English is a joke

Naikon

Dunno bout everybody else, but I got my English mock back yesterday expecting the worst and got a C2 in hons.
Not the best subject grade I suppose but I really dont care about English.
Now I haven't done any real work in English as of yet, and this leads me to believe this subject is a "bluffers" subject.

Opinions?:D

Haven't a Clue

Paper one, yeah, it's a bluffers dream without a doubt. Not so sure about paper two though. You need to know yer stuff there regarding the poets, the play and the comparitive. Especially with the comparitive, you need to have a good idea of what you're going to write before you go into the exam...

Nehpets

Yeah I did much better in P1 (as with everyone I'd say). P2, brought me down

ethernet

Nehpets wrote:

Yeah I did much better in P1 (as with everyone I'd say). P2, brought me down

Ditto. So disheartening to spend the best part of five hours slaving over two papers for a worthless grade.

My English teacher wasn't too impressed with the correction so she's going through our scripts.

AdMMM

You can "bluff" just over 50% of the exam, but to actually get respectable marks you will have to be well rehearsed in the subject. It's all very well bluffing your way through the essay but unless you're familiar with what's required of you and have practiced beforehand, you won't get a decent result.

Paper II is where it's relatively easy to pass with only a very basic understanding of the texts and prescribed poetry, but this is where those who achieve their A's manage to secure them through their extensive knowledge of the texts and poetry that they have studied!

claire h

Naikon wrote:

Now I haven't done any real work in English as of yet, and this leads me to believe this subject is a "bluffers" subject.
Opinions?:D

Hard to fail, also very difficult to do very well in, though - you can bluff your way to an acceptable grade but not an excellent one.

Hopkirk

Quick Question,
In the essay titles when they say "Write a short story prompted by one or more of the images" How tenous does the link have to be?
I presume a casual mention of a random picture that happens to portray your image is not a stong enough link.

AdMMM

The instructions that they give to the examiners is that "if it's barely relevant, it's relevant". Although it is at the examiners dicretion to decide if your essay is relevant or not. I wouldn't for example start writing about a picture of a football and then going on about how it's really a time machine...

Hopkirk

|.Murderer.| wrote:

The instructions that they give to the examiners is that "if it's barely relevant, it's relevant". Although it is at the examiners dicretion to decide if your essay is relevant or not. I wouldn't for example start writing about a picture of a football and then going on about how it's really a time machine...

So I couldn't go

Tom strolled down the expansive hallway. He paused briefly to admire a framed picture which hung on the salmon painted wall. *Input image description*, Rattle on with the story I want to write....

PurpleFistMixer

I'd say they'd penalise you for that sort of thing. 'Cause like, if you could do that, you could just prepare the most perfect wonderful essay ever and throw in the necessary reference at any point... thus eliminating the necessity to be able to write something new (enough) on demand.
Then again, I have no personal experience of this, it would just seem to make sense.

Hopkirk

PurpleFistMixer wrote:

I'd say they'd penalise you for that sort of thing. 'Cause like, if you could do that, you could just prepare the most perfect wonderful essay ever and throw in the necessary reference at any point... thus eliminating the necessity to be able to write something new (enough) on demand.
Then again, I have no personal experience of this, it would just seem to make sense.

Ya I know, The above was an extremist situation. But you could say use a picture of a man and model your description of the main character around him, To open your story place him in the same scene as depicted in the image. Once that is overcome you could then use your own essay. Obviously some adopting would have to be done and you could even try to include more images as your story progresses where possible, That would surely be more than a tenuous link,

Just a theory,

Nehpets

Well I sure they respect that fact that people will be creative. My "prison life" answer for question B was pretty much a story (meant to be journal I think, can't exactly remember) about a guy in prison and his friend. I wanted to write more but it was only for question B so I stopped myself

Naikon

Paper one was a godsend:D
paper two was....meh!

I wish more marks were allocated for Mechanics as I lost no marks at all under
spelling and grammar in all sections.
Hope this performance is repeated come June:D

I also did the prison life story, I just waffled on about some drug addicts everyday almost comical situations.
No doubt the Examiner wasnt impressed with the profanity ect.

ninebeanrows

I havent got my English mocks back, my teacher just ignores the subject but i bet she forgot to send them off..

Its been 1 and 1/2 months now :rolleyes: It's fekin ridiculous

md99

it often happens that an expected fail pulls a decent grade, while an expected A pulls a C. happened a lot in my class! ;-)

OctavarIan

Thing with english is, you need to be 'on form' the day of the exam, and hope you get a decent corrector. You can't tell ANYTHING from the mock english results, in my class the results in the mocks and the actual thing were topsy turvy, and the same for a few other schools I know of as well.

md99

OctavarIan wrote:

Thing with english is, you need to be 'on form' the day of the exam, and hope you get a decent corrector. You can't tell ANYTHING from the mock english results, in my class the results in the mocks and the actual thing were topsy turvy, and the same for a few other schools I know of as well.

agree totally with this....

all of ours were marked down for seemingly no reason, and while we expected our teacher to acknowledge that they were marked hard, she simply said 'ye can work a bit harder for the real thing' etc

eZe^

What I do for writing essays is have my opening paragraph closely related to the image, and then I have an A1 standard story I can manipulate around it. Like our teacher was showing how you can just have your opening paragraph as a fancy dress party, where you show up as on of the characters illustrated in the pictures, and then go off on your big storyline. Pretty damn handy!

Hopkirk

eZe^ wrote:

What I do for writing essays is have my opening paragraph closely related to the image, and then I have an A1 standard story I can manipulate around it. Like our teacher was showing how you can just have your opening paragraph as a fancy dress party, where you show up as on of the characters illustrated in the pictures, and then go off on your big storyline. Pretty damn handy!

Ya similar to me. In the mock I managed to incorporate a picture of Tony Blair throughout the story, just required some minor detail changes to the story I wanted to write, Just waiting now to get the paper back. Hopefully I'll get away with it.

Lia_lia

In our school it was completely of the walls.

In one honours class nearly everyone got A1's, in my honours class nearly everyone got a B2 ( I got a B1 ) and the Pass class got theirs back today and the highest was a C1 :rolleyes:

[SaB] Larsson

eZe^, I thought you said you were in fifth year??

cson

English is a lot harder than you think. If you write in the wrong register in paper one you get raped for it - the essay especially. You gotta know the 5 or so languages.

As for paper 2..... if you don't know your $hit, you are how shall I say.... F***ed. One thing to note though is that part 'B's on paper 1 are worth 50 marks, the studied poetry is worth 60 marks on paper 2 for which you're expected to write about 3 pages for, absolutely ridiculous in my opinion. Ranks alongside the Irish paper 2 for marking scheme craziness.

Anyway, you should be able to pass it with a little effort, I mean if you can't bluff the language you're fluent in.......

Corruptedmorals

Naikon wrote:

Paper one was a godsend:D
I lost no marks at all under
spelling and grammar in all sections.

I thought the same, got the paper back, with a few stupid mistakes in paper 1 essay under time pressure...'insteadly', 'from the age of weight'...????

Corruptedmorals

cson wrote:

the studied poetry is worth 60 marks on paper 2 for which you're expected to write about 3 pages for

It's worth 50. It's Macbeth that's the 60, and comparative is 70 (which you also get raped for if you don't have equal emphasis on each text).

Naikon

Lia_lia wrote:

In our school it was completely of the walls.

In one honours class nearly everyone got A1's, in my honours class nearly everyone got a B2 ( I got a B1 ) and the Pass class got theirs back today and the highest was a C1 :rolleyes:

Too true, I hate the way its technically easier to do better in Higher than Odinary due to the preconceived notion of examiners that you are less "able".

Considering I done Ordinary level for the JC and got a B and I am now sitting in the "mid Average" range in Higher considering I do less in English now is weird, and I am not boasting or bull****ting as I genuinely dont "study" English at all.
That teacher in third year lied to me:mad:

ninebeanrows

Got our English results back today have to say i was very disappointed.

The results were amazing, 9 A's 15 B's 3 C's

But i got 75% never thought i'd have been disappointed with 75% but i am:rolleyes:

It's obvious they were marked far too easy so its going to be a struggle but i'm hoping for a B2 in the real thing.. don't actually know where i stand though:(

eZe^

[SaB] Larsson wrote:

eZe^, I thought you said you were in fifth year??

Ya man, 5th year last year!

Nehpets

Since this is a thread about English.. I just looked at the Patrick Kavangh question for 04 and it says "select one or more of PK's poems from your course for inclusion in a short anthology entitled "The Essential Kavangh"

Does that mean that you could (if you were able) write on one poem only? :S

:|

PurpleFistMixer wrote:

'Cause like, if you could do that, you could just prepare the most perfect wonderful essay ever and throw in the necessary reference at any point... thus eliminating the necessity to be able to write something new (enough) on demand.
.

which is exactly what many people do!
Ah english, my most despised subject, I got an A2 though(?). I think the trick is just to practice a lot of questions, and pray you're on form on the day!

Nehpets wrote:

Since this is a thread about English.. I just looked at the Patrick Kavangh question for 04 and it says "select one or more of PK's poems from your course for inclusion in a short anthology entitled "The Essential Kavangh"

Does that mean that you could (if you were able) write on one poem only? :S

It sure does, but you'd want to know a hell of a lot about that poem. Wouldn't recommend it but they can't penalise you for it

AdMMM

Originally Posted by Nehpets
Since this is a thread about English.. I just looked at the Patrick Kavangh question for 04 and it says "select one or more of PK's poems from your course for inclusion in a short anthology entitled "The Essential Kavangh"

Does that mean that you could (if you were able) write on one poem only? :S

Of course there's no guarentee that you'll be only asked to write about one poem this year

Nehpets

I wasn't suggesting that

JC 2K3

Naikon, you call History a joke because it involves nothing but learning stuff off, now you're calling English a joke because you don't have to learn stuff off for 50% of it?

Please stop referring to the LC and LC subjects as "a joke".

adam_ccfc

Don't agree that it's a bluffer's subject at all. If you are naturally good at the language, you will do well in Paper One. Paper Two requires in depth study of at least 5 poets, plus 3 comparative texts, and a single text. Nothing easy about that.

Steve01

adam_ccfc wrote:

Paper Two requires in depth study of at least 5 poets

Or you could just study one. Not that I'd recommend it or condone such a daring approach...

Naikon

Steve01 wrote:

Or you could just study one. Not that I'd recommend it or condone such a daring approach...

I will probably only study the 4:o

curious girl

Naikon wrote:

Dunno bout everybody else, but I got my English mock back yesterday expecting the worst and got a C2 in hons.
Not the best subject grade I suppose but I really dont care about English.
Now I haven't done any real work in English as of yet, and this leads me to believe this subject is a "bluffers" subject.

Opinions?:D

listen mate if yout think english is a bluffers subject you're off the radar man and that is the rock you'll perish on!
Take it from one who knows!
Curious Girl

Mushy

Naikon wrote:

I will probably only study the 4

If I even manage to get up to doing 4 I'd be some super-worker(in my own ees of course:p). I looked at a poem at home for the first ever time today, just now in fact. Sailing to Byzantium. And cos of my woeful mock score, I'm really just gonna put in quite a lot more work into it, especially poetry, cos its my weakest area on the exam. Although, for the Mocks, I'm sure my essay brought me down so much, it was awful!

AdMMM

What worries me the most isn't the poets, or the comparative texts as we can learn them but it's the actual 100 mark composition itself! Us candidates only have that one exam, that one opportunity to shine in the eyes of the corrector! We can all have our bad days - the days where our essays just don't turn out as planned or perhaps we're presented with unfavourable essay titles. My essays are either A worthy or D worthy and it's that massive gap between the two that scares the crap out of me!

Nehpets

That's my favourite part

fillefatale

Hopkirk wrote:

So I couldn't go

Tom strolled down the expansive hallway. He paused briefly to admire a framed picture which hung on the salmon painted wall. *Input image description*, Rattle on with the story I want to write....

Our teacher read a sample essay where they had based the story on a pic of a kid in frieman's uniform.. the essay sounded like it was prepared. She had set it about a fireman who was killed in 9/11, and the picture was of him as a child dressing up, he'd always wanted to be a fireman. I think that's quite creative.

sternn

Just a quick question, and i know its kinda hard to judge from person to person....

How long should the poetry and comprehenson essays be on average?

I wrote just over 3 pages on poetry in my mocks and got a B2 in it. I know the old cliche "its quality, not quantity" but how much do you guts write??

analyse this

for me poetry i usually average around 4-5 pages. as regards my essay it varies depending on the topic and the format required.

Haven't a Clue

Yeah, usually about 4 pages for the poetry. For the essay, I usually do the short story which can be anything between 5 or 6 pages to 10 pages. I usually have a good bit of dialogue though with loads of spaces between the narrative and the dialogue.

md99

Haven't a Clue wrote:

Yeah, usually about 4 pages for the poetry. For the essay, I usually do the short story which can be anything between 5 or 6 pages to 10 pages. I usually have a good bit of dialogue though with loads of spaces between the narrative and the dialogue.

I'm a dialogue lover myself.... It really does seem to add length, reckon my short story for the pre (same as I used in the JC and pre-JC) was 6/7 pages.

Haven't a Clue

md99 wrote:

I'm a dialogue lover myself.... It really does seem to add length, reckon my short story for the pre (same as I used in the JC and pre-JC) was 6/7 pages.

Yeah. I also have a habit of having two plots that tie neatly together at the end of the story. And my endings're always fairly dramatic ranging from someone having an abortion to a prison inmate being killed by a bloke who thought he killed his wife, while the real person who did it just entered the prison at that stage. I also had a 24 style one too.

JC 2K3

lol, I never write tons of pages. I always wonder what the hell people were doing when they write over 20 pages for English 1 and only get a low B or a C....

My essays are 5 pages max. I don't really like using dialogue, my best stories are really abstract, but if I can't think of a killer abstract concept(happened me in my mocks), I usually write a really average story.

I hate writing anything but the story, you're just so much more free and can be so much more creative with the story.

Selphie

JC 2K3 wrote:

I hate writing anything but the story, you're just so much more free and can be so much more creative with the story.

Me too. And I also don't like using dialogue in my stories, it just doesn't work for me. My essays generally average five pages, we were told that's about normal. How someone would have time to write ten pages of good English I just don't know