Tip 2: Write your essay plan as a flow diagram…

I was marking an exam when I discovered a really clever idea from a student. They wrote their essay plan in flow diagram form, rather than a table or concept map. This was a really smart idea. It meant that, as an examiner, I could easily follow the essay.

The main point is that it didn’t lose marks. Remember, essays are almost always marked positively. That means you gain credit for clear, concise writing. You don’t lose marks for getting something wrong, so write the essay in a way that helps you to gain credit even if you later change your structure a little bit.

Tip 3: …then draw a box around it and label it ‘Figure 1’

The even smarter thing about this idea is that the student then drew a box around the plan and called it ‘Figure 1: the links between X and Y’. Throughout the essay, they referenced the ‘Figure’ to show the links between the issues being discussed. Even if they hadn’t finished writing the full set of paragraphs, I could have credited ideas they included in the plan. Genius!

Tip 4: Write an introduction that sets the direction of the essay

There’s more about this in my post ‘How to write a good introduction’. Basically, make sure you don’t just waffle. There’s no point in saying ‘The transmission of disease can be for many reasons. These reasons will be debated in this essay’. It doesn’t set up the essay well.

Instead, say something simple like ‘Diseases may be transmitted through relocation and expansion diffusion, which have different social and biological causes’. The direction of your essay will be much more clear to the examiner.

A good essay can be written in just three sentences:

The direction of your essay (like my example above).

Identify the case study locations you’ll use.

If necessary, define key words from the question. There is no need to define words that have a commonly agreed definition e.g. ‘hectare’ but you do need to define words where there is debate over their use, such as ‘resilient city’.

Tip 5: Don’t cross anything out unless (and until) it’s repeated later.

It’s so frustrating when students cross out a perfectly good paragraph, then write it all out again anyway but miss out the key point that got a mark in the first place. Examiners are used to stressed out students waffling a bit. If there is repetition, it will be ok. Just don’t cross out work because once it’s crossed out, the examiner won’t read it and it can’t get any marks.

Tip 6: Read what you’ve written, and stick to the plan

As you write, make sure you’re sticking to your plan. It’s fine to add extras, but you had a plan for a reason: it helps you avoid wasting time.

Also make sure you read what you’ve written. If you notice yourself becoming waffly, stop and think carefully about exactly what you want to say. Never start writing just because you’re running out of time. Three sentences of well considered words is worth far more than a page of nonsense.

Tip 9: Keep to time

Sometimes it’s tempting to keep going on a point because you feel you’re writing good stuff. But, you’re probably not leaving enough time for the counter-argument, or the second or third major theme of your essay. Make sure you allocate yourself a specific amount of time for each paragraph, e.g. 6 minutes. If you are going over that time, read it back and check whether it’s worth continuing.

That’s it! If you have any more tips on how to write an essay in thirty minutes, leave a comment below. And good luck with all that writing!!!

By Matt Burdett, 21 February 2020

This article is about using handwritten notes to study Geography.

Should I type my revision notes? The answer is: no.

Well, actually it depends. If you are going to type your final assessment (such as a piece of internal assessment or coursework, or an essay that you will hand in to your teacher) then yes, typed notes might be helpful.

But if your notes will end up on a handwritten answer in an exam, then you should dispense with the laptop or tablet as soon as possible.

There are lots of benefits of handwritten notes. (The benefits of typed notes are later on the page – but spoiler alert, they still aren’t beneficial for revision purposes.)

The benefits of handwritten revision notes

Some of these benefits are relatively simple and quite obvious:

You practice writing by hand, which means you are likely to be more legible in the exam
Your hands will become more used to the act of writing – literally, your muscles will become stronger so you can write for longer
You can experiment with different styles of handwriting, finding the one that is quickest for you
You can read back to check that the way you form your letters is clear, and change anything that’s not good – such as ‘v’ appearing like an ‘r’ in some styles of handwriting
You practice staying on the lines (which is increasingly important as most exams are scanned and then marked on a computer screen)

However, the main benefits of handwriting your revision notes are in your brain, and that’s what we’ll focus on here.

Using your brain’s capacity to the maximum

If you have to look at your fingers while you type, even once a line, you’re not a touch typist. Touch typing happens when your typing is automatic, and you’re not even aware of what your fingers are doing. Every bit of your brain’s processing power is being used to understand and learn the content. If you can’t touch type, you’re wasting your brain’s processing power. That’s because you are having to work out where the letters are. But with handwriting, your brain switches to automatic mode: it learned how to form the letters when you started writing, so your attention is better focused on your work.

Haptic feedback

You know this term from your mobile phone settings. Haptic feedback is that little buzz you get when you type a letter on your mobile phone. It’s a total waste of battery. But you might not be aware of the real meaning of haptic feedback, which comes from touching and feeling your pen and paper. Haptic feedback literally means the feeling you get from touching things.

When you type, you are always touching the same keys, regardless of what you’re writing about. The feeling, weight, temperature of the keys is always the same. So, your brain is building a memory while relying only on the visual stimulus of seeing the characters on the screen. You can italicise, underline, bold, highlight, add textboxes and so on, but it’s still only a visual stimulus.

But your brain remembers things better if you use multiple stimuli. If you handwrite your notes, you’re probably going to not only see the difference on the page; you’re going to feel it when you use different pens, or pick up a different notebook, or touch a post-it sticky note when you move it from the ‘to revise’ to the ‘understood’ section of your notes. You might even smell the difference when you get out your highlighter compared to when you use a biro.

The ‘toilet paper’ scroll effect

How often are you on Facebook or Instagram and find your thumb pushing the screen on, when you aren’t even really thinking about what you’re seeing?

It’s like a giant toilet roll. The screen keeps on coming, more and more and more. There’s no end in sight and it’s easy to lose things on the screen. What’s worse, the screen constantly changes – a title that was at the top is now at the bottom because you scrolled through the page.

If you handwrite your notes, that doesn’t happen. You always know how far through your revision notes you are, because you can see and feel the paper. Even better, the layout of pages doesn’t change, so when you try to recall that important fact, you can remember its location on the page.

Drawing diagrams can really help

Be honest: how much time have you wasted trying to draw a diagram on the computer, when you could have done it in a fifth of the time by hand?

Diagrams are a great way to revise because they involve transfer, i.e. you transfer the information from one type to another (usually text to diagram). If you’re working on paper, this can really speed up your revision.

Shut down the distraction

Laptops and devices are distracting. Notifications constantly pop up and take your attention away. And revision can be, well, boring. You’re far more likely to quickly check your messages using Whatsapp Web if you have the browser open right there in front of you.

If you’re handwriting your notes, you can leave your devices in another room until you’ve done with your session. Then you can open up your messages as a reward for the hard work you’ve done.

The benefits of typed notes

You were still hoping you can keep your laptop on, right?

Well – ok there are some benefits to using typed notes.

They can be quicker to organise and re-organise
Spell-check can quickly tell you if you are spelling the word wrong, and help you correct it
If you’re a fast typist, it can be a lot quicker to make your notes
You can instantly share notes with others, and receive their notes too!
You can collaborate on note-taking, so your friends can tell you if you’ve missed something
A lot of information (like this website) is already typed, so you can copy and paste materials for shrinking down

So, yes, typing can sometimes be better for some things. But why not type your notes only for the first week or two – just until you have the overall outline of notes – and then print them, and switch to paper?

Two conclusions

You’ll never type faster than you can think. And revision is all about thinking.
You can’t be accused of timewasting if other people can see that you have physical notes in front of you.

Tag: writing

How to write an essay in 30 minutes

Tip 1: Plan your essay