Essay Skills

Introduction — Budgeting Your Writing Time

When writing an essay in the actual test situation, there will be a time limit of 30 minutes. This time restriction, along with your purpose and audience, will impose limitations on the development of the subject. You will find that a time budget is a necessity.

For the 30 minutes given to write the essay, a reasonable time schedule would be:

• Plan your essay for about 5 minutes. Adequate planning will provide a statement of the main idea and a listing of ideas or examples intended to expand on that main idea.

• Write the essay as planned for about 20 minutes. Use the space provided by the test booklet. There is not sufficient time to re-copy the essay.

• Revise, proofread, and make corrections the last 5 minutes. An essay's evaluation will not suffer from making corrections even though this may require crossing out sections or adding additional wording.

Your essay needs:

• An introductory paragraph which includes your thesis or main idea.

• An additional paragraph which further develops the main idea or summarizes it.

A 200 word essay is sufficient. That may sound like a large number, but it seems much more reasonable if it is stated as coming from two major sentences. If your planning can produce the content for these two sentences, the writing will be devoted to filling out the ideas already established.

As an example, suppose you were required to write an essay on:

An important skill you have mastered while in school.

The first problem is to limit the subject because it is far broader than what can be covered in a 200 word essay. A single course like "typing" could be sufficient for developing your essay. Another choice could be the choice of a subject, like "mathematics."

Suppose you decided to write about Study Skills.

Your planning might begin with a diagram like the one shown below.

This diagram begins with the subject (Study Skills) and grows as you attach ideas to the subject. Each branch of your brainstorming diagram needs a title to remind you of its idea, but focus on ideas rather than complete sentences.