English essays!

reznov

Okay here is my dilemma:
I received my mock English results back, they were as predicted by me. Paper 1 much better than Paper 2. For paper 2, I didn't really learn "off" essays word for word. Instead I memorised the structure of my teadher's essays. All was fine, lost 10 marks in comparative due to time constraints. But in Hamlet, I was docked significantly for purpoe, ending up losing 25 marks overall which is a considerable dent. How do you guys adapt your essays? It was the theme of deception on the Examcrsft paper. I thought I adapted it to fit fairly well, writing my own material throughout. But just the general question is, how many essays do all of you prepare for P2? For P1 composition, in short stories do you prepare multiple storylines? Thanks for reading! :pac:

Bbbbolger

What I do when I'm adapting is, painstaking as it feels, use the wording of the question in EVERY paragraph. Force yourself to relate every point you make back to the question. Just because you feel the point makes complete sense towards the question (which it probably does) you really need those few sentences to hammer home the link. When an examiner sees that they'll immediately put down a mark to show you have it in. It's about making it easy for them to mark. Also try not to just add in a sentence at the end of each point to show the link to the question. Blend it into your paragraph to show full adaptation to the question. Your answer shouldn't look like an excellent general answer with tag-on sentences for relevance, it should constantly refer to the question.
I think the problem for a lot of good English students is that they become too used to the answer they've learned off. You put a lot of time and effort into writing an excellent answer and when you reproduce it in the exam you still see it as that excellent answer instead of critiquing it in order to make it more applicable to the question asked. That's usually my downfall with essays anyway. Hope my long-winded ramblings help in some way