‘How much am I supposed to write?’ must be one of the most frequent questions students ask themselves when faced with descriptive essay type handwritten answers in English literature examination. Tom Benton [Cambridge Assessment, Research Division]: “I remember this question being asked by someone in the class nearly every time… Despite the ubiquity of the question, clear answers are hard to come by.” Previous research has shown that the length of responses does have some association with achievement and also provided some norms around the possible writing speed. Tom Benton’s study shows that – “Nearly all responses of fewer than 200 words resulted in a grade U, suggesting that whilst very long answers are not necessary for a good mark, candidates must write enough to make sure that the examiner can recognize their knowledge at all.” With this in mind it would be a good advice for all candidates, even those who are not expecting to achieve the highest grades, to ensure that they write at least a significant number of pages in response to an English Literature exam question allowing 30 minutes to write descriptive answer. But exactly how long shall a student write? How many words shall an answer consist of? How many pages or lines shall be produced in writing descriptive answer?

1. Quantifying the Relation among
Marks, Length and Time Duration in
Hand-written Descriptive Answers in
English Studies
Department of English
Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University, Gujarat, India
english@mkbhavuni.edu.in
19 July 221

2. The Context

3. The Context
•‘How much am I supposed to write?’ must be one of the
most frequent questions students ask themselves when
faced with descriptive essay type handwritten answers in
English literature examination.
•Tom Benton [Cambridge Assessment, Research Division]: “I
remember this question being asked by someone in the class
nearly every time… Despite the ubiquity of the question,
clear answers are hard to come by.”

4. There are good reasons not to answer this
question.
•First and foremost is the fact that the quality of an answer is
not determined by the quantity of writing (Benton).
•For example, no published mark scheme for GCSEs will
specify the amount that candidates are supposed to write
but rather will rightly point markers towards the skill the
assessment is supposed to be measuring; for example, in
the case of English literature , the extent to which
candidates have identified the key features of the text they
are studying and are able to communicate effectively.

5. With these points in mind . . .
• . . . it is understandable if teachers
want to make sure the student’s efforts
are focused on producing a high-quality
answer to the question and not on
meeting some arbitrary target in terms
of how much to write (Benton).

6. Quality matters the most . . . But . . .
• There is in no way arguing against the overriding importance of
high-quality content, it is reasonable for students to want
some guide to how much is expected in terms of length
(Benton).
• An older BBC Bitesize guide to English Literature GCSE
suggested that for a 45-minute examination students might
have a target of roughly 450 words – whilst also providing
some more specific advice around time management and
practice in structuring an essay. (BBC Bitesize)

7. Murray, K.W., & Orii, N. (2012).
Automatic Essay Scoring
•The relationship between the length of responses
and the marks awarded to them has long been
established within the field of automatic essay
scoring.
•To take one example, Murray and Orii (2012)
describe their own attempts to build a statistical
model to achieve accurate essay scoring as part
of a machine-learning competition.

8. Perelman, L. (2014). When the “state of the
art” is counting words, Assessing Writing
• Indeed, the extent to which automatic essay scoring algorithms can
rely upon essay length has been criticized in research literature.
• For example, Perelman (2014, p.104) stated that “automated Essay
Scoring engines grossly and consistently over-privilege essay length
in computing student writing scores” showing that, for the essays in
this same competition, estimated scores from seven commercial
vendors of automatic essay scoring were far more strongly related to
word counts than was the case when human marking was used.
• No research on linking the length of hand-written answers with the
grades.

9. What is the average speed of hand-writing
answers under typical exam condition?
• Waine, l. (2001). Writing speed: What constitutes
‘slow’? an investigation to determine the average
writing speed of year 10 pupils
• Study 1: students wrote on average between 14 and
18 words per minute
• Study 2: the mean writing speed of Year 10 students
was 15 words per minute and that speeds between
10 and 20 words per minute were within the typical
range.

10. •Similar research published by PATOSS (the
professional association of teachers of students with
specific learning difficulties) shows that, in a 20-
minute free writing task, Year 10 students write at an
average of 16 words per minute which rises to 17
words per minute for Year 11 students (Patoss).
•Other research shows that when 16-year-old students
are simply copying text they can write considerably
even faster; at over 20 words per minute on average
whilst writing neatly for 2 minutes, and at over 30
words per minute when writing as fast as possible
(Barnett, Henderson, Scheib, & Schulz, 2009).

11. •Previous research has shown that the length of
responses does have some association with
achievement and also provided some norms around
the possible writing speed.
•Tom Benton’s study shows that –
•“Nearly all responses of fewer than 200 words resulted
in a grade U, suggesting that whilst very long answers
are not necessary for a good mark, candidates must
write enough to make sure that the examiner can
recognize their knowledge at all.”

13. •With this in mind it would be a good advice for all
candidates, even those who are not expecting to
achieve the highest grades, to ensure that they write
at least a significant number of pages in response to
an English Literature exam question allowing 30
minutes to write descriptive answer.
•But exactly how long shall a student write?
•How many words shall an answer consist of?
•How many pages or lines shall be produced in
writing descriptive answer?

14. To quantify the relation among time, number
of words and marks . . .
•We relied on Tom Benton’s study (Benton).
•Guidelines prescribed by Board of Studies in
English, University of Calcutta (BoS).
•Sample writings by the students of Department
of English, MKBU

16. Sample writing by 18 students of MKBU
•In 30 minutes, the students were able to write
610 words (average 600 words).
•In 30 minutes, the students were able to write
126 lines.

17. Students’ Write-up: Some issues . . .

18. 804
770
643
716
624
628
623
565
668
629
562
480
505
665
607
403
521
486
894
797
764
748
686
683
663
610
607
566
551
547
540
537
530
515
436
377
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18
STUDENTS' WRITE-UP: WORDS IN 30 MINUTES
Copied Write-up writing in exam condition

19. 32
64
90
94
97
98
107
107
113
117
117
125
125
130
134
134
165
190
28
87
96
111
95
132
127
96
135
116
174
150
135
109
148
149
170
220
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18
STUDENTS' WRITE-UP: NUMBER OF LINES WRITTEN IN 30 MINUTES
Copied Write-up writing in exam condition

20. Sample writing by 18 students of MKBU
•In 30 minutes, the students were able to write
610 words (average 600 words).
•In 30 minutes, the students were able to write
126 lines.

21. Final outcome
and
Recommendations

22. Quantifying Object 1 Quantifying Object 2 Based on
1 mark 1 min 48 seconds (108 sec) 100 marks : 180 minutes
1 min 20 words Students sample write-ups
1 mark 36 words 60 sec 20 words: 108 sec 36 words
1 word 3 seconds
For the exam of 90 minutes – 3 Questions of 14 marks each – total 42 marks
14 marks 504 words 96 words = 288 sec saved
30 minutes 600 words So, 4 min 48 sec to re-read answer
7 marks 252 words 48 words = 144 sec saved
15 minutes 300 words So, 2 min 24 sec to re-read answer
1 line 4.5 words Student sample write-up
600 words 125 lines (rounded off) Student sample write-up
300 words 62.5 lines Student sample write-up

23. How many pages?
1 Page 32 Lines 25 actual lines used
14 marks
30 minutes
504 to 600
words
105 to 125 lines = 4/5 pages
7 marks
15 minutes
252 to 300
words
53 to 63 lines = 2 - 2 ½ pages

24. Blurred images to conceal identity

25. Blurred images to conceal identity

26. Thank you.
•This is not the conclusion. This is just the beginning.
•We still need to scientifically investigate:
• Students’ hand-writing speed
• co-relation between normal writing and writing under
duress of exam condition
• Human capacity to hand-write lengthy descriptive
answers
• Co-relation between marks and time

27. References
Barnett, a. l., Henderson, S. E., Scheib, B., & Schulz, J. (2009). Development and standardization of a new
handwriting speed test: The Detailed assessment of Speed of Handwriting. In BJEP Monograph Series II,
Number 6-Teaching and Learning, 137–157. British psychological Society. available online at:
https://doi.org/10.1348/000709909X421937
BBC Bitesize. http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/english_literature/
Benton, Tom. (2017). How much do I need to write to gettop marks? Research Matters: A Cambridge Assessment
publication. ©UCLES
BoS in English. (2018). Guidelines for Syllabus and Paper Pattern. University of Calcutta.
Murray, K.W., & Orii, N. (2012). Automatic Essay Scoring. available online at:
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/Web/people/norii/pub/aes.pdf
Patoss. (2012). https://www.patoss-dyslexia.org/Supportadvice/InformationSheets/2012-09-
02/Handwritingassessment/. (Retrieved 28 June 2017).
Perelman, L. (2014). When the “state of the art” is counting words, Assessing Writing, 21, 104–111. available
online at: https://doi.org/10.1016/ j.asw.2014.05.001
Waine, l. (2001). Writing speed: What constitutes ‘slow’? an investigation to determine the average writing speed
of year 10 pupils. In Rose, R. & Grosvenor, I. (Eds.), Doing research in special education: Ideas into practice, 75–
87. London: David Fulton publishers.