LC English-Wtf??

Intel

I got an A2 in english. It was way above my expectations considering i failed my mock(37%).
In my opinion i wrote a good essay, and a good poetry question(Derek Mahon - I actually like his poetry), but thats about it. My Macbeth Q left a lot to be desired. I was banking on a question on Banquo,Duncan,GoodvsEvil etc but unfprtunately for me they didnt come up, and i found the 2 qs on the paper very tough. I just waffled a load of bull for 2 pages and i didnt have any quotes learnt of for the question that i answered, and i just paraphrased a whole lot. I also finished it mid-air, with no general conclusion whatsoever...
As I left the exam hall I thought to myself thats my B gone.

I just dont understand how any sane examiner could give me an A?? I mean, what is wrong with the marking scheme for the subject, or does it even have one. Furthermore, my handwriting is always pretty bad. And on the day of the exam, writing for hours on end and as fast as i could left my writing very difficult to read. I cant imagine how an examiner could decipher it all out,read what i wrote and give me a good grade for it..
Even though they have broken up the marks(ie 20%for mechanics,10 for language)I still believe they correct the papers subjectively, ie just read it and give it a mark. I also believe that I probably got a good mark for my macbeth essay because my essay and poetry question preceded it, and the examiner just followed on with the general mark he/she gave me for the essay+poetry Q.
Also, after reading hundreds of papers one after another, wouldnt you just become saturated and become unable to tell the difference between a good,alright and mediocre essay?

Dont get me wrong I am over the moon about the grade i got!
However, i think that some ppl were cheated out of the grade that they should have gotten. My friend who was consistently an A student in english got a C1 for his LC.
I think it all depends on the examiner correcting ur paper-one could think your the next james joyce and another could think your writing is a piece of ****.

SO, Has anyone else been (pleasently) surprised with their english result, or for that matter disappointed?

Micheal Wittman

First of all, congrats.I would have lovin' an A and to be honest I was expecting it,but I only got a B3.I was consistently an A student in English.I was a bit surprised considering the amount of time and effort I gave towards the exam.I think it really does depend on the examiner,especially in English.The B3 didn't matter though cause I made up the points I needed with other subjects(which I did much better than I thought in.:))

Lantis

Expected a high B, got a C3.

My examiner's on my hit list.

Bah

I'm in the same boat as you Intel - got an A2, expected a B3 at the *very* most... I thought I totally messed up the paper - my essay was ok, but definetly not the best I'd ever written, my question A & B on paper one were very, very dodgy. Paper two was even worse! I started off doing the silas marner question, where you got a choice of 2 - halfway through the question I realised that I did the hardest of the two and started to panic... definetly not a good start to the exam. The comparative wasn't too bad - I thought I was a bit weak in the comparisons though - it was more telling the story of each of the 3 texts rather than actually making solid comparisons, which made me think I'd do really, really badly. Then, to top it all off, I didn't even properly study any of the poets that came up! I had been banking on Dickinson to come up, and spent the last week or so before the exam concentrating on her. Gave maybe half an hour to hopkins the night before the exam - had maybe 2 quotes and a few buzzwords - I think "inscape" and "instress" saved me.

Altogether, very, very surprised with my result. English was supposed to be one of my weaker subjects and I wasn't even planning on using it for points, in the end, it turned out to be on of my best. Funnily enough (well, not really "funny" for me...) my (usually) best subjects turned out to be some of my worst.

asphalt-cushion

I spent most of my time on english and was really hoping for an A. I got a B2 and now i can't enjoy the rest of my results. I'm going to appeal.

Roller Toaster

I've been getting As in English ever since I started secondary and I wrote what I thought was the best paper I could possibly write and got a B1. In the mocks I wrote a sloppy story, didn't quote in macbeth at all and waffled my way through the poetry and got...a B1. I just don't understand it at all, hopefully when I go on to do Eng Lit the marking scheme will be slightly less cryptic. I'm annoyed I didn't get an A2 especially when it was probably just a matter of 2 or 3 percentiles.

Swifty

Exact same thing happened here, I'm used to average results of around 55%-60% in English and somehow pulled an A2 out of the bag. I'm absolutely delighted of course but other people I know have been screwed. My girlfriend whom I've always considered to be better than me at English got a D1, she came out of the English exams reasonably happy too.

dudara

I recall that my English teacher never marked in excess of 60%, EVER. No one in the class knew where we stood. In the end I got a few grinds and came out with an A1, that grade made my day. I knew I had sat a good exam but an A1 put a smile on my face. BTW this was 8 yrs ago on the old course.

rainbow kirby

I slept in most of my English classes in 6th year, and the only exam papers I ever looked at were the mocks and the LC. I had the paper 1 of my life in the LC and got a B1. Never ever got higher than a C3 before that...(LC 2002)

CuLT

I got A's all year and got a C2. What a load of rubbish.

lintdrummer

I've never been a model student in English, but I've always gotten good results. Poured my heart into that damn exam and expected a good B. Ended up with a C1. I dont know anyone who was happy with their English result. To say the least, I feel cheated by the terrible marking scheme in that exam. They dont really follow the marking scheme, they just mark how they feel they should mark. Therefore the English results depend on how liberal your examiner is.
Oh well. I will defo be appealing that one.

Micheal Wittman

***To say the least, I feel cheated by the terrible marking scheme in that exam. They dont really follow the marking scheme, they just mark how they feel they should mark. Therefore the English results depend on how liberal your examiner is.
Oh well. I will defo be appealing that one.***

I couldn't agree with u more!

Young Siward

Same old story here.

I thought I did a fairly neat and tidy paper. I learned off the best part of 20 essays (except on Macbeth himself!!! grrr....). Not the best tactic, but I answered the question etc etc. Came out with a B3

I wouldn't be too unhappy but lots of other students with a similar standard came out with A's. I don't want to be unkind here btw, but that paper will be worth a look at. The scheme is rightly screwed.

Corona

Young Siward wrote:

Same old story here.

I thought I did a fairly neat and tidy paper. I learned off the best part of 20 essays (except on Macbeth himself!!! grrr....). Not the best tactic, but I answered the question etc etc. Came out with a B3

I wouldn't be too unhappy but lots of other students with a similar standard came out with A's. I don't want to be unkind here btw, but that paper will be worth a look at. The scheme is rightly screwed.

I got an A1 in english, anything less than a B1 and I would have been disappointed because it's always been one of my better subjects. However I don't think learning off 20 essays is the key to getting an A1 - english is about comprehension of the texts and ability to express personal opinion, not about regurgitating some notes at the back of a poetry book. I didn't learn anything off for english, wrote my essay on the day and my revision for paper 2 consisted of reading over notes the night before. I know it seems like an exhausted clique when people say "english comes naturally" but I do think it's true to a certain extent

Noodle

Hi I want to agree with you all that there might be something wrong with the marking scheme or that your result depends on the examiner. When I first came into secondary I considered English to be my top subject but by the time I came into third year I think that it became one of my weakest subjects. When analysing a poem or a text I really did know my stuff and understood most things but I just wasn't able to write it on paper...I didnt know how to express it correctly. This is what my junior cert teacher thought and I suppose she was right.

In leaving cert english I dont think that I ever got an A, not even once. For that matter I never got a B either except maybe one time. I always got C's or less. I could tell that my teacher thought that I was crap at English. Because of all these things I never really worked that hard at english in 5th and 6th year. Throughout those two years I only did about 3/4 of my homework. Also I only wrote about 2 or 3 composition essays and I think that they were both narratives. We didnt do a lot of comprehensions either, we focused a lot on paper 2. But still I only wrote about 1 essay on each poet, about 5 essays on macbeth and 2 essays at the most on the comparative.

Stay with me, the climax of my story is coming soon. Then the exam came and I did a persuasion essay on paper 1 which is something that I had never really done before. (But I guess I must have done a good one because of the result that I got.) The comprehensions went pretty ok I suppose. Then in paper 2 I expected Kingship/Minor character for Macbeth and neither of these came up. I did the Macbeth himself question and mostly waffled. In the poetry I was really banking on Dickinson but she didnt come up either so I did Kavanagh who I knew a bit about. I waffled there too. I had learned an essay for the comparative the night before on pride as a theme/issue but I realised afterwards that I only made about 5 comparisons. I think that you are meant to have 15 or something. Unseen poem was ok too I guess.

Anyway when I had finished i didnt know what I was expecting: probably a C3 or D1 if I'm unlucky I thought. (I got 44% in the mocks by the way). But then the results came out and I saw English - B3. Yeah baby!!! Maybe I am better at English than I thought and it counted at the very last moment.....or maybe the marking scheme IS messed or your result DOES depend on the examiner. Who knows!?!

Bah

Corona wrote:

However I don't think learning off 20 essays is the key to getting an A1 - english is about comprehension of the texts and ability to express personal opinion, not about regurgitating some notes at the back of a poetry book. I didn't learn anything off for english, wrote my essay on the day and my revision for paper 2 consisted of reading over notes the night before. I know it seems like an exhausted clique when people say "english comes naturally" but I do think it's true to a certain extent

I totally agree with you - it's ok to blame everything on the marking schemes, but in reality, learning off essays isn't realisticly going to help your grade very much. Even if you can remember it all on the day, your essay would probably lack cohesion and clarity of thought if you just start sticking in bits of learned off crap which seems totally out of place/context.
The whole subject is about *personal response* - your response, not the author of the notes book. I was talking to my english teacher and a lot of the other people in my english class yesterday and it turned out that the majority of the people who got the A grades were the ones who werent "prepared" for the exam - the ones who didn't learn off pages and pages of poetry notes, the ones who were actually confronted with a challenge on the day and gave their own, personal responses in a free flowing essay. So, it seems to me that too much revision in english is actually a bad thing.

Young Siward

subway.ie wrote:

I totally agree with you - it's ok to blame everything on the marking schemes, but in reality, learning off essays isn't realisticly going to help your grade very much. Even if you can remember it all on the day, your essay would probably lack cohesion and clarity of thought if you just start sticking in bits of learned off crap which seems totally out of place/context.
The whole subject is about *personal response* - your response, not the author of the notes book. I was talking to my english teacher and a lot of the other people in my english class yesterday and it turned out that the majority of the people who got the A grades were the ones who werent "prepared" for the exam - the ones who didn't learn off pages and pages of poetry notes, the ones who were actually confronted with a challenge on the day and gave their own, personal responses in a free flowing essay. So, it seems to me that too much revision in english is actually a bad thing.

You all have my respect.

I completely agree with both of you, but in the time and under pressure, I find that I could write forever. My essays were learned off, not as a completed answer, but rather as a template that was altered, twisted etc. to answer the question.
You are right though, two of my friends went in without a single bit learned off, yet both got grade A.

BTW, do you notice the amount of people claiming that 'never got a's' did in this case, while those who did often ended up disappointed. Maybe the teachers need to start marking their students differently IMO.

Suaimhneach

I got a B2, which I guess is good. But I thought I might do a teeny bit better, becuase everything that I knew came up. To excatly what I had studied, knew and liked. I think maybe paper one let me down a bit.

Although I do think it totally depends on your the person correcting. Someone else could have easily marked me up or down.

Stabshauptmann

I always felt I was B1 material, though my teacher felt otherwise. On the day in question I felt I underpreformed and was expecting a B3, got an A2 :rolleyes:

Chucky the tree

was expecting a D and got a D1 so no cant say i was supirsed

ApeXaviour

Girl I know, won loads of poetry awards and all. A near prodigy of english literature IMO. Solid top A's right through secondary school. Came out of the english exams happy as a pig in sh*te. Got a C3.. They must have messed it up something terrible this year. In my year (2002) most people seemed to get what they deserved, I got a B3 and it's exactly what I was expecting.

Number6

I'm appealing my English. Nearly everyone who was from my exam centre is appealing because we were marked WAY to harsley

claire h

Class results aren't always indicative of how people will perform in an exam situation - even people who've never had problems with exams before might find themselves stressed out for the Leaving Cert. And this year's paper was designed, I think, to catch out the people who thought they could predict what was going to come up. The essay questions were, for the most part, more personal than most years. The Macbeth question wasn't really what anyone predicted. You had to think; it wasn't entirely about learning off stuff and that's where people fall down. It's very easy to get top grades in English if you're articulate and eloquent and have a textbook in front of you when doing your homework - you just rewrite what's there and make it sound coherent and intelligent and you'll get an A. It's a different situation when you're in an exam that isn't entirely what you expected.

It's a lot easier to criticise the marking scheme or the subjective nature of examining the English paper, but when roughly the same amount of As, Bs, and Cs are handed out each year maybe it's a bit more prudent to look at the exam itself and see how it possibly didn't suit some kind of students.

Roller Toaster

Says the person who came out with an A1. :rolleyes:

I'm not saying you didn't deserve it but coming to this thread and telling people who feel hard done by that they simply didn't have the talent is a bit hard to swallow.

claire h

Roller Toaster wrote:

Says the person who came out with an A1. :rolleyes:

I'm not saying you didn't deserve it but coming to this thread and telling people who feel hard done by that they simply didn't have the talent is a bit hard to swallow.

Whereas telling people who did well that the exams were marked ridiculously is not at all irritating...

I'm not saying people didn't have the talent, I'm saying that the exam paper wasn't designed for the people who go in there with stuff learned off, or for people who aren't particularly fond of writing personal essays. I'm pointing out that while some methods of learning English work in class - and would have worked other years - they mightn't have worked in the exam.

Roller Toaster

I didn't learn anything off by rote, all I did was learn off loads of quotes and other such stuff and did plenty of practice essays which got mostly As. I feel hard done by because I feel like I did everything required of me and still only got a B1. As you well know it has the most unclear marking scheme of any of the exams and how can you say for sure that your paper was genuinely better than other people when you might have just gotten a better examiner?

ApeXaviour

Claire I have to say your original argument doesn't seem hold much stature. Yes I agree when you have a good a grade the last thing you want to hear is that you possibly didn't deserve it but nobody is critisising you personally so don't take it as such. Being honest though I think the nature of the leaving cert english exam is quite a good one. But maybe this year's marking scheme was put together frivolously or explained ambiguosly. Yes there are a similar amount of A's, B's and C's given out every year but that by no means indicates or helps fair marking, IMO it hinders it. It puts examiners under pressure to not give as many A's out to possibly deserving students and vice-versa.
As I've stated, in my year there was relatively little fuss given about the english grades people got, it was all about the biology that year (have yis seen that paper?! Ridiculus..). You talk about exam situation performance. Well there is nothing more indicitave of that than the mocks. Again most mock papers are generally sent to other schools to be marked thereby eliminating the teacher's bias.
And back to comparing with previous years; why the fuss this year? Why are people like my friend getting such undeserved bad grades when others are admittedly recieving grades far higher than they feel they deserved? I mean someone is even went as far as to question his/her examiners sanity..

To those out there unhappy with your grades for christs sake make sure you LOOK OVER your paper with your teacher and get their opinion! It doesn't cost anything. You can decide to send it in for remarking after that. I did it with my physics paper and found an entire question just left unmarked! Got moved from a B1 to an A1. Well worth it..

Jammer

i had no novel/play/comparative/poetry quotes what-so-ever. Waffled my way through the whole lot of it with very little actual facts (paper 2) on the stuff i had done, and i got a B1...it is total injustice because i shouldn't have got anywhere near that.

claire h

>> But maybe this year's marking scheme was put together frivolously or explained ambiguosly. <<

Maybe, but I'm just saying that people tend to criticise the marking scheme first and their own work second. And it's a hell of a lot easier to do so in a subject like English that doesn't have a definite 3-points-for-writing this and 4-points-for-writing this marking scheme, as opposed to other subjects. It is possible that there's something wrong with the marking scheme but it's not necessarily the only option.

>> Well there is nothing more indicitave of that than the mocks. <<

Hardly anyone I know - and you might well have had different experiences of this, but from my own - approached the mocks in the same way as they did the Leaving Cert. They're at different points in the year, the amount of work you've done at that stage is different, you're placing a different emphasis on either of them (some people get more stressed out about the mocks) and above all else, they're not the actual thing.

staringelf

Wow, it seems like everyone did the opposite of how they expected.

I'd been getting C's and B's all year, and a D1 in the mocks. only started studying in the week coming up to the exam. Came out of the exam centre a little unsure, not really that confident, expecting a B or C

I got an A1

Kold

claire h wrote:

I'm not saying people didn't have the talent, I'm saying that the exam paper wasn't designed for the people who go in there with stuff learned off

No, it's designed exactly for that purpose.

Cathy

A lot of my friends got very different marks from what they were expecting... I got a B2, which I suppose I'm happy enough with, but I was expecting more. English is one of my best subjects, and I was predicted an A1. One girl I know got a C3 and was expecting an A1... I think the marks were a bit odd this year. A lot of people were surprised.
But I'm going to appeal the arse off it
So we'll see what happens...

munkeehaven

seriously guys and gals ITS OVER ,you should be trying to get ready for what comes next in your life -work/college/travel or whatever. dont be trying to analyze all this, tis not good to dwell in the past. just think now you can read books,poems or write without criticism (unless you are doing arts in college or something else )...english is like art one mans bull**** is anothers brilliance.LOOK FORWARD not backwards, or you will just get a brain ache.

Celt

I got a D1, had gotten high B's/A's since first year.

Expected C1 at the very least, B2 was what I was hoping for.

Not even bothered getting it rechecked

angeldelight

this might sound smug and annoying but did most of the ppl who were disappointed do the macbeth question about the scene that appealed to you or something?? I remember thinking it looked a bit too like Junior Cert question and thought 4 pages would be hard to write so did 'harder' question... paid off. still getting it checked, just wondering if htats where ppl fell down??

dudara

when I did the LC, (8 years ago on the old course), paper 2 was one poetry, one drama and one literature question plus one of your choice. My teacher said that statistics showed that the highest marks went to people who answered two drama questions. So I took that approach. She used to be a head examiner and she had a set of photocopies of essay scripts that hse had accumulated over the years consisting of learned-off essays that people wrote down, even though they bore little or no relation to the title. So she drilled it into us to just let things flow and not to try hard to write essays. (if that makes sense, she said that pre-learned essays just stand out a mile).

Other than that, I didn't learn any essays or answers off. I went in on the day armed with quotes and poems yes, but everything else I did from the top of my head. I just feel that english has to be done that way. it is uniquely different from the other subjects.

Kold

I think the hardest thing here is that I am a very good english student. I excel at aptitude tests in that region, have a natural love of debating and reading and my grammar is usually impeccable (not online cos i cba ). Then I see someone who couldn't hold a discussion to save their life getting an A. It just feels like an injustice.