Feeling really demotivated and helpless in english advanced (1 Viewer)

[hafsah_]

i would recommend not dropping to standard unless you genuinely think you can't handle advanced, but especially if you're aiming to maximise your atar - because the cohort in standard is 'less' academically capable as a whole compared to advanced (because most of the 'good' and 'capable' english students tend to do advanced anyways), standard aligns lower. in most cases it's better to stay in advanced. most of the time the workload is the same in both standard and advanced anyway, so the notion of freeing up time by picking standard isn't really true.

i get it, it sucks so much to get continually shredded again and again for english; throughout the whole year i had teachers and tutors pick apart my work - i had someone once even called my draft essay 'a waste of space' because of all the convolution, the redundant sentences and the waffly expressions that needed to be reworded (stuff you are getting too). but i will also say that if you continuously and consistently put in effort to act on that feedback and genuinely put in care to avoid what you got shredded for before then you'll definitely be able to improve in writing essays, by that, i mean putting in a bunch of effort, say probably dedicating 30 min-40 min to english a day (in the period that isn't leading up to assessments) analysing, practising paragraphs, drafting essays to prep for future exams, etc. try to analyse your texts and write down draft essays outside of class, adapting to various practice hsc and trial questions so you have a better grasp of what you are doing and how much you understand the text. try to supplement that with exemplars from state rankers/high ranking students/hsc nesa workbook, annotate them and see what they're doing and try to emulate that in your own essays.

and most importantly - keep on writing drafts, keep on getting that feedback. yes, it can be disheartening to write an essay only for it to continually be shredded, but it is in my opinion the only effective way that gets you to write a better essay, and even then it's dependent on whether you actually act on improving it. before my assessments i wrote 4-5 drafts for each module's generic essay, one per week leading up to the assessments (of course, that was overboard; 2-3 should suffice but if you want to do more based on the feedback you get then that's up to you), and every week they would get shredded, and i would end up having to polish it and fix it over the next week before it got submitted again for feedback again and again until i got something that the people who gave me feedback were happy with. all of that did pay off - i would go into exams and never get an essay mark below 18/20. get your teachers and your friends to continually give you good feedback, if this isn't possible, maybe hire a private tutor. i genuinely think if you're willing to put in the effort, you can definitely pull your rank up. a friend of mine improved drastically and went from a rank close to 100 to top 40 as her final rank when she started putting way more effort into english after term 4, i'm 100% certain you can, too

I'm by no means good in english myself, but please don't give up! For english just never give up! Don't ever let the 'emotional' side really affect you because it can be structural! What I recommend is to go get some state ranking/ exemplars essays and study them (preferably on the text you are studying ofc), note down juicy phrases to use in your own essays and also how they make they argument succinct, language concise etc.

Heyy,

When I take a few hours to write an essay with the quotes in front of me, I get a 18/20, but in exams, I seem to always get a mark below 15/20 . Usually, for me, my analysis is good but it's my structure that messes me up badly, and I can't seem to find any good essays with a good structure related to the texts I'm studying (The Crucible - Arthur Miller, King Richard III - William Shakespeare, Emma - Jane Austen, and The Awakening - Kate Chopin).

Is there any website other than AceHSC and BoS that I can find exemplar essays from??

Thank you so much.

 

[...xD]

Heyy,

When I take a few hours to write an essay with the quotes in front of me, I get a 18/20, but in exams, I seem to always get a mark below 15/20 . Usually, for me, my analysis is good but it's my structure that messes me up badly, and I can't seem to find any good essays with a good structure related to the texts I'm studying (The Crucible - Arthur Miller, King Richard III - William Shakespeare, Emma - Jane Austen, and The Awakening - Kate Chopin).

Is there any website other than AceHSC and BoS that I can find exemplar essays from??

Thank you so much.

Could you please elaborate on what aspects of structure you are unsure about? Like for example is it about the overall coherency of your essay, content, context, form or just language that you are lacking in your assessment paper?

Regarding where to find more exemplar essays, maybe you could try asking your teacher for some? Personally I find free BoS stuff + paid BoS stuff + teacher exemplars more than enough for my structural analysis (like although it would definitely be more helpful for the essays to be on your text, but I unsure of other places to get exemplars sorry).

 

[pikachu975]

I'm not an English person. I'm more of STEM, not one who reads, analyses, etc etc. I picked English advanced for the purpose of it scaling higher but at this point I do not really care as much.

The entire subject just... its not for me. I feel its useless. I'm hesitant to drop it but I do want to keep it. My year 11 ranking was 11th out of 22nd, with preliminary ranking being 8th.

Embarassing thing is that I've never recieved an A in english in my entire life. It's as if no matter what I write, I won't get anything past a mid B.

I write a paragraph and then ask a classmate to review it and they just annihilate the entire thing with "delete this", "redundant sentence", "reword this".

Its just from my previous experiences that I feel so helpless and unmotivated to do any English work. I want to drop down to standard to let the weight off my shoulders. This might also help me focus on my science subjects more. Anyone else like this or just me?

I'd appreciate any advice regarding moving down to standard, how to write better etc.

I was doing pretty badly memorising essays because I wasn't answering the question enough (in the feedback I got), so I started just memorising quotes and making the essay up in the exam and ended up making a comeback and getting a 91 in english.

Basically if you're not good at english like myself, just keep the vocabulary simple (mine was basic) and write simple sentences that convey your themes. In the paragraphs just follow a basic structure for all the essays like topic sentence introducing your theme + how it relates to the essay question, 2-4 quotes backed up by analysis and how that quote links to the theme + essay question, then a closing sentence summarising it. Other than that just chuck some linking words in to make it flow like "thus", "in addition", "furthermore", "in doing this", etc.

In summary just keep it simple with good analysis and make it flow since so many people focus on using bigger words and writing their essays with sentences sounding like Shakespeare which should be focused on by people getting 95+ not us

 

[Ksalu]

To get university-level analysis on english, you don't necessarily have to contact uni academics. Just read up some academic articles and journals, it basically contains the same content.

 

[HazzRat]

To get university-level analysis on english, you don't necessarily have to contact uni academics. Just read up some academic articles and journals, it basically contains the same content.

That's pretty much how I started getting 20/20 in english essays. Basically I'd go to jstor and ctrl c + ctrl v

(don't wanna jinx myself this year tho)

 

[hafsah_]

Could you please elaborate on what aspects of structure you are unsure about? Like for example is it about the overall coherency of your essay, content, context, form or just language that you are lacking in your assessment paper?

Regarding where to find more exemplar essays, maybe you could try asking your teacher for some? Personally I find free BoS stuff + paid BoS stuff + teacher exemplars more than enough for my structural analysis (like although it would definitely be more helpful for the essays to be on your text, but I unsure of other places to get exemplars sorry).

By structure, I mean that my teacher would reply with "explain", "elaborate", so I guess it isn't coherent enough and my reflections need working on. I believe I use a middle-range of vocab when it comes to my essays, so it's not basic but it's not a WOW either. In regards to my feedback on context and content, my analysis is usually never the problem, but the way I word my sentences needs improving.

For the essay exemplars, do you just use any? Like even if it isn't related to what you're studying??


Thankss sm

 

[hafsah_]

That's pretty much how I started getting 20/20 in english essays. Basically I'd go to jstor and ctrl c + ctrl v

(don't wanna jinx myself this year tho)

To get university-level analysis on english, you don't necessarily have to contact uni academics. Just read up some academic articles and journals, it basically contains the same content.

Heyy,

Idk if this is basic human knowledge but when you're on jstor, do you just search up any essays? For example, I'm doing King Richard III and Looking for Richard as my comparative texts for Mod A so would I just search those texts up?

And for Uni articles, the same thing ^^. What I'm confused about is finding an essay and not just info on the texts, if that makes sense.

Thankss smm

 

[Ksalu]

to find exemplar essays either on the resources tab on BOS or acehsc. Just search up on google and a bunch of resources should pop up.

Jstor usually doesnt have any comparative essays but I find it as a good resource to get good bits of analysis that is usually not covered in class.

 

[hafsah_]

to find exemplar essays either on the resources tab on BOS or acehsc. Just search up on google and a bunch of resources should pop up.

Jstor usually doesnt have any comparative essays but I find it as a good resource to get good bits of analysis that is usually not covered in class.

With Jstor, it requires me to log in from a school or library? Does that show up for you too? But yeah, I'm sure I'll find something online.

All the best!

 

[Ksalu]

By structure, I mean that my teacher would reply with "explain", "elaborate", so I guess it isn't coherent enough and my reflections need working on. I believe I use a middle-range of vocab when it comes to my essays, so it's not basic but it's not a WOW either. In regards to my feedback on context and content, my analysis is usually never the problem, but the way I word my sentences needs improving.

For the essay exemplars, do you just use any? Like even if it isn't related to what you're studying??


Thankss sm

Middle-range vocab is fine.

I think "elaborate" and "explain" is less so structure but more so a lack of depth in analysis? Perhaps you only said that a certain literary technique does a certain thing without further explaining why the composer did it or how it connects back to the overall argument?

Structure is more so to do with the organization of ur analysis and how well one piece of analysis flows on to another

For me, i read essay exemplars that cover my text and dont cover my text. I use bits of analysis from exemplars that cover my text while I try to imitate the style of an exemplar that doesnt cover my text. hopefully this makes sense?

 

[Ksalu]

With Jstor, it requires me to log in from a school or library? Does that show up for you too? But yeah, I'm sure I'll find something online.

All the best!

Im very lucky that my school covers jstor for me

 

[...xD]

By structure, I mean that my teacher would reply with "explain", "elaborate", so I guess it isn't coherent enough and my reflections need working on. I believe I use a middle-range of vocab when it comes to my essays, so it's not basic but it's not a WOW either. In regards to my feedback on context and content, my analysis is usually never the problem, but the way I word my sentences needs improving.

For the essay exemplars, do you just use any? Like even if it isn't related to what you're studying??


Thankss sm

Ohh... To my understanding, when I get 'explain' or 'elaborate' as feedback, its usually either because my analysis didn't link to my topic sentence clear enough, or my link was too vague/ unable to be inferred from my analysis (loll happens more common if I'm going from technique -> idea and not idea -> technique). Language wise, its always better to be clear + concise > just throw fancy words. It helps to write your first draft with language as basic as possible, before transitioning to more sophisticated phrasing + vocabulary when editing and refining.

I sometimes find a few exemplars on my prescribed text if I get lucky, but most of the time, I just read a bunch of the 19/20~ 20/20 essays out there and search around a bit for some critical readings to read on websites like jstor.

 

[hafsah_]

Im very lucky that my school covers jstor for me

Must be fun

 

[hafsah_]

Ohh... To my understanding, when I get 'explain' or 'elaborate' as feedback, its usually either because my analysis didn't link to my topic sentence clear enough, or my link was too vague/ unable to be inferred from my analysis (loll happens more common if I'm going from technique -> idea and not idea -> technique). Language wise, its always better to be clear + concise > just throw fancy words. It helps to write your first draft with language as basic as possible, before transitioning to more sophisticated phrasing + vocabulary when editing and refining.

I sometimes find a few exemplars on my prescribed text if I get lucky, but most of the time, I just read a bunch of the 19/20~ 20/20 essays out there and search around a bit for some critical readings to read on websites like jstor.

Yeahh I find that integrating your techniques and quotes are very important, and figuring out which one is the best to be used. My link is always rubbish and needs a lot of working on because I just rewrite the question majority of the time, especially when I'm in a rush.

Would you say now is a good time to start writing a base essay for Common Mod??

Does your school cover jstor for you too ?


Thanks for the feedback!!

 

[...xD]

Yeahh I find that integrating your techniques and quotes are very important, and figuring out which one is the best to be used. My link is always rubbish and needs a lot of working on because I just rewrite the question majority of the time, especially when I'm in a rush.

Would you say now is a good time to start writing a base essay for Common Mod??

Does your school cover jstor for you too ?


Thanks for the feedback!!

Glad that the feedback has been somewhat helpful!

Maybe try preparing and memorising the links to a rubric related topic sentence? It should help lower the pressures during the actual exam?

Regarding the base essay for the common mod, I'm not sure if all schools do the modules in the same order but we have already done our exam on it in term 4 and therefore pretty much already have the base essay prepared for trials... Which module have you guys been tested on so far?

And yeah I guess our school kinda covers jstor in the sense that our class teacher distributes lots of critical readings in soft copy to us, so we always have a database we can go to if needed.

 

[Jelly_jj]

Must be fun

Get a library card from the State Library of NSW, that will let you access JSTOR under their institution

 

[MJRey]

also this is my trump card: most school teachers can mark an essay- what i mean by that is that they are trained to teach english on a low level- they just dont have the scholarly knowledge or acumen to analyse texts by themselves to the degree that, if you use, will get you good marks. I'm talking about the english teachers i've seen, there are obviously some exceptions.

Absolutely agree with this. Luckily for me, my teacher, who I had for Advanced and both extensions, was actually an English lecturer at UNSW and a professional writer. They always gave me the most comprehensive feedback and their insights into all the texts I studied were so sophisticated. They were the kind of person who would also give my class extra critical readings on our texts, going above and beyond your typical english teachers who just rely on sparknotes or litnotes to teach texts they don't fully understand themselves.

 

[raindance42]

I was talked into English Advanced rather than English Standard, and I actually did pretty well. Advanced and Standard required the same standard of writing, it's just the standard texts are easier to approach.

Short answer / P1S1 was fairly easy for me, as you don't need to sustain an argument for very long. just remember, quote + technique + effect.
good techniques for visual are: colour, contrast, vector lines, contrast, symbolism.
other good techniques: pov (1st vs 2nd vs 3rd), statistics, metaphor, simile, exclamation.

for essays, what I really struggled with, was that you're not actually supposed to answer the question. my teacher's main feedback for the trial was that too many people in my class were answering the question. really, what they want, is the question to guide you to a thesis, and then the essay is arguing the thesis. they like thematic stuff.

then you just find quote + technique + effect. i got most of mine from various websites from people much smarter and better at english than me. then I could just learn and adapt them. personally i also found doing 2 paragraphs, each for a different key concept, worked best. just quote + effect + analysis for one, then onto the next one, etc.

In particular, I found talking about context easiest: Keats' imminent death led him to present mortality as... / Campion's feminist perspect led her to present [female character]'s experience...

What texts are you studying?

 

[Aeonium]

Im very lucky that my school covers jstor for me

me stealing nsb's jstor

 

[Nacseo]

I'm not an English person. I'm more of STEM, not one who reads, analyses, etc etc. I picked English advanced for the purpose of it scaling higher but at this point I do not really care as much.

The entire subject just... its not for me. I feel its useless. I'm hesitant to drop it but I do want to keep it. My year 11 ranking was 11th out of 22nd, with preliminary ranking being 8th.

Embarassing thing is that I've never recieved an A in english in my entire life. It's as if no matter what I write, I won't get anything past a mid B.

I write a paragraph and then ask a classmate to review it and they just annihilate the entire thing with "delete this", "redundant sentence", "reword this".

Its just from my previous experiences that I feel so helpless and unmotivated to do any English work. I want to drop down to standard to let the weight off my shoulders. This might also help me focus on my science subjects more. Anyone else like this or just me?

I'd appreciate any advice regarding moving down to standard, how to write better etc.

Nah I get you, start of year 11 english was so ass the only time i felt smart in that class was explaining what a metaphor was on the first day it beat my ass the first few terms like I was in bottomest ranks. But since year 12 i started locking in, looking at what past essays did better than what i did and spamming feedback to teachers, ex-tutors and even teachers from other schools (don't tell nesa) and then I was like rank 27/181 avging high band 5s to low band 6s throughout year 12. If u got a good teacher who checks urdrafts over holidays its a W cause loads dont do that, esp mine, i asked that and she said "r u corrupt w retardation", I came first in her class after that for trials btw.

But overall, things will get better for english if you really put in the work. You can easily b5 it or b6 it by combining bunch of b6 essay exemplar together in a cohesive manner tho but if u wanna do ur own thing then go for it.

Hope this helps