How to write fast in exams

One of the most annoying things about exams (and let’s face it there are plenty of annoying things about exams) is the fact that you can write until your hand is is a cramped, spasaming claw and you may not have written half as much as you would have liked. The obvious knock on of this is lower grades espically if you only get half way thorugh your question and don’t even have enough time to include a conclusion.

So with that in mind the purpose of this post is to show you some cool tricks that will definatly help you write quicker, and as a result write more and hopefully earn a better grade, though its worth keeping in mind that it’s not just what you write but how well written your answers are. Join me as I ask how to write fas in exams.

How to write quickly tip 1 – Practice

Yeah, you had to know it was coming. I’m sorry, we both know you came here hoping to read an article on how you won’t have to write hunderes of pages in order to speed up your writing. Unfortunatly the fact of the matter remains, there are muscles in your hand, and the more you use them the stonger they will become and the longer you will be able to sustain writing at a high speed.

in order to understand how you can best train your hands to to write quicker and for a long time you need to know the difference between slow and fast twitch muscle fibers. It’s not too complicated slow twitch fibers are used for long activites i.e. marathons and fast twich are used for short term activites i.e. sprints. It makes sence then that you should focus on imporiving the slow twitch muscles in your hands in order to sustain your quickest writing for long periods of time. It’s fairly easy to do this, just flex and relax your hands (make a fist then release it) when ever your hands are free or your not doing anything. For example, your in bed trying to get to sleep why not do these exercises write fasterthen?

Taking this further there are devices that you can use to exercise your hands (check out the picture) which will speed up the hand training as well as increasing your upper limit.

Note: I wouldn’t reccomend going over board with this close to your exams, afterall you wouldn’t want to sprain your hand.

How to write quickly tip 2 what are you eating?

One of the main reasons that people often can’t write quickly is because they set off like a bomb, and five minuits their hands have cramped up and it’s another half a min before their hand feels well enough to start writing again. This seriously effects the amount of words you can get down in an exam, assuming the above is correct and you carry on doing it you could lose between five and ten mins due to cramp in an hour exam.

So how do you prevent your hand from cramping in an exam? Simple! Potassium is the answer. In order to stop cramping you need to maintain a reasonably high level of potassium, the best way to ensure this is to eat foods which are high in potassium at least two week before you take your exam (if you are reading this the night before you exam firstly tisk! And secondly some potassium is better than none so get eating).

Notilble foods which are high in potassium include: bananas, spinnach, write fastpotatoes, yogot, salmom and avacados. If your diet already includes a healthy amount of any of these the effects of cramping should be considerably reduced.

Its worth remembering that crams are cause by a build up of latic acid in your muscles, which is caused by a lack of oxygen which in turn is caused by a lack of blood flow to the muscles i.e. make sure at some point you do take a few seconds to flex your hands to let some fresh blood enter it.

How to write quickly tip 3 Pen Island

The type, size and features of the pen which you take into your exam will also have an effect on how quickly you can write in the exam.


Generally speaking I find that I can write faster with thinner pens however this tends to be personal preference, the best thing you can do is try a few different pens and see which you find you can write quickly and comfortably with.

Regardless everything else fountain pens are something to avoid, you maybe able to do pretty calligraphy with them but they make for slow writing.which brings me on to my next point…

The way in which you hold your pen can also effect how quickly you are able to write, when we are young we’re taught that keeping your thum, fore and index finger on the pen is the correct way of doing it, however when you do this it seriously hinders your writing speed. Instead try holding it as shown in the picture.

 

How to write quickly tip 4 Balance speed and neatness

Although handwriting does indirectly effect your grade (markers subconsciously give higher grades to those with neater handwriting) the amount, and what you write has a higher weighting when it comes to your score.

I have a rule when doing exams, if it’s readable when I squint a little its OK. Generally speaking you need to figure out what is and isn’t readable before you sit an exam, because then you have time to change the font of your handwriting, however it’s worth bearing in mind that nobodies handwriting is the same in and outside of an exam.

Again this tip relates back to practicing, when doing a practice question try writing as quickly as you can, read your answer while squinting, if you can’t read what you have qritten you will probably need to slow down, otherwise you’re alright.

How to write quickly tip 5 – Be efficent with your writing

This tip isn’t so much about writing quicker but about figuring out how you can write less while still saying the same thing. There are overt and covert ways of doing this, the obvious things being writing ‘and’ instead of ‘as well as’. This readuces the amount of words your need to write to connect one sentence to another, freeing up time to write other things, ok you probably only save a second by doing it, but when you do it a couple of hundered times over an exam, those seconds really add up.

Then there is the more covert way of being efficent in an exam, this mainly relates to planning what you are going to say for one point to stop you from going overboard in terms of time consumption. Other than this you should also stick on topic, make sure that you don’t go on a random rant which doesn’t even relate to the question you are answering.

Finally, try to get it right the first time, this will save you having to cross out and re-write the thing you ment to write in the first place.

Wrapping up

I wouldn’t expect your handwriting to suddenly get super quick over night, it may take some time before you acctually see an improvment, but stick with it and you will see some results. If you are after more tips on writing quicker, check out this ebook

how to write quickly

 

5 Tips To write a perfect essay

Essays are hard and annoying to write especially considering that you need to do well in them in order to pass exams and get good grades all the way from the ages of 6 all the way up to 24 and even 30′s if you are doing a doctorate. Even after that you will end up writing reports and proposals when you get into a job.

What does all this mean? You essays need to be strong if you want to succeed in life, which is why we have come up with these five tips which will make you life of writing annoying, hard and mostly boring essay writing a walk in the park.

1. Grammor is King

Having good grammor won’t just help you when you are writing an essay, it is an every day essential. Good use of grammor is vital when writing a strong essay, people pick up and get annoyed by bad grammor, which will only lead to one thing… lower marks

Concertrate on improving your grammor, think about which puncuation you are using around which words, if you are having trouble you sould practice writing using different grammor and punctuation and then read what you have wrote, how does it sound? try it with different grammor, now how does it sound? better or worse?

2. Spelling is Queen

Spelling is just as important as grammor, although the human brain can normally figure out what you are trying to say even when you spell something wrong, people still notice. This is especially important when you are writing something like an English essay where you maybe being marked on spelling.

There are a few ways to improve the way you spell, one way is doing look, cover, spell, check. Firstly you look at the word you are trying to spell, cover it up so you can’t see it, spell it (writing it down is better than spelling it aloud as it will imporve retention). Finally check to see if you spelt it write, if its wrong do it again, otherwise well done.

OR if you are living in this century and the essay is one that you can do in your own time write it on a computer with a word processor with a spell checker (note: works for tip one too).

3. Sturucture an easy to read flowing essay

Nobody wants to read a wall of text, and its that’s how you write your marks will suffer. Walls of text are hard to read and take alot of effort. At the very least learn how to use paragraphs, that way you won’t enfuriate the reader into submission.

After that consider using things like subtitles, bullet points and numberings. All of these help the reader find information quickly and easily as well as giving your essay a nice flow that keeps the reader reading.

note: some of these things maybe inappropriate if the quiestion asks you to write in continus prose.

4. Engage and captivate the reader

This may sound hard, and in truth it can be quite difficult if you don’t know how to do it. However the easiest way to enguage your reader is to ask them a question, not only does this add perspective to your essay but it also get the reader thinking about what they have just read. Obviously these questions are retorical but it still helps give your essay some punch if they are used at the appropriate times.

Engaging your reader is one of the best ways to get good grades but there is an art to it, used subtly its awesome, however if you are to overt when trying to get the reader to coninue with your essay it can have a detrimental effect on your grades.

5. Be sneaky

Now, its impossible to be sneaky in an exam because you knownothing about the person who is going to mark your essay. However, lets say your teacher is going to mark a peice of course work for you, this is where you can take advantage of what you know about them. If they like something, write about it positvely and vice versa.

Its also worth noting what font, size and other formatting they like to use in documents, you’d be surprised but writing in your techers favourite font can have a positive effect on your grades.

In closing

These are our five top tips on writing an essay, remember to you don’t need to work hard, you only need to work smart. Do you research and don’t freak out over an essay, its just words on a peice of paper after all.

How to write a rhyming poem

You’re here probably asking wondering how to write a rhyming poem. Well you aren’t alone and in fact you may be surprised how many people are acctually wondering the same thing. That’s why we have created this little guide titled ‘how to write a rhyming poem’.

How to write a rhyming poem part 1 – Choose a topic to write about.

The first thing you need to decide when beggining to write a rhyming poem is the topic that you are going to base the poem on. Many people choose to write rthyming poems about their experiences and inner thoughts (much like all poems), for example past experiences, love etc.

Stuck about the topic of your poem? Think about this, one of the best thing about poetry is the fact that it can be about literally anything, so if you are having trouble finding a topic you can first try this… close you eyes, the first thing that comes into your head you write a poem about.

Something else you can do is look around your surroundings, find the most interesting thing in the room you’re in and then write a poem about it.

How to write a rhyming poem part two – Pick a rthyming pattern

If you have heard of rthyming patterns before, fantastic! otherwise here is a quick guide on how they work. As you already know in order to write a rthyming poem the last word of a given line needs to rhyme with its corresponding word, confused? Heres a very basic example of a rhyming pattern:

Line 1. A

Line 2. B

Line 3. A

Line 4. B

What this rhyming pattern means is the last word of line one rhythms with the last word of line three, and the last word of line two rhythms with the last word of line 4. In practice this would look like the following.

My dresser is made of wood

The boy plays his xbox

The dog plays in the mud

The dresser hold a fox

As you can see (the terrible poem aside), the A part of our poem is lines 1 & 3 where wood rthyms with mud, and the B part on lines 2 & 4 has xbox rthyms with fox.

There are many, many rhyming patterns avalible to you and in fact I’d encourage you to get creative and have a go at coming up with your own. However if you aren’t in the mmod for that here are a few to get you started:

Line 1. A

Line 2. A

Line 3. B

Line 4. B

——————————–

Line 1. A

Line 2. B

Line 3. A

Line 4. B

——————————–

Line 1. A

Line 2. B

Line 3. C

Line 4. A

Line 5. B

Line 6. C

How to write a rhyming poem part 3 – Get writing

So thats it you have your topic, and you have come up with a rthyming pattern, that is all you need to begin writing your rhyming poem. All thats left for you to do is start writing you poem. Best of luck and have fun doing it.

Post your comments and questions below. Hopefully I’ve ansewered your question: hoe to write a rhyming poem.