>> Welcome to an SCC Writing Center workshop
about timed writing.
This workshop focuses on how to beat the pressure
of timed writing by making a plan and being prepared.
Timed writing is a problem for a lot of people
because it usually stresses everybody out.
So it's good to walk into it with a plan.
And since everybody writes differently,
it's hard to say exactly what any one person should do.
But these three tips are generally the most important
things to remember.
Manage your time effectively,
read the assignment very carefully
and understand exactly what you're supposed to do,
and understand what your teacher expects to see,
what kind of a structure they expect to see
out of the writing that you're doing.
So first we're going to talk about managing our time.
Writing in general is a three-stage process.
There's what you do before you write,
there's what you're doing while you're writing,
and there's what you do after you finished writing.
Now, in a regular writing situation where you aren't
under a time pressure, the after process is going
to be much more involved
than what we're going to talk about here.
But we were talking
about writing a process for timed writing.
So I'll talk a little bit
about the differences when I get there.
So before we start writing,
we need to do what's called prewriting.
This is where we read the assignment carefully
to understand exactly what we're being asked to do.
Brainstorm, come up with ideas.
We can do that through a list or a cluster, somehow ideas
out of the brain and onto a piece of paper
where we can see them and decide how good they are.
Organize by making an outline or some kind of a plan.
In timed writing, a lot of times it's a good idea to not make
such a formal outline but rather make more of what is called
out a scratch outline where we simply very,
very briefly number the things that we're going to do
in the order that we're going to do them rather
than making a very detailed plan like we might do
for an out-of-class essay.
And create a working thesis statement.
Now, keyword there is working.
We want a thesis statement which is going to be the statement
that covers what our argument for the paper is.
And that's going to have the topic of the paper,
our opinion about the topic and some reasons for that opinion.
But the reason I highlight the word "working" is
because it's important to remember
that thesis statement might change over time.
After prewriting, we're going to do some drafting.
This is basically where we take what we have used or the ideas
that we've come up with in prewriting
and turn them into paragraphs.
We're going to use the language in the prompt
to help us get started.
And always just refer back whenever we get stuck
to what we've already done.
That's the idea behind prewriting is it helps us while
we're writing to not get stuck.
And then the final stage, and in the timed writing situation,
we're going to call this proofreading.
Any other situation, I would call this revising.
The reason it's not revising is
because in a timed writing situation,
you will never have time to do a revision.
Revision involves completely throwing out paragraphs
and reorganizing and coming up new ideas,
and sometimes scraping the entire paper.
And if you have an hour to write your paper, you don't have time
to write it, then throw it out and then rewrite it.
So we're going to talk about proofreading for this.
And that's going to involve reading through the essay once
to make sure it's clear, understandable.
Making sure that the thesis matches what you actually did
in the essay.
So if you say you're going to talk about things in A, B,
C order and you talk about B first, then C, then A,
you're going to want to change that in your thesis.
You're going to look for patterns of error.
This is where you look for things
that you know that you do.
So when I write for a timed writing exam, I always look
for run-on sentences and misspelled words
because I spell really badly,
and I always have run-on sentences.
So those are the things I look for first because I know
that I'm going to find some.
And then we look for any misspellings
or confusing sentences, anything that we can make look better
and sound better, try to fix.
So, time management is a big part of our problem.
So this is an example of how you could schedule yourself
for a one-hour exam.
You spend some time during prewriting,
usually about 10 minutes or so out of an hour,
spends about 40 minutes of that hour drafting,
and then about 10 minutes at the end proofreading.
For some people, this is all we need to do
to have our time managed well
but many people find it to be too much.
Forty minutes for drafting could be--
end up being 40 minutes on the introductory paragraph
if someone is not careful.
So if you want a little bit more structure
to that drafting section,
figure out how many paragraphs you're going to write and divide
that amount of time by that number of paragraphs.
So if we were going to do four paragraphs,
it would be 10 minutes per paragraph.
Or if we were going to do five in 40 minutes,
it would be eight minutes per paragraph.
And that can help you to keep on top of things if you want
to be a little bit even more structured
with your time management.
Next important thing to remember when you're preparing
to do timed writing is that you are responding to an assignment.
And if you do not respond to the assignment properly,
it does not matter how good of an essay you write.
If it's off topic, you're not going
to get the grades you want.
So it's important to know how to read
and understand what you're being asked to do.
So we're looking at the questions and the keywords found
in writing assignments.
Questions words like who, what, when, where,
why and how are important to look for especially
when they're embedded inside of statements.
So sometimes, you might get a sentence
like explain how the Civil War began.
And that's really asking you a question,
how did the Civil War begin?
So it's good to look for those even if they're embedded
in the middle of a sentence.
So we're going to look at some words that are used
that a little more difficult than who, what, when, where,
why and how like summarize.
When a teacher asks you to summarize, they want you
to give a brief statement about the main ideas
and major supporting points of the thing
that you are summarizing.
Usually, it'll be your own words and it's important
to remember this is not about your personal opinion.
When you are summarizing what somebody else said,
you're just telling us what they said not what you think
about what they said.
On the other hand, if you have to evaluate,
you are judging something.
You're telling us how valuable it is and so you have
to give us your opinion about it.
You might also be asked to compare something
in which case you're going to show how two
or more things are similar.
You might also be asked to contrast where you have
to show how two or more things are different.
We also are asked to describe things often in writing
and this is where we give a detailed account of that thing.
This is something we do all the time in our daily lives.
We describe people, places, things, ideas.
You're just telling somebody about it
so that they can understand it.
Analyzing on the other had is a little more difficult,
and this is where you are pickings at a part
and examining it to determine where it came from,
how it happened, what might happen because of it,
how could we fix it if it's a problem, decide whether
or not it's a problem, all of these ideas.
Explaining is something we do all the time just
like describing and this is where we explain--
we tell some-- tell people about something in a way
to make it easy to understand.
Discuss is my least favorite word to see on a prompt
because it's almost an impossible thing to do.
A discussion is where multiple people give their ideas
about something whatever the topic is and go back and forth
to figure out how their ideas fit together,
and whether one idea is better than another
or whether ideas can be blended to work together,
and it's really hard to do that by yourself on a piece of paper.
So when you are discussing on paper, what you have
to do is write about it in detail,
looking at the different opinions and view points
that people have about the topic.
You are to recreate a verbal discussion on your paper but not
in the argument and the form
that verbal discussions often take place.
So, last thing to really be paying attention
to is having a clear understanding of the structure
of an essay and what teachers expect to see
when they are reading through your paper.
So it doesn't matter whether you know the question or not,
it doesn't really matter what the question is.
Just about every academic essay has roughly the same structure.
So, virtually all academic essay start with an introduction
that tells us about the general topic of the essay and narrows
down what the essay is going to talk about.
It'll often include a brief summary of a reading
if the essay is responding to a reading.
It will also give usually some background information
about the topic especially if it's a complex topic or a topic
that other people might not know a lot about.
Virtually always, we expect to find a thesis statement
in the introduction as the last sentence
and that sentence is going to tell us what the topic is,
what your opinion about that topic is,
and why you have that opinion.
Every paper you write should have some body paragraphs,
and those body paragraphs are going to have a topic sentence,
that is basically a thesis statement
for your body paragraph.
It does the same thing that a thesis statement does
for a paper and that it tells us what this paragraph is going
to be about.
And it will usually include the same information
that a thesis statement does.
The topic of the paragraph, your opinion about that topic,
and a reason or reasons for that opinion.
After you give that topic sentence, it's a good idea
to explain it a little more carefully using different words
or using an example of some sort.
After that, we want a specific illustration of the point.
That could be a time it happened to you, a quote,
a time it happened to somebody you know, a statistic like four
out of five dentists prefer Dentin Ultra White
or some other type of gum.
It could be some kind of a fact or figure.
Something that shows us that what you claim to be true
in your topic sentence is really true.
And last, we want some analysis, some kind of an explanation
of that example that tells us how
that example proves your point.
This is the thing that most people forget to do and it's
where people often end up in trouble.
Most of us in our heads believe
that once we give an example, that's enough.
I have an opinion, here is an example of how
that opinion works in real life, isn't that enough?
Unfortunately not because those people who were reading it,
they're not in your head, so they don't see the connection
between the example and your point.
You have to put all of that stuff that's in your head
onto the page so that they can understand why you think
that example is a good example of the point that you've made.
Most in-class or timed writing essays will have
at least two body paragraphs, sometimes three or four.
Out-of-class essays, it's generally a bad idea
to have exactly five paragraphs, and often you'll end
up with much, much longer papers.
But in an in-class paper or timed writing situation,
it makes sense to do 2, 3, 4 body paragraphs at most.
Each of those body paragraphs should have roughly the same
structure with a topic sentence, some explanation
or clarification of that topic sentence, an example
and some analysis of that example.
Remember, when you give an example, you need to have
at least as much analysis of the example
as there is of the example.
What I mean by that is if you give us a quote
and that quote is two sentences long, you should have
at least two sentences of analysis explaining why
that quote proves your point.
If you give a statistic and it's one sentence
in which you give the statistic, you only need to have
at least one sentence.
However, if you need to explain things more fully
for somebody who's not you, spend more time explaining it
than you think you need to, OK?
Almost always we stop too soon on the analysis.
So if you think that you--
there's any chance you might be giving too short of an analysis,
add another sentence to it.
The last thing you're going to do is write a conclusion.
A conclusion paragraph ties the essay together.
It tells us what we should've gotten out of the paper.
Usually, you're going to have a restatement of the thesis.
Notice I say restatement.
You're going not going
to say exactly the same words as you did before.
You want to use different language but the same idea.
Still cover your topic, still cover your opinion
and still give us the reasons for your opinion
but you don't have to use the exact same language,
and often it's kind of encouraged
that you don't use that same language.
You should also tell us why we care.
We just read this paper.
So we don't really need a summary of what you've written
because we just read what you wrote
so we don't need a summary, but we do need
to know why it matters.
What should we do with this information?
Should we do something?
Should we start a march on Washington?
Should we take a class?
Should we read a book?
What is it that we should do now
that we've read what you have to say?
Some final tips about how to prepare and do well
on our timed writing exam.
If you have any reading or preparatory materials,
make sure you read it and understand it as thoroughly
as you can before walking in.
You can ask questions about readings before the test
but usually professors will not answer questions during an exam,
so it's important to know what your materials are saying before
you walk in.
This is when your mom might tell you is don't forget
to eat a good meal, a health meal not a donut, real food,
and get plenty of rest before your exam.
It's also a good idea to take such precautions
as bringing a bottle of water with you so that
if you get thirsty you have something to drink.
Maybe some gum so that if you are feeling like you need
to chew on something, you have something
that won't bother other people.
Earplugs are a good idea in case somebody else is loud.
And it's also a good idea to wear layers
because classrooms can be very, very cold or very, very hot,
and sometimes they switch between the two in the two hours
or one hour that your exam takes place in.
So bringing a sweater in case it gets too cold is a good idea.
Whatever it takes to make sure
that you are comfortable is a good thing.
The more comfortable you are,
the better you will be able to do.
Very important, make sure that your essay responds
to the question you're being asked.
I know I've said this before but I'm going to say it again,
you can write the best essay ever and if it's not
on the write the topic, you are not going
to get the grades you want to get on that paper.
So make sure that you're answering what you've
been asked.
And lastly, if you want to practice for timed writing,
come by the Writing Center in LRC 144, we are happy
to help you prepare and we have a number
of timed writing prompts that you can take
and take home and practice with.