There are a number of essential elements that you may wish to consider in terms of your preparations for the HAST:
- Read a range of texts. These can be texts that you are interested in and/or texts that you believe would enable you to develop your writing skills. Reading is useful because it allows you to focus and understand the different literary techniques that authors incorporate into their texts and the ways in which they do so. This will subsequently enable you to learn those techniques and potentially use them in your own writing.
- Maximise practice, because practice makes perfect. You should attempt writing in response to various stimuli, as this can increase your ideas and allow you to form patterns that can assist you in quickly thinking of ideas on the day.
- Seek feedback. This is a good way of assessing the quality of each response that you write. You should ask your teacher whether they would be happy to provide you with feedback and suggestions regarding the quality of your writing, which you can implement going forward.
Additionally, keep in mind that, while the quality of your writing is of course important, so is the structure of your response. Because of this, a good-quality response that is also well structured (including a title and paragraphs where applicable) is likely to receive a higher mark than a good-quality response that lacks a good structure.
I hope this helps!
