English Paper 2 Tips

IrishLassie26

English paper 2 is the only paper in the Junior Cert which I am dreading! I got 80% in the Mocks and my teacher said I should be well able to get an A in the Junior Cert. However, the only thing that is against me and probably everyone else is time!

Does anyone have any tips for English paper 2 on how to approach the questions, speed up and how to keep to the timings?
Any advice would be greatly appreciated

Yogosan

I got a D- in the mocks and a C+ for the leaving cert, higher level.

A friend of mine got an A+ in the mocks and a D+ for the leaving cert, also higher level.

Moral of the story is, your result depends solely on the person marking your test. It has nothing to do with your grasp of the English language. It is completelely subjective.

My advice would be not to overthink a question. If you feel you need to flesh out an answer, just write some smart sounding crap and move on. It worked for me!

Also if you simply form an answer as your own pesonnal opinion, you can't be docked marks. You can pretty much make up whatever you want on the spot. The people marking the exam don't mind this, in fact if they notice the same answers cropping up over and over again, then they know the students are just parroting off what the teacher told them and they will be docked marks while you gain marks for having a unique answer!

IrishLassie26

Does anyone have a guideline on how much to write for each question? I usually go by 10 marks = half page 15 marks = 3/4 Is this ok or should I be writing more or less?

Missyelliot2

10 mark- half a page
15 mark- three quarters to a page
20 mark- page- page and one third
30 mark- two pages

(These are just what my own English teacher recommends, It depends on your writing size as-well. These are just rough guidelines)
Hope this helps

ElmW13

Missyelliot2 wrote: »

10 mark- half a page
15 mark- three quarters to a page
20 mark- page- page and one third
30 mark- two pages

(These are just what my own English teacher recommends, It depends on your writing size as-well. These are just rough guidelines)
Hope this helps

Our english teacher tells us a page per ten marks with a thirty marker being shortened to at least 2.5 pages

ElmW13

Missyelliot2 wrote: »

10 mark- half a page
15 mark- three quarters to a page
20 mark- page- page and one third
30 mark- two pages

(These are just what my own English teacher recommends, It depends on your writing size as-well. These are just rough guidelines)
Hope this helps

Our english teacher tells us a page per ten marks with a thirty marker being shortened to at least 2.5 pages

spurious

Read the marking schemes. It's nothing to do with the length of the answer, it's the quality.

VG31

ElmW13 wrote: »

Our english teacher tells us a page per ten marks with a thirty marker being shortened to at least 2.5 pages

You don't need to write 2.5 pages for 30 marks.

10 marks = 1/2 of a page
15 marks = 3/4 of a page
20 marks = About 1 page.
30 marks = 1 3/4 pages - 2 pages.

pizzamad

Our teacher has told us 3/4 page for ten marks, page and a half for 15, two for 20 and two and a half-three for 30 marks..:)

VG31

pizzamad wrote: »

Our teacher has told us 3/4 page for ten marks, page and a half for 15, two for 20 and two and a half-three for 30 marks..:)

The marking schemes don't say how much candidates should write but 30 marks is generally about 2 pages. Write more if you can but P2 is very time restricted so I would not advise writing more than you have to.

spurious

Do people seriously think an answer is marked on how long it is, not what is in it?

VG31

spurious wrote: »

Do people seriously think an answer is marked on how long it is, not what is in it?

Exactly, but... You still won't get the marks for 1/2 page of an excellent answer for 30 marks.

thetalker

my English teacher says we should write 4 A4 pages for a 30 mark question
my class did poorly in the mocks
the highest was 61% but the examiner was really harsh

Mr Rhode Island Red

The best out of our class for the mocks was 78% followed by 76%

This was mainly due to people wasting way too much time on Personal Writing (my friend wrote just shy of 6 A4 pages:eek:, not that I was any better, I spent 1h 15 minutes writing about 4 1/2 to 5:pac: ) which then led to us doing dire in Functional writing because we could only afford to spend 15 or so minutes on it (I got 16/30:rolleyes:) and we hadn't done much media studies either.

As for paper 2, everybody did pretty OK, but we really fell down in Fiction, because by that our hands were in a bad way, and we had no quotes of any use for our novel "Of Mice and Men".

Why is time so cruel, especially with English:(

VG31

thetalker wrote: »

my English teacher says we should write 4 A4 pages for a 30 mark question
my class did poorly in the mocks
the highest was 61% but the examiner was really harsh

That's far too much. Half that is fine.

Fifii

My teacher tells us that it's 1 strong, developed point for every 5 marks. By well developed he means a point, a reference to the text (preferably a quote but less quotes are needed for studied fiction than the others), and an explanation or further development. PQE:) Honestly I am trying to shorten and shorten my answers by doing an answer and then reading back over it and highlighting in different colors the point, the quote and my explanation. Then I can see where I can take out the junk:) As everyone has different writing sizes, you can't really say 2 pages,we all know that one person who has crazy huge writing;)

Manutd_4life

Missyelliot2 wrote: »

10 mark- half a page
15 mark- three quarters to a page
20 mark- page- page and one third
30 mark- two pages

(These are just what my own English teacher recommends, It depends on your writing size as-well. These are just rough guidelines)
Hope this helps

Thats what my teacher told us aswell. Makes sense but crazy when you look at the time you have to write that much in an exam. Reading part is 30mins, with usually one 10m question and two 15m questions. That means you have to read the text, read the questions, go back over the text and look for answers/quotes and then write a bit over 2 pages all in 30 MINUTES :eek:

IrishLassie26

Anyone have any advice for the timing in paper 2? It is the most difficult paper, I think, for time so is there any method or advice for speeding up?

hf98kk

I wrote 15 full a4 pages in the mock! I got an A but there is no way im putting myself under that kind of time pressure in the real thing. So for me, im going to speed up by just writing shorter answers. I was writing at least a page on average for each question. At the end of each answer I always write a conclusion which is quite similar to my opening parapgraph, does anyone else do this? I think I might stop doing this if it's not neccessary.

IrishLassie26

hf98kk wrote: »

I wrote 15 full a4 pages in the mock! I got an A but there is no way im putting myself under that kind of time pressure in the real thing. So for me, im going to speed up by just writing shorter answers. I was writing at least a page on average for each question. At the end of each answer I always write a conclusion which is quite similar to my opening parapgraph, does anyone else do this? I think I might stop doing this if it's not neccessary.

Well done to you! I am aiming for an A on Wednesday but all I can do is my best! I always write a conclusion too if I have time! It is very important as it shows structure in our answer

pizzamad

A conclusion is a must! Makrs go for summing up the answer at the end

pizzamad

Makrs... why am I sitting HL english...

Xgracie

Would a conclusion just be like a paragraph briefly like tying up all the points you made? I always mean to do them but forget, must remember on Wednesday!

VG31

Xgracie wrote: »

Would a conclusion just be like a paragraph briefly like tying up all the points you made? I always mean to do them but forget, must remember on Wednesday!

Yes just a line or two tying up your answer.

pizzamad

For example, if the question was what type of character is A chosen character in your drama and say you wrote about Romeo being a sad, stupid character - You would say something like
"In conclusion, I feel that Romeo from Romeo and Juliet is a sad, stupid character."

VG31

pizzamad wrote: »

For example, if the question was what type of character is A chosen character in your drama and say you wrote about Romeo being a sad, stupid character - You would say something like
"In conclusion, I feel that Romeo from Romeo and Juliet is a sad, stupid character."

I would not use the word stupid in the exam if I were you. There are better words to use.

pizzamad

That was just an example, obviously not

VG31

pizzamad wrote: »

That was just an example, obviously not

I was telling you just in case.

dee_mc

VG31 wrote: »

Exactly, but... You still won't get the marks for 1/2 page of an excellent answer for 30 marks.

If you can write a concise answer which fully answers the question, then yes, yes you will.

The danger of thinking 'I must write 2 pages / 4 pages / 17 pages for a 30 mark answer' is that you will lose sight of the point, write multiple conclusions, and generally ramble, which at the end of the day will lose you marks.

A good structure is important, so you will generally gain more marks for taking your time and concentrating on having well structured, concise answers, than you would for frantically writing x number of pages because of some crazy 'formula' as suggested by the teacher (and even from this thread, we can see how much that 'formula' differs between teachers).

Nobody is saying 'write as little as possible', but... know when to stop.

As an example, in my Leaving Cert English exam, I wrote fewer pages than any other student in my exam hall (average sized writing), and finished early enough to reread each answer and make small changes where necessary. And i got my A1.
In the Junior Cert, I also wrote relatively short answers, and i got either an A or a B.

Best of luck to all with the English papers, I look forward to the post-mortem

Missyelliot2

Hi, I'm doing the junior cert in 3 days and I was wondering, is it a certainty that a debate speech will come up for (HL) english? I was looking over the past personal writing questions over the years and a debate speech has come up 12 out of the 14 years in our exam papers. The last time it hasn't come up was in 2004. Is it now a definite question?

pizzamad

Does anyone know what you need to know from a novel and a drama like what will they ask? We didnt get exam papers this year so I'm not that sure

dee_mc

pizzamad wrote: »

Does anyone know what you need to know from a novel and a drama like what will they ask? We didnt get exam papers this year so I'm not that sure

Have a look at the past papers on www.examinations.ie to see the types of questions that come up; they don't change much from year to year

VG31

dee_mc wrote: »

If you can write a concise answer which fully answers the question, then yes, yes you will.

The danger of thinking 'I must write 2 pages / 4 pages / 17 pages for a 30 mark answer' is that you will lose sight of the point, write multiple conclusions, and generally ramble, which at the end of the day will lose you marks.

A good structure is important, so you will generally gain more marks for taking your time and concentrating on having well structured, concise answers, than you would for frantically writing x number of pages because of some crazy 'formula' as suggested by the teacher (and even from this thread, we can see how much that 'formula' differs between teachers).

Nobody is saying 'write as little as possible', but... know when to stop.

As an example, in my Leaving Cert English exam, I wrote fewer pages than any other student in my exam hall (average sized writing), and finished early enough to reread each answer and make small changes where necessary. And i got my A1.
In the Junior Cert, I also wrote relatively short answers, and i got either an A or a B.

Best of luck to all with the English papers, I look forward to the post-mortem

I agree with you, you've got good advice there, but it's very difficult for a short story to be 1 page and not finish it abruptly.

Still, quality over quantity.

dee_mc

VG31 wrote: »

I agree with you, you've got good advice there, but it's very difficult for a short story to be 1 page and not finish it abruptly.

Still, quality over quantity.

Right, but as I mentioned, nobody is saying 'only write one page'!
What I'm saying is, write your answer, have a strong introduction, main body with well developed points, and a strong conclusion that links to the introduction, and it genuinely doesn't matter how much you write.
Just try to focus on the strength rather than the length of the answer, and refer back to the question often to ensure you're remaining on topic, and you'll be grand

Missyelliot2

Hi, I'm doing the junior cert in 3 days and I was wondering, is it a certainty that a debate speech will come up for (HL) english? I was looking over the past personal writing questions over the years and a debate speech has come up 12 out of the 14 years in our exam papers. The last time it hasn't come up was in 2004. Is it a definite question?

Manutd_4life

dee_mc wrote: »

Right, but as i mentioned, nobody is saying 'only write one page'!
What I'm saying is, write your answer, have a strong introduction, main body with well developed points, and a strong conclusion that links to the introduction, and it genuinely doesn't matter how much you write.
Just try to focus on the strength rather than the length of the answer, and refer back to the question often to ensure you're remaining on topic, and you'll be grand

So does that mean examiners wont mark you down for having your length. my teacher who is also an examiner seems to think the length is very important and told us that for 10m = 1/2 page
15m = 3/4 page
20m = 1 page
30m = 2 pages

She also gave us this guide to the amount of points you should write for a certain questions. Can someone clarify and tell me this is right or wrong.

10m = 2 points
15m = 3 points
20m = 3/4 points
30m = 3-5 well developed points

Is this accurate and is this what examiners mark you on

dee_mc

Manutd_4life wrote: »

So does that mean examiners wont mark you down for having your length. my teacher who is also an examiner seems to think the length is very important and told us that for 10m = 1/2 page
15m = 3/4 page
20m = 1 page
30m = 2 pages

She also gave us this guide to the amount of points you should write for a certain questions. Can someone clarify and tell me this is right or wrong.

10m = 2 points
15m = 3 points
20m = 3/4 points
30m = 3-5 well developed points

Is this accurate and is this what examiners mark you on

Have a look at the marking schemes, you won't find any guidelines re length of answer.
Teachers like to give students as much guidance as possible, and it's simpler to guide with specifics, for example 'write half a page for that many marks'.
But don't think that this means you will be penalised for writing more OR less than the 'suggested length' - as said before, as long as you've answered the question fully, it genuinely doesn't matter how much you've written.

Manutd_4life

dee_mc wrote: »

Have a look at the marking schemes, you won't find any guidelines re length of answer.
Teachers like to give students as much guidance as possible, and it's simpler to guide with specifics, for example 'write half a page for that many marks'.
But don't think that this means you will be penalised for writing more OR less than the 'suggested length' - as said before, as long as you've answered the question fully, it genuinely doesn't matter how much you've written.

Yeah i was practicing a few reading comprehensions the other day and found it really difficult to write the amount my teacher recommended (my last post) in the time suggested. Its usually a one 10m question and then 2 20m questions. To write 2 pages and a half and read the reading comprehension all in 30 minutes i found extremely difficult. Any suggestions/advice

i am awsome

IrishLassie26 wrote: »

English paper 2 is the only paper in the Junior Cert which I am dreading! I got 80% in the Mocks and my teacher said I should be well able to get an A in the Junior Cert. However, the only thing that is against me and probably everyone else is time!

Does anyone have any tips for English paper 2 on how to approach the questions, speed up and how to keep to the timings?
Any advice would be greatly appreciated

I use a little technique that I call "brain dumping"this works every time, basically, you write down everything you know about your story, poem & drama on a rough page in short bullet points, then quikly read through all the question and circle the ones you prefer. I do this so later in the exam it's easier to come up with points for your answer , because your pen can't keep up with the speed of your brain. Another thing is , DO NOT GO OVERTIME on questions, if you didn't finish and you should be moving on to the next question, do it but leave a page in between so you can come back to it later, after all you don't have to pay for those booklets and you can ask for as many as you want! My final tip is that you should always ALWAYS spend more time on the seen section, because you can answer alot better on it , since you have been studying that particular stuff for three years now!

Thanks and hope this helps you all, usually this does the trick! Good luck on Wednesday!

hf98kk

I plan to spend 45 mins on the reading comprehension. Then about 55 on the personal writing and 25 each on media studies and functional writing.

hf98kk

Also my plan would have been to save time on the seen section and spend more time on the unseen stuff!

dee_mc

Manutd_4life wrote: »

Yeah i was practicing a few reading comprehensions the other day and found it really difficult to write the amount my teacher recommended (my last post) in the time suggested. Its usually a one 10m question and then 2 20m questions. To write 2 pages and a half and read the reading comprehension all in 30 minutes i found extremely difficult. Any suggestions/advice

Reading comprehensions can be tricky. I'd recommend reading the questions first, highlighting or underlining the main points of the question, and highlighting or underlining the relevant bits of the text before approaching the answer.
Use short quotes from the text to back up your answer (never quote big chunks of text, only the bits that are actually relevant).
Be bold: don't 'water down' your points, just state them confidently and back them up with evidence from the text.
If the question asks for your opinion (for example, you're sometimes asked things like 'do you like the writing style?'), give your actual opinion - don't write what you think the examiner will want to hear! A sincere, honest answer is always better than an insincere, 'lickarsey' one

Xgracie

Does anyone know the timing for paper 2?

smiles_1998

Xgracie wrote: »

Does anyone know the timing for paper 2?

Unseen drama- 20mins
Studied drama- 25mins
Unseen poem- 20mins
Studied poem- 25mins
Unseen fiction- 20mins
Studied fiction- 25mins

Xgracie

smiles_1998 wrote: »

Unseen drama- 20mins
Studied drama- 25mins
Unseen poem- 20mins
Studied poem- 25mins
Unseen fiction- 20mins
Studied fiction- 25mins

Thank you so much! How I'm gonna get it all done is beyond me!

VG31

smiles_1998 wrote: »

Unseen drama- 20mins
Studied drama- 25mins
Unseen poem- 20mins
Studied poem- 25mins
Unseen fiction- 20mins
Studied fiction- 25mins

Would it not make more sense for the studied to be 20 mins and the unseen 25 mins, as you will know your studied so you should be quicker at it then the unseen.

smiles_1998

VG31 wrote: »

Would it not make more sense for the studied to be 20 mins and the unseen 25 mins, as you will know your studied so you should be quicker at it then the unseen.

I tend to write better answers on the studied than the unseen but everyone's different
@xgracie- I actually don't know HOW I'm going to get it done! I nearly burst a vein trying to get it done in the mocks...English paper 2 is the exam I am the most nervous for...

VG31

How far did people get in English Paper 2 in the mocks? I only managed to just start the studied fiction (the last part I did).

Manutd_4life

VG31 wrote: »

How far did people get in English Paper 2 in the mocks? I only managed to just start the studied fiction (the last part I did).

I finished with literally 30 seconds to go. Was pretty proud of myself but dont know if ill be able to cope with the timing pressure again in the real things. Gonna have to work out my hand in these next two days so it doesn't die out in the exam like it nearly did in the mocks

ElmW13

VG31 wrote: »

How far did people get in English Paper 2 in the mocks? I only managed to just start the studied fiction (the last part I did).

I managed to get the whole paper done with a minute or two left. I had a digital clock in front of me so as the 25 minutes was ending, I was making sure I was finishing the question. I wrote really quickly. If you look through the paper, my writing got worse and worse as I went through the papers.

smiles_1998

ElmW13 wrote: »

I managed to get the whole paper done with a minute or two left. I had a digital clock in front of me so as the 25 minutes was ending, I was making sure I was finishing the question. I wrote really quickly. If you look through the paper, my writing got worse and worse as I went through the papers.

Haha that happened to my writing as well...I got it done with two minutes left so I'm hoping that will happen again on Wednesday!