Why you should plan your answer

“If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail!” is one of the most well known saying from Benjamin Franklin. This phrase is true for much of life including writing HSC exam answers. If you don’t have a plan how do you know where you are going? How do you know what you should write next? How are you going to write an answer that flows well and connects together? Answer: you wont.

Let me give you a short list of the benefits of planing your answer:

  • You can check that you are including all the relevant important pieces of information.
  • You know what you are going to write next.
  • You can piece together an argument or even just a description that is “logical and cohesive” (part of the marking criteria for your options).
  • You can preface (mention before it happens) content you are going to write.
  • Your writing is more likely to make sense.
  • You are able to check that your answer will actually answer the question before you write it.
  • You can get feedback on your plan and improve your answer before you invest the time to write it.
  • Your plan will be marked in an exam.

I could give you some more, but I think you’ve got the point.

How to plan your answer

There are lots of ways you could plan your answer. My personal favourite is to make a mindmap with the question in the middle and then you have aline coming off to each key point, which will become their own paragraph. From there I then list 4 things:

  1. A definition of the topic.
  2. Some points to mention as I expand on the topic.
  3. An example or 2 I can use in the paragraph.
  4. How this answers the question and/or links to the next paragraph topic.

Of course you could just throw down a few dot points and then number them in the order you are going to write them. You could also scribble a few ideas on the page before you get writing. Some of this depends on how good you are at writing and how well you know the content. basically, you want to make sure you know what you are going to write and in what order before you begin.

Example

Question

Which type and methods of training would be used to improve the performance of a striker in football?

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