sure about this advice. Quality of writing style is something that accumulates over time and it's a lot harder to work on than how fast you can write. If OP is already incredibly confident in their writing quality, then obviously speed is first priority, but otherwise writing to a lower standard should always be avoided especially if you just want to inflate the quantity of words.

Definitely agree with this. At this stage of the year writing a 9+/10 essay within 3 hours is better than rushing a 4-5/10 within the time frame. Speed does come with practice over the course of the year.