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Essay Skills
When writing an essay in an actual testing situation, there will be a limited time allowed. This time restriction, along with your purpose and audience, will impose limitations on the development of the subject. You will find that a time budget is a necessity.
Since you have four and one-half hours to answer all of the questions on the MTTC Basic Skills test, there is no specific time limit for any one section. You should consider giving yourself 60-80 minutes for your essay. Depending on how quickly you complete the Reading and Mathematics sections of the MTTC will ultimately determine the time available for your essay.
If you allocate 60-80 minutes to write an essay, a reasonable time schedule would be:
- Plan your essay for about 5-10 minutes. Adequate planning avoids the tendency for the essay to become a jumble of disjointed, poorly organized facts.
- Write the essay as planned for about 40-50 minutes. The topic sentence for each paragraph may be part of the planning process you followed before your writing began.
- Revise, proofread, and make corrections the last 10-15 minutes. Without this part of the process, your essay is likely to contain omissions of words and problems with punctuation or spelling. These careless errors drastically effect the evaluation of your essay.
Your essay needs:
- An introductory paragraph (50-100 words) which includes your thesis or main idea.
- Two or three developmental paragraphs (75-100 words each).
- A concluding paragraph (50-75 words) in which you summarize or draw a conclusion.
A 350-500 word essay is built around a main idea, three topic sentences for paragraphs of supporting details, and a summary. Five hundred words may sound like a large number, but it seems much more reasonable if it is stated as coming from five major sentences. If your planning can produce the content for these five sentences, the writing will be devoted to filling out the ideas already established.
As an example, suppose you were required to write an essay on:
The most important skills you have mastered while in school.
The first problem is to limit the subject because it is far broader than what can be covered in a 500 word essay. A single course like Typing could be sufficient for developing your essay. Another choice could be the choice of a subject, like mathematics.
Suppose you decided to write about Study Skills.
Your planning might begin with a diagram like the one shown below.
This diagram begins with the subject (Study Skills) and grows as you attach ideas to the subject. Each branch of your brainstorming diagram needs a title to remind you of its idea, but focus on ideas rather than complete sentences.
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