In order to perform a detailed analysis of large deflection behaviour of a rectangular plate, an efficient semi-analytical method is developed in this paper. The method is called Incremental Galerkin Method. This method is successfully applied to plates with initial deflection subjected to in-plane and out-of-plane loads to obtain the whole histories of the behaviour of these plates. Application of this method to rectangular plates with initial deflection is presented. Comparisons of results obtained by this method with those obtained by other methods are made and the validity of the method is demonstrated.