How do I write a successful essay under exam conditions?

It can be difficult to make sure that you are answering the question that has been asked of you under the stress of exam conditions. To overcome this I would recommend that you first make a checklist at the top of your page. Depending on the exam board that you are taking, you can access the percentages of each assessment objective online and this can help to guide your checklist. You can then refer back to this as you're writing to make sure you are ticking all of the boxes the examiner is looking for, such as quotes, analysis and context either in every paragraph or at least in the essay as a whole. Before writing the essay you should also factor in around five minutes of planning in which you should bullet-point the structure you are going to follow. This could follow the PEAL structure; for each paragraph work out what your Point is, find an Example (a quote from the text), Analyse this, and then Link it back to your original point. After these planning stages you can get to writing, and hopefully the exam stress should have reduced given that you know exactly what you are going to write. While writing, keep in mind the 'mark a minute' rule. This can help you to work out how much time you should be spending on each question. So, for example, if the question is worth 20 marks you should spend approximately 20 minutes writing.