How to write an essay quickly

In an ideal scenario, you have the luxury of time to devote to crafting a masterpiece of an essay. Yet, you can’t expect everything to go your way. 

The clock is ticking and you must produce a quality article despite the short timeframe. Whether the time limit was instituted by the English tutor or you simply procrastinated until the last minute, it will not matter. You need to learn how to quickly create an essay.

Change your mindset

Feeling like you don’t have enough time to finish the essay because you’re up against a deadline might induce a state of fear. It’s possible that you’ll feel hopeless before you even begin. 

Yet, if you want to achieve your goals, you’ll need to ignore your negative emotions and prepare yourself mentally for the seemingly impossible task at hand.

You may need to have a discussion with yourself to convince yourself that you are capable of writing an excellent essay. Set a target to show yourself that you’re capable of facing adversity, thriving in it, and destroying it in record speed. Relax, concentrate, and get to work.

Put away your interruptions and distractions

You don’t have much free time, so wasting it on your phone and social media is not an option. Time is of the essence. Reduce the number of potential interruptions to increase your productivity. 

Get rid of your phone and other interruptions. Choose a peaceful place to work and activate any productivity software, such as a full-screen text editor, on your computer to ensure that you focus solely on your article. You can also download browser extensions that will prevent you from accessing social media sites for a specified amount of time.

Schedule your activities ahead of time

There is a deadline for when the paper must be completed. Every available second must be maximised. For this reason, you should schedule your activities in advance. The recommended time allocation for a 30-minute essay is 10 minutes for planning, 15 minutes for writing, and 5 minutes for revision.

If you have an hour, divide it up into smaller chunks. You should allocate at least 20% of your time to planning, 50% to drafting the essay’s main body, and the remaining time to revising.

Paper and ink or computer?

These days many students type more quickly than handwriting.

When compared to writing the essay by hand and then typing it, typing saves almost half of the time. If you want to learn how to write a decent essay quickly, one trick is to type it on a computer.

That said, never overlook the importance of practising your essay writing skills with pen and paper since this is still a very common requirement in exams

Understand the essay question thoroughly

Make sure you’ve read and fully comprehended your essay’s question.

Carefully read the essay question to get a sense of what is expected of you. If your comprehension is only partial, you will waste time referring back to it when you should be writing. 

Draft the paragraphs’ key sentences

The first lines of your paragraphs need to be powerful and concise so that they can both hook the reader and convey necessary information. It shouldn’t be too difficult to come up with the key sentences, as you’ve already prepared the paragraphs in the outline. 

This shouldn’t take more than a few minutes, and if it does, you can always come back and fill in the blanks later.

Write a good intro and summary

Create a catchy introduction that sets the stage for your essay. It’s helpful to introduce your topic with a quote, a short pertinent anecdote, or perhaps some statistics. Make a smooth transition from the opening to the essay’s main body. 

The conclusion restates the key points and draws connections to the supporting arguments. The final section of your essay should serve to contextualise the arguments you made. Writing a conclusion for your essay is equally as important as creating an opening.

Take some time for revision

Time constraints can lead to little mistakes when you have to write an essay. It is essential to set time aside for revisions to prevent turning in an essay that is riddled with mistakes. 

Even if you’ve done some proofreading as you go along, a final read-through is essential before you hand in your essay.
Masterclass English College is an English tutor in North Shore. Talk to us about your child’s English learning goals and our teaching method today.