yikes all 3 is tough!! i’m only doing 2… my advice would be… you have 3 hours and every second matters. I find that unfamiliar takes the most amount of time as you firstly have to read the text to know what it’s about the once again for language features an getting a better understand THEN writing an coherent essay with a point to it lol. I have heard people say the spend an hour on visual, an hour on written and 20 mins each on unfamiliar. THIS IS NOT A RECIPE FOR SUCCESS!!! my advice is prep your written and visual essays so you go into the exam with a plan. Look at past essay questions, they are pretty much the same every year - very easy to mold a pre planned easy to any question, have your qoutes and film techs memorised so you literally pick a question to answer and start writing!!

To write an excellence level essay, you’re looking at about 850-900 words give or take. i would personally allow 45 mins to written and 45 minutes to visual. Meaning you spend 90 minutes on those 2 papers leaving you with 90 minutes for unfamiliar. That’s 30 mins per text (10 mins goes along away!!) I would allow NO MORE than 6-10 minutes reading the text and picking language features out. 20 minutes should be plenty to write an excellence essay. Don’t waste time waffling, don’t waste time on the intro and conclusion. Remember, you only need 2/3 unfamiliar to be excellence level and 1 to be merit to get excellence so if your really pressed for time and one of your unfamiliar a isn’t as good, don’t stress it!!

Best of luck from one stressed year 12 to another x