Writing
Time Management
C1 Advanced Exam
In this section:
Strategies for managing your time when completing two Cambridge Writing Tasks at the same time.
Time Management
During the Writing paper, you will need to complete two compositions. Both texts are the same amount of words and worth the same amount of points. Therefor, you should try to spend equal amounts of time on both tasks. On the C1 Advanced exam, you should aim to spend around 45 minutes per text.
Make sure that you give plan to both plan and check your work. Planning will actually help you write faster and will result in better pieces.
Suggested breakdown per task:
Planning - 10 minutes
Writing - 30 minutes
Checking - 5 minutes
A lot of people want to skip the planning stage and immediately start writing. However, this often leads to disorganized essays and can lead to frustration. It's actually much wiser to plan your writing.
Having a plan will:
help your piece be more organized, leading to a higher mark for organization
help you with idea generation
make it easier to double-check that you've done everything required in the task, leading to a higher mark under content
make the writing process will be much easier and faster
result in writing which is easier to read, leading to a higher score under communicative achievement.
Planning is actually really easy and not a waste of time at all. In fact, all high-scoring pieces begin with plans.
Doing both tasks together
You have approximately 45 minutes per task. However, you do not need to completely finish one task before starting the next.
I suggest doing the following:
Plan the First Task - 10 minutes
Write the First Task - 30 minutes
Plan the Second Task - 10 minutes
Write the Second Task - 30 minutes
Check the First Task - 5 minutes
Check the Second Task - 5 minutes
It's very easy to overlook errors when you've been editing a text for a long time and I'm sure you've noticed this in your native language as well. For this reason, I like using the above strategy when working on two tasks as I find it gives my mind a bit of a break, and helps me catch more errors.