Have you ever been in a situation where you have appeared in an exam and half way through the exam your pen has stopped working, interrupting the flow of your thought and disturbing your speed of writing? Or you have ever found yourself drifting away from writing a superb paper to daydreaming about something, which hampers your concentration and affects the accuracy of writing?

If your answer is yes for the situations stated above, then you definitely have an issue in hand to combat. It is common with many students that their speed and accuracy gets distracted right during the examination. But it is not a big problem and can be sorted out by keeping a few points in mind.

Increasing speed to get more marks:
Where achieving a good writing speed in exams or increasing the speed majorly depends on how much written practice you have done and how conversant you are with writing huge volumes; there are certain other factors which you might tend to ignore while writing examinations, but which can help you achieve a good speed.

1. Power of cursive writing: Remember how much time and effort your primary school English teacher had put in teaching you cursive writing? It was not just to make your handwriting look beautiful. Cursive writing means writing in a flow without having to lift the pen too many times. Lesser the lifts, more the time saved!
2. Using a comfortable pen: Many of you would believe in taking your lucky pens to the exams, and it is quite common. But it is very important that you should do a writing practice with your lucky pen to ensure that it gives you a comfortable writing experience. Also, it is unadvisable to use brand new pens for your exams as they may be rough on the paper initially.
3. Keep extra pens: Your pen stops working whilst writing an answer! As discussed earlier, it happens with you or someone else in every exam, doesn’t it? So keep extra pens with you. And keep the same kind of pen because it is easier adapting the same feel of the pen to maintain a flow of writing. Also make sure that these extra pens have been used by you and are smooth in writing.
4. Warming up: On the examination day, during revision in the morning, attempt writing a couple of answers. It will give you a good warming up exercise to ensure that you write the exam with a good speed and your fingers don’t feel cramped.
5. Do not hold or press the pen tightly: Holding the pen very tightly strains your fingers and affects the speed of writing. So hold the pen lightly. If holding lightly doesn’t provide a good grip, then hold just moderately tight. Also, never press the pen heavily on the sheet. It will just drain you out of energy during the course of examination and you will feel tired and irritated.
6. Avoid wearing bangles or rings: Wearing jewellery should be kept to a minimum because it also affects the speed with which you write the examination.

Increasing accuracy in the examination:

Accuracy in examination is a very important factor, which cannot be ignored if you want to achieve good marks. It is challenging to achieve both speed and accuracy together, as you have a time limit to abide by. You should look into the following points in order to ensure maximum concentration and focus in order to maintain accuracy.

1. Forget all problems, tensions and anxiety: There might be circumstances at home or elsewhere which are eating into your peace of mind, or it could be some unfinished future work. You have to let go of all the tensions and remember that you have a time bound examination where you can either give your best, worst or moderate performance. The choice is in your hands. The rest of the world can wait for the time being.
2. Avoid taking loo breaks: The loo break may seem like a welcome break at times, but it hinders your thought process and thus may affect accuracy if you are amidst writing an answer. You should always go the restroom before your exam starts.
3. Feeling fresh: Feeling fresh from inside boosts your focus and concentration a lot. This can be achieved by several factors:
   1. Have a good night’s sleep and wake up feeling refreshed.
   2. Have a healthy breakfast free from caffeine. Remember that food is the fuel for your body and mind to work accurately.
   3. Take blessing from parents and elders, it will definitely motivate you towards focusing on your goal.
4. Write in a moderate speed: Remember that your brain functions in a particular speed. So do not write too fast that your thought process gets muddled and you are unable to think.
5. Do not check what other students are doing: There might be students who will ask for five extra sheets, some super kids who will finish the exam half an hour prior to the finish time, or even some of your friends who would keep looking here and there. Don’t feel distracted. Instead concentrate on what you have in hand and avoid making mistakes.