Memorising Essays (1 Viewer)

[turtle67]

Hey Guys,

I've just started Year 12 and have an English assessment coming up and I'm just curious if many of you are memorising essays or just quotes for the HSC? I know they tried to make it hard to memorise essays with the new syllabus but are many of you just learning sort of generic and adaptable essays?

Also, are you trying to cover every single possible base, like having quotes for every potential theme, like last year who would've had a quote bank on love for the crucible lol.

Thanks

 

[ahri]

Heya! I did HSC in 2019, and I would definitely say memorize quotes only but practice adapting them. There's no point in memorizing like explanations for the quotes if the question is highly specific (which it will be because of the new syllabus), so you're better off practicing adapting your quotes for a new essay instead of reworking points. Personally, I just had about 15 quotes per essay and practiced adapting my topic sentences to different themes or keywords from the syllabus module which worked well for me, although some other people may prefer having quote banks.

 

[totally_screwed]

I'm memorising almost whole essays for the HSC and each cover only one theme. this might sound risky but the essays, although covering a single theme/lens, are still adaptable to any question. I'm doing The Crucible, and if I did the HSC last year I believe I wouldn't have struggled with exploring the concept of "love" even though my prepared work has a feminist approach, and only a few of my quotes are explicitly love-related. if you're memorising essays like me it's very important to know your texts well, so that you're able to think outside the box if the question doesn't work well with your prepared work

 

[turtle67]

Heya! I did HSC in 2019, and I would definitely say memorize quotes only but practice adapting them. There's no point in memorizing like explanations for the quotes if the question is highly specific (which it will be because of the new syllabus), so you're better off practicing adapting your quotes for a new essay instead of reworking points. Personally, I just had about 15 quotes per essay and practiced adapting my topic sentences to different themes or keywords from the syllabus module which worked well for me, although some other people may prefer having quote banks.

Yeah that sounds like a good way to approach the new syllabus, and obviously worked out for you ahah, well done on that 94. How did you choose what your 15 quotes would be on, did you go for sort of broad topics/themes?

 

[turtle67]

I'm memorising almost whole essays for the HSC and each cover only one theme. this might sound risky but the essays, although covering a single theme/lens, are still adaptable to any question. I'm doing The Crucible, and if I did the HSC last year I believe I wouldn't have struggled with exploring the concept of "love" even though my prepared work has a feminist approach, and only a few of my quotes are explicitly love-related. if you're memorising essays like me it's very important to know your texts well, so that you're able to think outside the box if the question doesn't work well with your prepared work

Yeah well I suppose if you know your text well enough, as you say, you can adapt anything. Thank you very much and good luck for the HSC!

 

[ahri]

Yeah that sounds like a good way to approach the new syllabus, and obviously worked out for you ahah, well done on that 94. How did you choose what your 15 quotes would be on, did you go for sort of broad topics/themes?

Thanks! I pretty much just wrote my essay as I would normally (so I would pick my ideas/themes) and find quotes for that best fit my argument. Then I would just practice adapting the points (which included switching several quotes from different paragraphs) to best fit new ideas. My ideas weren't necessarily broad, but they could be adapted (so I focused a lot on humanity/morality throughout my texts so I did like "the nature of imprisonment and it's effects on morality" which could be adapted more into the imprisonment side (freedom, entrapment, isolation etc.) or the human nature side (morality, inherent human values etc.).

 

[turtle67]

Thanks! I pretty much just wrote my essay as I would normally (so I would pick my ideas/themes) and find quotes for that best fit my argument. Then I would just practice adapting the points (which included switching several quotes from different paragraphs) to best fit new ideas. My ideas weren't necessarily broad, but they could be adapted (so I focused a lot on humanity/morality throughout my texts so I did like "the nature of imprisonment and it's effects on morality" which could be adapted more into the imprisonment side (freedom, entrapment, isolation etc.) or the human nature side (morality, inherent human values etc.).

Ohh yeah, I see, very smart! Thanks a lot for the help