Congratulations! You have completed two timed writings in AP Language. Take a moment to revel in your sense of accomplishment, and then use the comments to discuss timed writings. What do you learn about yourself as a writer through timed writings? What are your top tips for timed writings? What are your most significant areas for improvement this year?
Respond by Friday, September 19.
I have learned that under time restrain although it maybe difficult to produce quality writing I was still able to create a quality document. My top tips for timed writing are be organized and make sure to focus on a certain area( don't jump all over the place.) I hope to improve the flow of my papers and I hope by the end of the year I can write an effective timed write with an 8-9 rating.
ReplyDeleteAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!! TIMED WRITINGS MAKE MY WRIST FEEL LIKE IT'S ABOUT TO FALL OFF!!!!! Otherwise, I enjoy timed writings. They are a great way to prepare us for the long road ahead in our lives. I learn that the quality of my writing often feels like it suffers due to the pressure of only having a class period to write. I would have to agree with Ally on the tips for timed writings. In order to have a successful timed write, we need to make sure that we're prepared (in the event that we have the writing prompt before to actual write) and we also need to be organized in our writings. By the end of the year, I hope to write with a more mature writing style and that I can write effectively so that I can score well on the AP test.
ReplyDeleteI actually rather enjoy timed writings. I gives you a chance to see what your raw writing is actually like without days of editing. I also enjoy the prompts. It enables you to write in a different style then you would normally choose to write in.
ReplyDeleteTOP TIPS 4 TIMED WRITING: (TT4TW)
1) use odd examples like heroin in modern slavery
2) take a few minutes in the beginning to plan out your essay
3) begin with a cool quote
4) don't freak out. its just an essay not the end of your life
Although I did not have the chance to take the previous timed write, usually timed writing goes smoothly for me. I enjoy taking the time to express what I know and apply it while answering a question. Of course the time restraints worry me a bit, but it also encourages me to continue writing. In all I enjoy timed writes, even though I continue to stress over them consistently.'
ReplyDeleteAs a writer my top tips would be to: organize your thoughts, evaluate and then reevaluate the question at hand, and finally to reread your timed writing and make changes to clarify your point on the subject.
I learned that I can fully express my thoughts on a subject through writing. While attempting to express myself in conversation, I may not be able to explain myself clearly. When I write I am able to edit myself and make corrections, so I can insure I make my point clear to the listener/ reader. This year, my area for improvement would have to be organization. I usually jump right into an essay and start scribbling down my ideas without thinking them out. As some of my peers may know, this is a bad habit.
I've learned several things from timed writings. The first thing is that I am always nervous for them for the whole day! However, when it's time to write, I've learned that I can surprisingly write a lot without getting stuck or having brain farts. Also, my nervousness is gone when I start writing. My top tips would be to take your time on reading the prompt and when you're ready to write go right into it. The second tip is to think before you write! It's not good to ramble on or write something that you haven't thought clearly about. Lastly, my area for improvement would have to be word choice, I need to have a more broad vocabulary.
ReplyDeleteFrom my timed writings, I learned that I spend too much time thinking. From what I remember, half of my time was spent thinking on what I was going to write. The other half was writing everything down as fast as I could. I felt rushed, but it was also kind of fun. I liked to see what kind of writing I produced when I didn't have time to revise and edit. Personally, my sense of accomplishment is low. I feel that my timed writing essay could have been better on both tries. I feel that organization of my ideas is my biggest problem. When I look back, I remember skipping around my ideas, and even veering off my main topic a bit. I think great tips are not to stress over it. This will not be your best work. It never will, because other writings that have time to be sculpted will be actual quality. Don't stress if the timed writing essay isn't the quality you want when you finally run out of time. Also, write as much as you can. There is always more room for improvement. Your only limit is time (and how fast your hand cramps).
ReplyDeleteI learned that writing under a time restriction can compromise the quality of the writing if you let it. By just relaxing and clearing your head, you can form accurate and complete thoughts. This allows the writer to write in complete ideas, which improves the quality of the writing significantly. In my own experiences, I get nervous about the quality of my writing and if I am writing enough. This is a real stressor. So I just took a moment to clear my head and the words just started flowing. Being able to clear my head has helped me improve my writing. Which I think is a great achievement.
ReplyDelete-Celeste VanHoozier
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ReplyDeleteAs a writer I understand that I can handle the pressure of the time restraint. My top tip would be not to rush starting your essay because you need to gather your thoughts before you begin. The area that I need to improve most is to not forget to mention the opposing side in my argumentative essays.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I have yet to take the second timed writing, I have to say that timed writings are a great way to challenge us as writers and a great way to compare your progress throughout the year. To achieve this point of noticeable progression, I would strongly encourage to thoroughly map out your thoughts. I think we can all agree we have started an essay and realized it was going nowhere. Also, just don't stress yourself out too much. It is just a timed essay. By the end of the year, I hope to change my "I am writing an essay" tone.
ReplyDeleteIn timed writings you learn how your mind reacts to a prompt that is given to you to write about without you having any preparation before hand. They also make you think ways that you don't when you have time to prepare in your normal writings. In timed writings you really have to think quickly and plan out your essay as soon as possible and then just go with it and do the best you can. I think I need to improve on making my timed essays more formal and make them flow better.
ReplyDeleteThe time restraint is quite stressful but, if I take the time to plan the essay before I start writing i have found it makes the timed write much more bearable. I think my (and others) main problem with them is that it can be hard to stay organized and i sometimes struggle to keep my argument coherent. I hope that by the end of the year i will be able to consistently receive 6's or 7's.
ReplyDeleteTimed writes are very stressful partly because there really isn't a universal way to be able to prepare for them. I have learned that it is easier to write if first you organize your thoughts. There are many things that I would like to improve on with my timed essays. During timed writes you learn how controlled your writing is. I would like to improve the control that I have in my writing.
ReplyDeleteTo be honest i really am horrible at timed writes because they stress me out. Also i feel like i have to use a lot more professional words in order to help get a better grade which I'm just not good at! I have to mentally prepare which means thinking about what i am going to write for probably a good 10 minutes before i can even start. Getting better at writing more efficiently is probably one of my biggest goal this year in this class also to improve my run on sentences problem because everyone know i do!
ReplyDeleteTimed writes end up being stressful due to the fact that great, quality writing is expected in limited time, which requires time for your brain to process the claim, what your topic will be about, actually writing the essay, then going through to revise for mistakes. Some tips would be to get organized before you actually start. Take 5-10 minutes to set up your main ideas and what goes into each paragraph. The main thing I want to improve on is expanding my ideas in my writing. Elaborating on the topic and hand should help receive better scores, I hope..
ReplyDeleteI actually think timed writes are less stressful than other assignments because I only worry about it that class period. With other assignments I can procrastinate and it causes more thought on my part. I found out I don't know many synonyms for sin or sinner on our most recent timed write and I also found out how bad I am at determining what should be a paragraph. I think the best ways to improve upon timed writes is to keep an expanded vocabulary and to know a lot about the world around you. The best examples are ones that other people know about or something that they might have experienced first hand. To be more specific the things that I want to improve on are time allocation and word choice.
ReplyDeleteAs everyone else said... Timed writes are stressful and I get extremely nervous about them. Through many past experiences with timed essays I've learned that I can pretty much write down everything I need to within the class time. The first paragraph is always the toughest to get through but after that the rest just comes to me! In one of my essays last year, I had enough time to read over what I wrote and I ended up removing an entire paragraph! It just didn't seem like it belonged and ended up being a good thing that I took it out. Overall I would suggest that people just go with the flow... What I mean by that is just write down what comes to you because you can always remove or add in more things but it's important to get everything you want to say out on paper first and then revise it with your spare time. I also think that organization plays a huge role in these. It's hard to organize your thoughts when in the back of your mind you know you only have about an hour to write.
ReplyDeleteFrom reading though the other comments, it is clear that timed writes are quite stressful to many people. I don't necessarily agree with that. I don't typically find timed writes to be stressful, because if I allow myself to become stressed, it makes it incredibly more difficult to write coherently. I usually take a few minutes at the beginning to plan out my essay, and then just start writing until I finish what I had planned. If I still have time, I attempt to revise what I wrote, however, I often don't notice the mistakes. Overall, I feel like organizing before hand makes the experience less stressful.
ReplyDeleteWhat I've learned from doing timed rights it that I am not prone to nervousness within time restraints, and I am able to think of many points of discussion within a limited amount of time. Then unfortunately I learned that I think of too many points, and because of this my organization suffers as I try to write it all down. My tops tips for anyone doing a time write are first, and foremost, stay calm; there will be plenty of time. Secondly I would take the time to think of a strong outline, you don't have to write it out, but be sure you know what your writing. Finally I would learn to cut time in as many places as possible. After this I believe that my most significant area of improvement this years should be my writing's organization.
ReplyDeleteI'm seeing a lot of anxiety and nervousness within the above posts. However, don't let yourself freak out! If you just plan a bit, it will help immensley. My first one was not so good, but the second one was better. Why? I took a few minutes to plan. If I plan, i've found that writing the essay becomes easier.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Hailey! getting nervous is only going to lessen your quality of writing. What often helps me is making charts, putting down what i want to say and where i want to say them. It helps my writing tremendously! You have a direction on where you want to go.
ReplyDeleteReading the posts above i find that everyone along with myself feels very stressed out about a timed writing. When im in class writing i have be taught how too plan and divide an essay throught my younger school years and i see now how helpful it really has been. What i have learned from myself is that while i have created well thought out paragraphs im still struggling in the conclusion which is where i need to improve the most.
ReplyDeleteI guess I just don't have the same problems as most people. I see most have trouble trying to get a good, organized, plan of how to attack the timed writing but for me that part is a breeze. What I personally have trouble with maintaining the ideas inside my head long enough for my hand to put them to paper. I think way faster than I write and it causes me to forget some of the amazing, really dramatic, points that would make my timed writings truly amazing.
ReplyDeletePersonally i learn alot about myself through timed writings. It really shows how I think, because nothing helps me write well like feeling my time ticking away. It really helps to prioritize things that are important and make statements that i feel are necessary. This is going to be a really strange comparison, but like Kara said, use obscure examples. Its akin to if you have 5 minutes left to live and you have one person you love to talk to. You want to say as many things that matter as you can, because you know after that time is up, there's no going back.
ReplyDeleteTOP MLG PRO 360 NO SCOPE SUPER LEGIT TIPS AND TRICKS (SHOUT OUT TO RED BULL AND DORITOS)
1. Like I've said 3 times, know what you want to say and prioritize on these things. Maake sure you say what you want to.
2. Don't stop if you make a gramatical error, just keep on rolling on like a pain train, because there isn't any breaks
3. Read back through everything at least once just to make sure things sound right.
4. If you feel like you did the best to your abilities, then you did the best to your abilities so dont feel like the only thing that matters in life are those 45 minutes.
I feel as though i could really improve in everything (blanket statement, i know, im lazy what do you want me to say.
When the teacher says that a timed write is coming up soon the first thing I do is stress out about it. Then once I'm actually writing my essay I feel totally fine. My top tip would be to do a short outline before writing. I could improve on concluding my essays better and actually analyzing the prompt/text.
ReplyDeleteI find timed writings stressful, like a lot of other people. I hate doing anything that is timed. My top tip is to try not to think about it to much until the timed writing is a day away. What I could improve on is organization of my thoughts before putting them on paper.
ReplyDeleteContrary to popular opinion, i enjoy timed writes. There is no preparation necessary because you have no prior knowledge of what the prompt may be. You have 50 minutes to write without distraction. After the 50 minutes, you never have to worry about it again. The writing has been done and there is no changing it. I'd take writing an essay in under an hour any day as opposed to one that requires days of work to write and format. After all, which do you think Mrs. Bolin will grade more harshly, an essay that's been assigned for weeks or an essay written in a class hour?
ReplyDeleteTimed writings really aren't as bad as I make them out to seem. They help me figure out what main things should be put into the essay and what things aren't as important to the story.I hope to be improved in getting some better details into my essay and more text references by the end of the year.
ReplyDeleteOkay, I finally got the blog to come up. When I do timed writes I really learn how I am under pressure. Timed writes always make me nervous because I want to do so well on them. I learn about the process I use to think quickly and every time I do a timed write, I think of new ways to prepare myself for the next one. I definitely think that when someone takes a timed write they should try and keep calm and also think about what you would like to write about and how to organize your paper before you start writing. I hope to improve my organization when I am writing. If the topic does not really connect with me from the beginning sometimes I panic and have even more trouble thinking.
ReplyDeleteI personally do not like timed writes that much because i dislike writing to a prompt, however i do like them because they are good for tracking my progress in terms of how fast i can develop a solid argument or side on the prompt. I hope to improve in my diction as well as my support and references for my evidence.
ReplyDeleteI am pretty neutral when it comes to timed writings. I'm not all that great at them, but I can usually adequately address the prompt. I agree with Kara a little bit in that I enjoy exposing the flaws in my raw writing. I agree with Jesse as well though, because i dislike writing to address a prompt. I think the most important part of a quality timed write is to make sure you are organized and that your entire essay stay in support or negation of a singular idea. Don't jump around from idea to idea spasticly. Don't try to take on too much.
ReplyDeleteI am fine with Timed Writing. I have learned that the best way to tackle a prompt is to spin it and relate it to something you know and are comfortable with. Confidence is a huge factor in high stress scenarios and it is best if you go into a timed write with a positive mindset.
ReplyDelete