Why is it important to be able to write an essay in an hour?

I have never been to good at writing essays. It often took me a whole day with the help from my mom to write a good essay that was 2-3 pages long (handwritten without spacing). It would probably take me 3 to 4 days by myself to write an essay of similar quality. The hardest part for me was always to get those first 2 or 3 sentences on paper after that it went a lot faster.

The last time I had to write an essay was 7 years ago when I graduated. Sometimes we had to write essays in school as a test in one hour but mine would never turn out good. Honestly I have no idea how I managed to pass the class because my essay tests were so bad.

Now I only have to take English composition next semester in college to graduate and I am really nervous about taking that course because I'm just not good at writing given such a short time frame. And it is even harder for me now in college because I went to a German school back then and wrote in German. The style and layout is completely different so I can't even just write it in German and then just translate it.

So why is it important to be able to write an essay in such a short period of time? Why do we even have to write in a certain style in school? Most of the time you have to just write about your opinion on certain topics. I have never had to write about anything I could even use later in life, unless I wanted to be a journalist (which I don't). Why don't we learn how to write business proposals or something else useful?

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asked Oct 06 '11 at 19:39

Lestat611
2.1k●94●111●133

3 Answers:

oldest newest most voted

I dropped out of college my sophomore year, but I graduated high school with honors. I was in honors English all four years, gifted freshman year. I helped a lot of my friends pass senior year with their term papers. The best advice I can give you to help pass one hour compositions is to practice.

Read an article and make an outline. The outline is the key to a good paper. If you try to write blind you'll always wind up disorganized.

If your mom was like mine, she would help you write a lot of summarized paragraphs and then put them in the order they sounded best, then rewrite a final draft. You'll never have time for that in class. If you hope to write a decent composition in an hour, practice making outlines quickly, and following them. I would usually spend ten to fifteen minutes of my time reading and writing the outline, then I knew where I needed to put the content to make it sound professional. A guaranteed "B".

Find yourself articles of content you know nothing about, keep them short, that's how they'll be in class. Time yourself and read the article, write an outline and follow the outline to write the paper. Keep doing that until you feel confident. Good luck.

answered Oct 06 '11 at 20:39

MacManDerek
801●16●20●27

edited Oct 22 '11 at 03:26

A note to the last paragraph, this method is also very useful for learning new stuff. If you see an article about something do an outline and write a mini paper on it, don't have to be an hour but I tell you it's a good way to remember it later on.

(Oct 22 '11 at 22:08) Yarvaxea

0	imagine writing an SAT essay in 25 minutes. answered Oct 06 '11 at 20:50 windowstechtalker 641●23●27●37

0	Spam / Advertising Removed answered Oct 22 '11 at 21:50 riogfdjlafda (suspended) edited Oct 23 '11 at 00:25 TheTechDude 17.0k●40●94●300

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