How long to write 500 words?

7 replies

DeWe · 04/12/2013 11:08

Last night dd1 (in year 8) had a history debate to write. She had to write: Introduction, her opinion, argument for, argument against, conclusion.
She'd done the research, knew her opinion... but it took her over 2 hours to write just over 500 words.
She likes everything to be perfect so reads, rereads, checks etc.

That evening I expressed surprise to dh that she had taken so long over it, I would have expected her to be able to do 700-800 words in an hour-in that situation I can do around 1500. (but not a perfectionist!)

Dh (v. intelligent, but also a perfectionist) said he thought it would take him about that long, or longer to do 500 words on a subject like that.

She's having problems keeping up with homework, and I was going to talk to her about working quickler after last night. Checking at the end rather than regularly all the way through.
However I'm not sure whether I have unrealistic expectations on how quickly she could be aiming to write.

But if dh is right... then the history teacher was setting unsuitable homework-it was meant to take maximum an hour and cover roughly one side of A4.

OP posts:

Artandco · 04/12/2013 11:14

500 words would take me about 20-30mins. But longer if it includes research

MrsSteptoe · 04/12/2013 11:20

I'm a very slow writer (and high scorer). 500 words if I knew what I wanted to say would take me about two hours. But looking at my own performance through adult eyes (and I've done many years of mature studying) I know that I've only been able to accommodate my own slow processes because I've had a lot of free time to study and if i start a full time MA, as I want to, I'm going to have to work harder on strategies for banging out work out more quickly. Sounds like your DS needs that too, or I'd be worried about her keeping up with all her homework.

Original poster

DeWe · 04/12/2013 13:39

Thanks. That's roughly what I thought.

I tried doing the homework myself last night and in an hour I managed to research (area I'm familiar, but not really known well) and write 1700 words. But I am quick, and I wasn't worrying too much about the exact flow etc.

Part of her problem is indecisiveness. She'll spend 20 minutes deciding which of two things to put in and things like that. And she's really bothered about the standard, so she can spend ages seeing if there's a better word in the thesaurus. Or she'll come over to tell me something that happened that day etc. All of which takes (to my mind) a 30 minute homework into a couple of evenings.

Actually the worst homework used to be art. None of us are arty. Combine perfectionist with not being very good at it... doesn't work. Took a very long time to draw an apple once. Just a pencil outline. She rubbed it out so often she rubbed a hol in the paper. Since then she's better, we set a deadline after which she can't start again. maybe I need to introduce something similar for other homework now.

OP posts:

MrsSteptoe · 04/12/2013 16:00

I found it quite helpful when my sister, who's an academic and a writer, told me to use a kitchen timer and write out an answer as if I were under exam conditions. Like your DD, I tend to agonise over good writing, and selection of appropriate research. Does she struggle with planning as well, preferring to just keep writing and let it emerge?

lljkk · 04/12/2013 19:41

To write well could easily take me 500 words (was something of a writing prodigy in my youth).

Original poster

DeWe · 05/12/2013 09:57

Mrs she overplans if anything. She had done about 6 pages of research, highlighted key information in three different colours etc. When she came to writing it up she used that-but probably only about 1/12 of the stuff she'd planned on.

I tried the timer. It doesn't work very well. However she does usually do well in exams, so maybe I'll ask her how she sorts her time out in exams.

OP posts:

MrsSteptoe · 05/12/2013 14:50

Yup, I recognise that too - my notes for a 2,000 word essay used to run to about 10,000 words. Then it would take me a week to get them down to a usable amount of information. It's possible that she doesn't know what her argument is before she starts, in which case she is just extracting everything from the research material and it'll then take her forever to get it down to a reasonable amount of information that allows her to present a discursive piece of work.
If I can find them, I'll PM you with extracts (Short!) from a couple of emails my Uni tutor sent me to try to help me with this - worst case scenario, it's no help whatsoever, bin the email and there's no harm done.

Flip