Timed or not

For almost all kinds of writing practice essays, I would recommend doing it timed. No matter which of the following approaches you choose, doing it timed helps you to learn how limited time is in the exam. For D3 essays it means approximately 40 minutes per essay. Either give yourself a little less time to account for the examnerves or other questions taking up a little more time – or give your self a little extra time as you want to practice structure. Try doing the essay under time first – then go away for a while and come back and look at it with fresh eyes – what would you like to change? Revise the essay and write down what to focus on next time you do a practice essay! 

If the exam is very far away and you are just getting into writing the examformat essays and reading the book, then it can be fine to do a few essays without time restraint. Then focus on the essay as a way to revise a topic and what structure is expected from you. 

Open or closed book? 

Open book

Writing essays with the book open is especially great in the beginning of your studies when the exam is far away. You can use the essay to revise the chapter and help you to put what you just read into different contexts of essay questions. It can also be beneficial if you are revising before the exam and haven’t read about the topic in a while, so instead of panicking that you can’t remember anything about it, use the book and revise this way. 

When doing the practise-essay with open books, you can focus on the structure of the essay instead of the information. Practicing the structure many times for different essay formats will really help you in the exam situation. If the structure is already in your spine, you can focus on remembering factors and writing a brilliant essay! 

Even though you have the book and can get all the information you want from it, then try to be realistic about what level of detail you will be able to remember in the exam. And not only remember – the exam is written under quite a time pressure and hand-written, so there is a limit to how much information you will have time to add to your essay. So even though you could write 2000 words with all the details in this practice-essay, try to write a ‘standart’ of what you want to be able to write in the exam – how many words can you write in 40 minutes? And will you be able to remember the exact mm of rainfall per year in a region or rather that its low, adequate or high? 

Closed book after revision 

Whether you are just starting your studies or are close to the exam, revising the chapters and then do a practice essay is always a good option. 

If you are close to your examdate, it can be used to polish your structure and exam technique as you won’t stress so much about recalling information from the book. So focus on how you would structure the essay – what are they asking? Are there any hints on how to structure the essay or how the different parts of the question is weighted? 

If the exam is still far away in the horizon, this method can help you revise the information from the book – doing the essay with the book closed after revising it, will help your brain to storage the information as it has to actively recall what you just read. The more you force yourself to recall information, the more it will move from short term memory and into long term memory – and this is what we want! 

This approach will also give you a more realistic picture of what you would be able to do in the exam setting in terms of remembering factors. Even though you just read it, details such as exact yield numbers might already be forgotten. Focus on the impact of the details instead of the detail itself. Its more important to remember that rainfall in Bordeaux is high and this is why spraying is needed (the spray against fungi is literally called ‘Bordeaux Mixture’!). 

Closed book 

Doing the practice essays completely closed book is of course the most exam-like setting. 

I recommend doing a bunch of these before the actual exam to help you feel confident about the time restraint, how much you will be able to write and how much information you can recall. 

Of course this is great to do right before the exam, getting your minds ready for the exam. If you find there is something you struggle with in the essay, either recalling info or structure, then finish the essay anyway under time and then revise after. 

Even if the exam is far away, doing an essay or two completely closed book can help you set a marker on where you are at the moment and getting a clearer understanding on what you are expected to be able to do in terms of time restraint, memory and structure. It might be a little scary! Try doing the exact same essay two months later, and compare to the first essay. Look at how far you have come and how much better your structure and knowledge of the topic is!

So whether you do the essays open book, closed book or in between, the important part is that you are doing the essays! This will help you immensely towards feeling confident and passing the D3 exam – and this is our goal!