How can I practise my essay writing (1 Viewer)

[McRafi9]

I'll be doing English Advanced and English Extension 1 soon and I was wondering whether there are any sites with good questions (that are like the sort that will be in the HSC and Pre-lim exams) which I could use to time myself and write essays?

 

[eyeseeyou]

I'll be doing English Advanced and English Extension 1 soon and I was wondering whether there are any sites with good questions (that are like the sort that will be in the HSC and Pre-lim exams) which I could use to time myself and write essays?

In prelim, usually your school chooses their own texts and makes their own AOS (you might be lucky and do an old AOS such as belonging, journey or change)

I assume it's the same for extension english

As for HSC essay questions, it depends on which text you do as some modules essay questions are different from each other (Mod A and Mod B)

A good website which has plenty of essay questions is Pbtutoring, just google search up pb tutoring essay questions although their Module essay questions might not be specifically based on what texts you will do in the HSC

As for english extension essay questions, I don't really know any since I don't do english extension and am not familiar with sites which have good essay questions for english extension

 

[eyeseeyou]

And if your school makes their own AOS (such as power or identity), then I'd suggest you look at the rubric and reword one of the rubric sentences, to make it look like an essay question such as "identity is shaped through an individual's past experiences. Discuss this with reference to a prescribed and related text of your own choosing" (obviously I made this question up since I am not familiar with this area of study). Remember you need a related text

For Module A, essay questions are usually classified as "generic essay questions" such as "Text with similar content will inevitably reveal similar messages. Discuss this statement with reference to your two prescribed texts" or text based questions such as "A deeper understanding of disruption and identity emerges from considering the parallels between Frankenstein and Blade Runner. Compare how these texts explore disruption and identity"

For Module B, I assume your school will do othello or maybe a shakespearean text of some sort (since most schools do othello for Module B). For Othello essay questions, you can just transform Hamlet questions into Othello questions since they are essentially Mod B Shakespearean texts

And Module C, I believe some schools may or may not do it. However this module is all about representing and you will be required to find a related text. Haven't really studied this before so I can't really give the best advice

 

[andrew12678]

Unfortunately you can't really practice essay writing without having been allocated your texts (assuming you are indeed Year 11 as per HSC 2018 so you will get these texts once the term starts), essay writing really comes into place after having studied the set texts for an extended period of time-from which you are comfortable with selecting appropriate sections (quotes) of the aforementioned text as 'evidence' in 'proving' a certain thesis to answer the exam question. So instead, as every school's Yr11 English program is different, I would instead recommend first seeing if you can find out what texts you would be doing (from current Yr12s/teachers) and then giving the texts a read before even thinking about essay writing practice. Following this, I would recommend honing up your analytical skills which can be done either by reading some exemplary High Band 6 Yr12 essays or by looking up some good analysis online (I would recommend searching up 'Nerdwriter' on YouTube to watch some of his excellent analytical videos). After this you should have a good idea of what kind of things you are looking for in an essay so you can then get started writing notes or generic essays to generic questions (provided you know the Syllabus/Module-these are the things that eyeseeyou is referring to above) but personally I would put writing notes/essays off until the text has been explained and analysed in class-reading the text ahead of time is more than enough for the holidays