I am generally struggling with typing my answers faster and I have not completed a paper properly when practicing. I am leaving some significant marks ranging from 30-20 marks. I am worried. If I plan my answers its actually worse off. If I just answer questions I feel confident in and just start typing am a bit faster I would leave out about 10 to 15 marks. But I am facing challenges especially with paper 2. Any advice would be appreciated.
Hi - I can appreciate your worries about this. It is OK to launch into answering questions where you are very confident, but for most questions with a material number of marks it is really important to spend a bit of time thinking about how to answer the question and doing some initial brainstorming of the key areas to cover. Something to think about: are you writing (ie typing) out too much for each of the points that you are trying to make? Make sure that you aren't including a lot of words that aren't actually adding any value. For example, you don't have to start each answer point with 'The company could ...' if it is a question asking you what actions a company could take in a particular situation. Aim to be as concise as you can, whilst still getting across the key ideas, and that might help to take some pressure off your typing ability?
With planning, you can just write 5-6 key headings (depending on the number of marks) to start with. This shouldn't take too long to do. This will reduce the "thinking" process when it comes to typing out the final answer. You will be much more mechanical that way.
Thanks for the advice. It seems I am writing unnecessary information to score marks by including the words you mentioned. Will practice questions with that in mind.
Thanks will also try this. In my answers in planning it seems am being a bit too detailed and this also takes too much of my time.
