o.bi.sess
You feeling lucky, punk?
NB: I’m not saying that the only way to prepare for English Standard AoS is through my guide. If fact, a lot of my friends found my techniques to be downright weird. They are just suggestions and not to be taken as the be-all-and-end-all. However, they worked for me and I got a band 6 in Standard English so hopefully, you’ll also find something of value in this mother of all posts. I did Skrzynecki poems out of the set texts. I’m not sure if you still use the Stimulus booklet for 08 or if you have other prescribed texts. Please realise that this is an extremely long post and will be added to pending suggestions from forum-goers.
EDIT: HAVE BEEN INFORMED THAT NOT ALL STANDARD PEOPLE DO PHYSICAL JOURNEYS. DIDN'T KNOW THAT... MY TEACHER MADE IT SOUND AS IF ALL STANDARD CLASSES DO PHYSICAL.
THIS GUIDE IS BASED ON EXPERIENCE FROM 2007 HSC. I DID PHYSICAL JOURNEYS AND SKRZYNECKI AS SET TEXTS SO I'M REFERING TO THOSE AS EXAMPLES IN THIS GUIDE. I REALISE THAT NOT EVERYBODY DID THE COMBINATION THAT I DID. I ALSO REALISE THAT A LOT OF THINGS HAVE CHANGED, BUT I'M NOT TOO SURE ABOUT THOSE CHANGES. SO, TAKE THIS GUIDE AT FACE VALUE AND IGNORE ANYTHING THAT REFERS TO THINGS THAT'S BEEN CHANGED/DOES NOT APPLY TO YOU.
The AoS Paper
Just in case some of you don’t know the structure of the HSC, the English exam consists of two papers on two different days. Paper 1 is the Area of Study (AoS) paper and this is the “Journey Paper”. It has three sections:
Section 1: comprehension
Section 2: creative writing
Section 3: extended response
Paper 2 is the Modules Paper. It also has three sections, where each section corresponds to each of the modules you will learn in class. The text type they ask to answer the question in can be any type (letters, feature articles, essays, speeches, etc.).
Journey Concepts
By now, it should be clear that Physical Journeys (PJ) focuses on various concepts to do with Journeys. Some of these concepts include:
-All PJ’s have obstacles/hardships
-PJs lead to growth and enlightenment
-PJs change the person undergoing the journey
-PJs are beneficial to the traveller
-PJs always leads to new experiences
And so on and so forth.
The exam question has to be applied to all types of Journeys, including Imaginative and Inner, so the question is very broad and generic. Pro: You can usually talk about a lot of things to do with our texts. Con: Makes it very easy to wonder off-course and start rambling instead of answering question. However, the question will only focus on one aspect of the Journey. I find it a good idea to rework the question into the topic sentence of every paragraph just to group your thoughts and ensure that you’re still answering the question. It doesn’t matter if it doesn’t seem “sophisticated” enough because you would rather answer the question in an “unsophisticated” manner than ramble eloquently.
Related Texts
For my related texts, I did two magazine articles. One was from National Geographic (“The Thrill Gene”) and the other was from Wish (“Seachange”), the magazine that The Australian publishes every month or so. I recommend that you do not use them simply because they are too old. If you’re going to do a magazine article, you want one that corresponds with your HSC course period. Otherwise it just seems as if you didn’t put a lot of effort into it. In hindsight, I would not use two magazine articles. Again, makes you seem as if you were lazy.
Contrary to popular belief, you do not need more than two related texts for AoS. More than two texts will mean that you cannot analyse any of your texts in enough detail and this results in a lower mark than someone who only did two texts and analysed them well. You have to talk about 4-5 texts in your essay and do a relatively good job on all of them. Do yourself a favour and avoid a stress-induced heart attack by doing TWO related texts. Remember, quality, not quantity.
That being said, you really can’t get away with anything less than about 5 pages of the BoS booklet in normal handwriting. Not if you want a “high range” mark. (I feel like a hypocrite now
)
Practice “Essays”
Start doing NOW. If, like me, you have typed everything and anything to do with school work on the computer, you will find your hand sorely lacking when it comes to essay time. Try and do everything in all your subjects by hand as it will give you more practice. Don’t go “I’ll start practicing three months out” because that is not soon enough. You have to be able to write about 1200 - 1500 words in 40 minutes. That might not sound like a lot, but it is. I always thought I was a fast writer, but I struggled badly when I tried to do the essays in the allotted time.
The first few times you write essays don’t try to stick to the 40 minute rule. Just concentrate on getting the essay finished to a satisfactory standard. I remember that one essay took me three days because I couldn’t get it to flow and it didn’t do so well on the teacher front. T.T When you feel comfortable with all your texts, try to do the essay within a specified amount of time. It doesn’t even have to 40 minutes. Try to finish it within an hour the first time and slowly whittle your allotted time down.
Give the essays to your teacher to mark. If you didn’t get full marks, hound them for exact reasons as to why. Don’t let them get away with a vague “Your language wasn’t sophisticated enough” etc., etc. Ask them for detail so you don’t do the same thing next time. Don’t be discouraged if you get a bad mark the first few times. It does not matter. They are practice essays and mean shit all for the HSC. You have around 9 months. Even if you hand in one essay every two weeks, that’s a lot of essays and practice you’ve done.
I know I focused on essays, but do not just practice essays. The HSC can test all forms of texts, including letters, feature articles, newspaper articles, personal responses, speeches and essays. Although section three of Paper 1 tends to be a personal response/essay, the people up at BoS have been known to set feature articles and the like for it. Don’t box yourself in by thinking it’s only going to be an essay. It’s not.
Edit (3/1/08): Suggestion by Forbidden
Ask teachers or tutors to give you completely random questions whether the response is in the form of an essay, speech, interview or feature article and have either mark it once you made a response.
I did this days before our AoS paper and it was a real lifesaver.
I sat down with some A4 paper, gave myself forty minutes to respond to a question, typed it out then submitting it to my teacher via e-mail without any corrections to retain the consistency of my hand-written responses.
She picked out critical errors which could cost me valuable marks if they were in my actual HSC responses.
Practice Short Story
Section 2 of Paper 1 is a creative writing task. They can ask you for a specific type, such as short story or feature article, or they can just generalise. However, it will never be a poem as they don’t allow people to do that.
Personally, I had written a short story, moulded it to the question as best as I can and just shoved that into Section 2. Looking back, I’m not sure if that was the best option, simply because you never know what the prompt for the question will be. I know a lot of people don’t like to prepare and I don’t blame them. If the question isn’t right, your prepared story will not work. So if you do prepare a short story, be ready to ditch it at a moments notice. You have 10 minutes reading time. Decide then whether you’re going to use it or not.
Preparing Stuff in General
A lot of people I know prepared entire essays and such to regurgitate in the HSC. Like the short story thing, I didn’t really like it and I didn’t do it for Section 3. That is not to say that I didn’t know what I was going to talk about in the exam. For each text I did, I made notes about the concept(s) of the PJ that it corresponded to and how I would go on and explain that concept through the techniques.
Eg, if the question was about the benefits of a PJ, I would know which texts were about that concept and the techniques used because that was the way I organised my texts. Remember, the AoS focus is on the Journey and not the text. Besides, if you did a reasonable number of practice papers, you should have come across most of the concepts that BoS will ask about and already have a faint idea on how to answer the question.
Organising Time
In the exam, you have to be organised. Keep your eye on the time. I cannot stress the importance of time management enough. I try to aim for around 40 minutes per section, maybe taking 5-10 minutes from Section 2 to put into Section 3. However, to do well in Section 1, you would need the full 40 minutes.
If you find yourself going overtime, stop and just move on. You would rather do well in the other sections and come to back if you have the time than subsequently stuff up all the sections because you spent too much time on one.
Remember all the Sections are worth 15 marks. There's no use doing a really good Section 3 response and only getting a 5/15 for creative writing. The Sections are worth the same so it follows that you should spend roughly the same amount of time on all of them. The most I would take out of any one Section would be 10 minutes. Anything over that means you're neglecting that Section.
Comprehension
There is no other way to improve on this other than doing practice papers. Again, start off slow. You don’t have to stick to the 2 hour exam time at the beginning. As you begin to get the hang of it, start disciplining yourself and timing yourself. After you finish, get your teachers to mark it and ask for explanations/advice on places where you lost marks.
Don’t forget to spend time on the last question in Section 1. That question is usually worth 30% - 40% of the entire section, with 6 or 7 markers not unusual. You would need at least two pages of normal handwriting to get a good mark. Spend a good ten minutes on it. Judge how much you need to write by the marks given to the question. You would never write as much for a 1 marker as you would for a 3 marker. Spend your time wisely. You would rather lose a 1 marker than stuff up a 3 marker.
Choosing Set Texts
I'll use Skrzynecki poems as an example:
I know a lot of people go "I'm going to do these two Skrzynecki poems" before the HSC and spend all their time analysing them and nothing else. I do not like this approach simply because the poems might not fit the question and the concept of PJ. I analysed four of Skrzynecki's poem just picked the two that I thought fit the question the best. I mean, you have 9 months left and it's only four poems. Do enough practice essays and you'll have talked about all four at some stage in enough detail to know what to write in the HSC.
If you're going down the route of picking only two, then for God's sake choose two that explore more than one idea about PJs. At least you're slightly more covered this way. And yes, if you do Skrzynecki, do two poems, not one. You're competing against people who are going to talk about novels and films. They have much more to work with. The only way you're going to put yourself on the same level as them is to do two poems.
Bottom line: Choose set texts that explore more than one concept about PJs.
Importance of AoS Paper
A lot of Standard English people tend to not care about AoS Paper, mistakenly thinking that they only need to do good on the Modules to get a band 5/6. That is the worst possible to thing to think/believe. EVER.
AoS Paper is just as important, if not more so than Paper 2.
With AoS Paper, you are competing against all the Advanced people as well as Standard. The markers mark without distinction. They don't give a toss that you're Standard or whatever. You need to do as good as the Advanced people on Paper 1 to get a decent mark. It's only with Paper 2 that Advanced and Standard are distinguished.
Last Words
There is no shortcut to get a band 5/6 in Standard English. You need to work hard and consistently. Don't think just because you read this post/Excel guides/worksheets you're guaranteed to get 80+. You're not. You need to put in the effort and time.
Also, this is what worked for me and they might not work for you. Try and see what does work for you and stick with it.
If you have any suggestions or questions, post them. This post will be ongoing and I'll add more if people think things should be added/clarified.
I hope that this helps some of you. Good luck!
EDIT: HAVE BEEN INFORMED THAT NOT ALL STANDARD PEOPLE DO PHYSICAL JOURNEYS. DIDN'T KNOW THAT... MY TEACHER MADE IT SOUND AS IF ALL STANDARD CLASSES DO PHYSICAL.
THIS GUIDE IS BASED ON EXPERIENCE FROM 2007 HSC. I DID PHYSICAL JOURNEYS AND SKRZYNECKI AS SET TEXTS SO I'M REFERING TO THOSE AS EXAMPLES IN THIS GUIDE. I REALISE THAT NOT EVERYBODY DID THE COMBINATION THAT I DID. I ALSO REALISE THAT A LOT OF THINGS HAVE CHANGED, BUT I'M NOT TOO SURE ABOUT THOSE CHANGES. SO, TAKE THIS GUIDE AT FACE VALUE AND IGNORE ANYTHING THAT REFERS TO THINGS THAT'S BEEN CHANGED/DOES NOT APPLY TO YOU.
The AoS Paper
Just in case some of you don’t know the structure of the HSC, the English exam consists of two papers on two different days. Paper 1 is the Area of Study (AoS) paper and this is the “Journey Paper”. It has three sections:
Section 1: comprehension
Section 2: creative writing
Section 3: extended response
Paper 2 is the Modules Paper. It also has three sections, where each section corresponds to each of the modules you will learn in class. The text type they ask to answer the question in can be any type (letters, feature articles, essays, speeches, etc.).
Journey Concepts
By now, it should be clear that Physical Journeys (PJ) focuses on various concepts to do with Journeys. Some of these concepts include:
-All PJ’s have obstacles/hardships
-PJs lead to growth and enlightenment
-PJs change the person undergoing the journey
-PJs are beneficial to the traveller
-PJs always leads to new experiences
And so on and so forth.
The exam question has to be applied to all types of Journeys, including Imaginative and Inner, so the question is very broad and generic. Pro: You can usually talk about a lot of things to do with our texts. Con: Makes it very easy to wonder off-course and start rambling instead of answering question. However, the question will only focus on one aspect of the Journey. I find it a good idea to rework the question into the topic sentence of every paragraph just to group your thoughts and ensure that you’re still answering the question. It doesn’t matter if it doesn’t seem “sophisticated” enough because you would rather answer the question in an “unsophisticated” manner than ramble eloquently.
Related Texts
For my related texts, I did two magazine articles. One was from National Geographic (“The Thrill Gene”) and the other was from Wish (“Seachange”), the magazine that The Australian publishes every month or so. I recommend that you do not use them simply because they are too old. If you’re going to do a magazine article, you want one that corresponds with your HSC course period. Otherwise it just seems as if you didn’t put a lot of effort into it. In hindsight, I would not use two magazine articles. Again, makes you seem as if you were lazy.
Contrary to popular belief, you do not need more than two related texts for AoS. More than two texts will mean that you cannot analyse any of your texts in enough detail and this results in a lower mark than someone who only did two texts and analysed them well. You have to talk about 4-5 texts in your essay and do a relatively good job on all of them. Do yourself a favour and avoid a stress-induced heart attack by doing TWO related texts. Remember, quality, not quantity.
That being said, you really can’t get away with anything less than about 5 pages of the BoS booklet in normal handwriting. Not if you want a “high range” mark. (I feel like a hypocrite now
)Practice “Essays”
Start doing NOW. If, like me, you have typed everything and anything to do with school work on the computer, you will find your hand sorely lacking when it comes to essay time. Try and do everything in all your subjects by hand as it will give you more practice. Don’t go “I’ll start practicing three months out” because that is not soon enough. You have to be able to write about 1200 - 1500 words in 40 minutes. That might not sound like a lot, but it is. I always thought I was a fast writer, but I struggled badly when I tried to do the essays in the allotted time.
The first few times you write essays don’t try to stick to the 40 minute rule. Just concentrate on getting the essay finished to a satisfactory standard. I remember that one essay took me three days because I couldn’t get it to flow and it didn’t do so well on the teacher front. T.T When you feel comfortable with all your texts, try to do the essay within a specified amount of time. It doesn’t even have to 40 minutes. Try to finish it within an hour the first time and slowly whittle your allotted time down.
Give the essays to your teacher to mark. If you didn’t get full marks, hound them for exact reasons as to why. Don’t let them get away with a vague “Your language wasn’t sophisticated enough” etc., etc. Ask them for detail so you don’t do the same thing next time. Don’t be discouraged if you get a bad mark the first few times. It does not matter. They are practice essays and mean shit all for the HSC. You have around 9 months. Even if you hand in one essay every two weeks, that’s a lot of essays and practice you’ve done.
I know I focused on essays, but do not just practice essays. The HSC can test all forms of texts, including letters, feature articles, newspaper articles, personal responses, speeches and essays. Although section three of Paper 1 tends to be a personal response/essay, the people up at BoS have been known to set feature articles and the like for it. Don’t box yourself in by thinking it’s only going to be an essay. It’s not.
Edit (3/1/08): Suggestion by Forbidden
Ask teachers or tutors to give you completely random questions whether the response is in the form of an essay, speech, interview or feature article and have either mark it once you made a response.
I did this days before our AoS paper and it was a real lifesaver.
I sat down with some A4 paper, gave myself forty minutes to respond to a question, typed it out then submitting it to my teacher via e-mail without any corrections to retain the consistency of my hand-written responses.
She picked out critical errors which could cost me valuable marks if they were in my actual HSC responses.
Practice Short Story
Section 2 of Paper 1 is a creative writing task. They can ask you for a specific type, such as short story or feature article, or they can just generalise. However, it will never be a poem as they don’t allow people to do that.
Personally, I had written a short story, moulded it to the question as best as I can and just shoved that into Section 2. Looking back, I’m not sure if that was the best option, simply because you never know what the prompt for the question will be. I know a lot of people don’t like to prepare and I don’t blame them. If the question isn’t right, your prepared story will not work. So if you do prepare a short story, be ready to ditch it at a moments notice. You have 10 minutes reading time. Decide then whether you’re going to use it or not.
Preparing Stuff in General
A lot of people I know prepared entire essays and such to regurgitate in the HSC. Like the short story thing, I didn’t really like it and I didn’t do it for Section 3. That is not to say that I didn’t know what I was going to talk about in the exam. For each text I did, I made notes about the concept(s) of the PJ that it corresponded to and how I would go on and explain that concept through the techniques.
Eg, if the question was about the benefits of a PJ, I would know which texts were about that concept and the techniques used because that was the way I organised my texts. Remember, the AoS focus is on the Journey and not the text. Besides, if you did a reasonable number of practice papers, you should have come across most of the concepts that BoS will ask about and already have a faint idea on how to answer the question.
Organising Time
In the exam, you have to be organised. Keep your eye on the time. I cannot stress the importance of time management enough. I try to aim for around 40 minutes per section, maybe taking 5-10 minutes from Section 2 to put into Section 3. However, to do well in Section 1, you would need the full 40 minutes.
If you find yourself going overtime, stop and just move on. You would rather do well in the other sections and come to back if you have the time than subsequently stuff up all the sections because you spent too much time on one.
Remember all the Sections are worth 15 marks. There's no use doing a really good Section 3 response and only getting a 5/15 for creative writing. The Sections are worth the same so it follows that you should spend roughly the same amount of time on all of them. The most I would take out of any one Section would be 10 minutes. Anything over that means you're neglecting that Section.
Comprehension
There is no other way to improve on this other than doing practice papers. Again, start off slow. You don’t have to stick to the 2 hour exam time at the beginning. As you begin to get the hang of it, start disciplining yourself and timing yourself. After you finish, get your teachers to mark it and ask for explanations/advice on places where you lost marks.
Don’t forget to spend time on the last question in Section 1. That question is usually worth 30% - 40% of the entire section, with 6 or 7 markers not unusual. You would need at least two pages of normal handwriting to get a good mark. Spend a good ten minutes on it. Judge how much you need to write by the marks given to the question. You would never write as much for a 1 marker as you would for a 3 marker. Spend your time wisely. You would rather lose a 1 marker than stuff up a 3 marker.
Choosing Set Texts
I'll use Skrzynecki poems as an example:
I know a lot of people go "I'm going to do these two Skrzynecki poems" before the HSC and spend all their time analysing them and nothing else. I do not like this approach simply because the poems might not fit the question and the concept of PJ. I analysed four of Skrzynecki's poem just picked the two that I thought fit the question the best. I mean, you have 9 months left and it's only four poems. Do enough practice essays and you'll have talked about all four at some stage in enough detail to know what to write in the HSC.
If you're going down the route of picking only two, then for God's sake choose two that explore more than one idea about PJs. At least you're slightly more covered this way. And yes, if you do Skrzynecki, do two poems, not one. You're competing against people who are going to talk about novels and films. They have much more to work with. The only way you're going to put yourself on the same level as them is to do two poems.
Bottom line: Choose set texts that explore more than one concept about PJs.
Importance of AoS Paper
A lot of Standard English people tend to not care about AoS Paper, mistakenly thinking that they only need to do good on the Modules to get a band 5/6. That is the worst possible to thing to think/believe. EVER.
AoS Paper is just as important, if not more so than Paper 2.
With AoS Paper, you are competing against all the Advanced people as well as Standard. The markers mark without distinction. They don't give a toss that you're Standard or whatever. You need to do as good as the Advanced people on Paper 1 to get a decent mark. It's only with Paper 2 that Advanced and Standard are distinguished.
Last Words
There is no shortcut to get a band 5/6 in Standard English. You need to work hard and consistently. Don't think just because you read this post/Excel guides/worksheets you're guaranteed to get 80+. You're not. You need to put in the effort and time.
Also, this is what worked for me and they might not work for you. Try and see what does work for you and stick with it.
If you have any suggestions or questions, post them. This post will be ongoing and I'll add more if people think things should be added/clarified.
I hope that this helps some of you. Good luck!
Last edited:
