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| The best thing you can do is write, write, write! |
Most VCE students want to do well in English. After all, it is the only subject that counts towards your Atar regardless of your marks. What most students don't realise though is that English (and every English based subject) is not about learning content. Although you do need to demonstrate a detailed knowledge of and understanding of the texts you are studying, English is predominately about demonstrating a set of skills. Skills like interpreting and understanding texts, writing coherently and intelligently and being creative when creating your own texts. The only way you can demonstrate these skills, in order to have them assessed, is to write and this is why most of your assessment during the year is in the form of writing, culminating in the three hour English exam.
Regardless of which one of the tasks you are completing in Year 12 English you are being assessed on both your understanding and interpretation of what you have read and how you go about exploring these ideas in your own piece of writing.
So what does this mean for a year 12 student? It means that although knowledge and understanding are important, the most important thing is how you go about expressing that knowledge and
understanding in your own carefully crafted piece of writing.
understanding in your own carefully crafted piece of writing.
More importantly it means the only way you can truly improve your English grade is to write practice essays. As many as possible, as often as possible, getting as much feedback as possible.
1. They help you work out where the gaps in your knowledge are when you still have time to do something about it.
Particularly in the Reading and Responding (text response) your knowledge of the text is paramount. Many students only realise they don't have enough to talk about in their essay when they are trying to write under exam or assessment conditions. If you practise your writing before sitting down to an assessment task then you have time to go back to the text and learn more about the characters and themes to fill in the gaps etc if you need to.
2. The more you practice any skill, the better you become.
Writing a good essay is not some mythical skill that some people possess and others don't. Anyone can write a good essay, it just requires practise and a knowledge of what to include and how to structure it. I will be writing more on this in future posts.
3. Practice essays allow you to get feedback and this feedback, when taken on board, can only make your grades get better and better.
Getting feedback on an assessment task that has already been graded is not really that helpful. Let's be honest, how often do you read the feedback, look at the grade, be happy or sad and then forget all about it by the time the next essay comes around? Writing practice essays means that you are practising the skills at a time when you can get feedback on them from the teacher who will grade your assessment tasks and ACTUALLY DO SOMETHING ABOUT that feedback in time to improve your grade. This is a free service, provided by your teachers that you should be taking advantage of.
4. Practising a whole lot of different topics makes you better prepared for the exam?
There are not an infinite number of questions that an examiner could ask you about every text you will study, just like there are not an infinite number of prompts you could be given for Creating and Presenting. This means the more you write practice essays, the more likely it is that you will have written a practice essay on the very essay topic or prompt that you receive in the exam. Therefore, you can actually be prepared for the exam without cramming in the last 6 weeks. If you write a practice essay every week (which requires just one hour's committment each week) then by the time the exam comes around, you will have written a practice essay for almost every possible essay topic you might be given in the exam.
Okay.
So I've convinced you that you need to write practice essays but you might not know how to motivate yourself to actually do it. The best way to get yourself started and to maintain your momentum is to get organised with a study timetable. I've written more about how to make study timetables work for you here. My previous post also contains a video and template to help you out.
When you are planning out your study timetable you need to put aside at least one hour each week of uninterrupted time to write an essay. Set aside two if you can. I find the weekends are the best time to do some more concentrated study blocks. Get some practise topics from your teacher and force yourself to write. Give each essay to your teacher for feedback. If you don't feel like you are getting enough feedback, or you feel that it is taking too long then check out our essay feedback service. Each week, before you start the new essay, look at last week's feedback and try to incorporate it in to this week's essay. The more you do this, the better your essays will become and the more confident you will feel going in to the exam.
