Fiducia TogetherEnglish exam technique
Also called Timing, Exam survival
How to spend the minutes. The most transferable thing you can revise for English.
Please note: This page explains a word or a process in education. It is general information about the system, the law and the guidance in England — not advice about your child, your school or your exam. If a decision is going against you, get advice from one of the free services we link to before you agree to anything or miss a deadline. If you are revising, check your own exam board's specification: boards word things differently and yours is the one that marks you.
What it is
Exam technique is the set of decisions about how long to spend on what, what to do first, and when to stop — as opposed to what you know.
Where it applies
Both English papers, and most of it transfers to other essay subjects.
How it works
English papers are almost always time-limited rather than knowledge-limited. Marks per minute is the governing arithmetic: a 4-mark question and a 30-mark question on the same paper should not get the same attention, and they routinely do.
Work out the minutes-per-mark before the exam, write the finishing time for each question on the paper, and move on when the time is up even mid-sentence.
How to use it in your work
Plan for five minutes on a long answer. It feels like lost time and it is not: unplanned essays repeat themselves.
Answer the question asked. The single most common examiner comment is that students wrote a prepared answer about the text rather than an answer to the question.
Leave the writing task enough time. It usually carries as many marks as the reading section and is usually the one that gets ten rushed minutes.
Where to get help
Past papers with a timer, and your board's examiners' reports. The English exam survival song is about exactly this.
Revise this with a song
These are ours. We write revision songs because a lot of people remember a tune when they cannot remember a page, and because revising out loud in the kitchen beats staring at a highlighter.
- The English Exam Survival Song How to approach the English papers under time pressure.
Where to read more
Last reviewed 2026-08-28 by Fiducia Together · Next review due 2027-08-28
Please note: This page explains a word or a process in education. It is general information about the system, the law and the guidance in England — not advice about your child, your school or your exam. If a decision is going against you, get advice from one of the free services we link to before you agree to anything or miss a deadline. If you are revising, check your own exam board's specification: boards word things differently and yours is the one that marks you.