It may seem overwhelming at first to begin studying for your first senior English exams – too many words to remember and too many words to write in too little time! However, there is a very simple and very effective way to study for these exams!

Begin by writing an “alpha” essay. Usually before exams, your teacher will give you an essay question with which to practice. Make sure that you write a practice essay to this question and submit it for marking. Once you have fixed up and polished your essay, use flashcards to separate your essay into manageable pieces:
One flash card per quote + techniques + analysis
One flash card for the introduction
One flash card for the conclusion

Once you have gone through and memorised the key parts of your essay, start going through other practice questions online. Instead of diving right in and writing complete essay drafts in 40 minutes, I would recommend setting a five minute timer per practice question and writing out a plan. For example, on a piece of paper I would write out a sample thesis statement which answers the question, and then practice adapting my quotes and analysis to back up my new thesis statement.

Once I have become comfortable with adapting my skeleton essay to foreign questions, I start writing out full length practice essays under timed conditions. It is really important to write these out in exam conditions to emulate the stress of the exam. It may also be beneficial to form a study group and all practice writing the same essay under the same conditions together.

The most crucial part of this process is to only read over your essay a day later, not right after the exam. This way, your brain will have cooled off from the stress of the practice exam and you will be able to read your essay like a marker and find the key strengths and flaws of your arguments.

Using this very simple method, each English exam will be a breeze! Good luck on your exams 🙂

Shahaf Liraz