Writing Exam Essays

Exam essays usually come in one of two formats:

• an in-class essay that requires you to write at a pre-scheduled time or
• a take-home essay that you can work on over a few days.

Either way, the structure of exam essays will be different from the papers you’re tasked with writing over a longer period of time.

Although exam essays don’t require the same amount of research and specificity as your term-time papers, they do require you to prioritize your time differently.

There’s no need to fear, however. Here are some strategies to make your next exam or in-class essay easier.

Understand the Question

Before you get started, take a critical look at what the question is asking of you.

Underlining key words and elements of the question can help you to identify the essential components of your response. For example, an essay that asks you to compare two sources from the course has a different purpose than an essay that asks you to state the significance of a theory, so it’s important to identify what the question is asking of you.

Remember: you can write a fantastic essay, but it also has to follow assignment guidelines to be successful. Be sure to ask questions if you don’t understand!

Create an Outline

Because you have such little time to write an in-class essay, you may be tempted to start writing right away. However, taking just five minutes to organize your thoughts and evidence before you get started will make for a better-argued, better-organized essay.

Your outline doesn’t have to be fancy or well-developed; your outline just has to make sense to you.

It’s best to include your general argument, sub-arguments, supporting evidence, and relevant course content in your outline. You can always develop your ideas further as you write.

Develop a Succinct Point

By nature, essay questions will tackle big topics in the course. There is likely going to be a lot you learned this semester that you won’t be able to share in your exam essay, and that’s natural!

Instead of cramming everything you studied into one essay, craft your essay to specifically answer the question that is being asked of you.

Craft a Thesis (If Needed)

For some exam essays, you will be required to have a thesis. This won’t be as nuanced as your thesis statements for other types of writing assignments, but it should still be a statement of your argument.

One way to make sure that you follow the instructions is to use key words from the question in your thesis. For instance, the question “Why is the Sistine Chapel important?” may become the thesis “The Sistine Chapel is important because...”

Be sure to refer to the assignment instructions to see if you’re required to write a thesis, as some exam essays will be reflective or explanatory instead of argumentative.

Use Evidence from the Course

Essays are a great way to show your holistic understanding of the content that you might not be able to show in other exam formats (like multiple choice). As a result, you should keep your evidence limited to what you learned directly from your course, not general knowledge or content that you learned in other courses.

Unless you have an open-book exam, it is highly unlikely that you will need to include direct quotes or page numbers in an exam essay. Instead, you should focus on sources’ main arguments, the content you learned in lectures, and any special experiments or case studies you studied in class. It’s a good idea to remember the authors’ names and the titles of the works you studied, but you won’t be expected to memorize readings word-for-word.

Budget Your Time Wisely

Whether your essay makes up 100% of your final or if you have other sections of the exam, you should always be mindful of your time constraint.

• Make sure you can see a clock and start to conclude your essay in advance of the deadline.
• Try to use the entire allotted time to think and write.

If you have other sections to your exam, like multiple choice or short answer questions, look at the mark breakdown for a general idea of how much time you should spend on each section. For instance, if you have a two-hour exam with an essay section worth 50%, short answer worth 25%, and multiple choice worth 25%, you should spend approximately one hour on your essay and thirty minutes each on short answer and multiple choice.

Read it Over

Unlike other types of writing assignments, in-class essays encourage you to write your essay from start to finish, in that order, without stopping to edit. By the time you’re finished, you’ve probably thought of additional points that you could have added to your introduction or body paragraphs. It’s not too late!

Even if you’re handwriting your essay, make use of the margins to fill in additional information. However, make sure that the flow is still clear for the reader. Arrows and stars can be great ways to draw attention to where the additional information fits into an existing paragraph.

No matter what, give yourself time to read over your essay at least once. Look for ways you can clarify your argument or define key terms.

If you have extra time, you can then focus on editing things like grammar and sentence structure.

How to Study for Exam Essays

• Identify key themes from your course. You can check the syllabus or lecture slides to find course goals and outcomes, which can be helpful to guide your studying.
• Recognize key sections and turning points in course material. If you need the content of one lesson to understand the others, it’s a good indication that it is particularly important.
• Draw connections between the content from different weeks. Are any of the materials directly supporting or opposing one another?
• Spend more time understanding the context than you spend on memorizing the little details. It is more important to remember the main arguments from your readings than direct quotes.
• Examine the significance of the theories, events, and materials you learned about instead of just the content itself.
• Connect your readings to the content you learned in lectures or tutorials.

Writing Services, Wilfrid Laurier University, CC By-NC 2023