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English Paper 1 - Personal Writing

  • 29-05-2014 9:54am
    #1
    ConorFTW
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 15 ✭


    Okay so I did my pres earlier this year and got 54 out of 70 for the personal writing question. I made up my essay on the day and came up with a murder story. However I'm planning on learning off an essay before the exam, or at least having an idea as for what to write, and can't seem to find a topic that comes up every year. So I was just wondering, what topic should I write about that should almost be guaranteed to come up and what are you writing about? Thank you.
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  • #2
    Mr Rhode Island Red
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 746 ✭✭✭Mr Rhode Island Red


    Same as myself, I got 54 in the mocks for personal writing as well.

    I can't write short stories to save my life so I always go for stuff like "The beauty of quite places" and "Trivial things that annoy me", that sort of thing (observational writing?)

    But most of the people in my class write short stories and our English teacher did a lot of work with us as regards story-writing.

    She said to limit the number of characters in a short story to 2 or 3, because she says there isn't enough time to develop more characters than that to an adequate standard in an hour.

    She also said to stay in one or two places/settings, for the same reasons as above. Eg. Don't go from a kitchen, to a farm, to the shop, to the back seat of a car, to a hospital (a bit exaggerated but it's the example she gave us)

    She also said to keep our audience in mind. I'm sure a murder mystery is perfect but some people in our class wrote graphic zombie apocalypse/torture/sacrificing sort of stuff and she said that it may be taken up as "bad taste" by some examiners. She said its fine to write something unique and thrilling and with a bit of "shock factor" provided you don't go overboard.

    A lot of people in my English class tried to memorise a story and weave it in on the day and when our results came back the examiner looked down upon this action in the general comments. The examiner said there is an obvious difference between the quality of the learnt off stuff (not relevant and poorly written) compared to the people, like yourself and I, that had the initiative to formulate an original story on the day(well-written and relevant)

    By the way that's the examiners view and not mine, I know a few people who have had great success with learning stuff off for the personal writing.

    Hope this helps


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