Is my english teacher lieing?

justmelindsey

Im doing higher english (at the moment anyway Ill be doing leaving in 2017) and my teacher says my essay should be 10 pages or more, that every 10 marks means I have to write a whole page.
Is she lying to get us to write more? Cause all shes doing is stressing our whole class tf out.

spurious

Nowhere in the marking scheme does it mention a number of pages. It doesn't even make sense. Some people have huge writing and others write really small.

selectamatic

She should probably be working on ye're spelling first and foremost

Alf Veedersane

selectamatic wrote: »

She should probably be working on ye're spelling first and foremost

People in glass houses..

OP, the length of the essay is not related to the marking of it. A good essay is a good essay.

selectamatic

Alf Veedersane wrote: »

People in glass houses..

OP, the length of the essay is not related to the marking of it. A good essay is a good essay.

An almost acceptable error/idiosyncrasy in Hiberno-English but it does take away from my sly dig :P

As said though length of essay is irrelevant the quality of the essay is what matters. That said 10 pages isn't a million miles away from what a person with medium to large handwriting should be aiming for. Length of answers and essays isn't quantified in pages it's quantified in words. Too short an essay won't get an A that's for sure.

TSMGUY

The trolling is strong.

Post count: 4
Spelling of lying: Lieing
Story credibility: Close to nil.


LMAO at this whole thread. 10 pages! Either you're trolling us or your teacher is trolling you.

justmelindsey

TSMGUY wrote: »

The trolling is strong.

Post count: 4
Spelling of lying: Lieing
Story credibility: Close to nil.


LMAO at this whole thread. 10 pages! Either you're trolling us or your teacher is trolling you.

Yeah my spelling is literally ****e I know that, but sadly not LYING

Turtle_

One of the greatest skills you could possibly demonstrate is the ability to communicate succinctly and with clarity. 10 pages is anything but succinct or clear. And if you're writing 10 pages, I'd wager you're also not answering the question, you're just spewing everything you know about a topic onto the page.

wench

10 pages seems excessive. I never went past three or four, and managed an A.
If you have all the correct information, or a well constructed essay, there is no need to pad it out with waffle.

Peg14

Waffle is waffle whether it be three pages of it or ten pages. Just try develop your points as clearly as you can. I understand that's easier said than done with the LC English course that we have....3 pages is good estimate for say 4/5 developed points and for you to give yourself time in the exam to actually think. Only students writing 10 pages are ones not even thinking of the question as already mentioned. They haven't given themselves a chance.

two wheels good

selectamatic wrote: »

An almost acceptable error/idiosyncrasy in Hiberno-English but it does take away from my sly dig :P

Nah, just an error. Putting a "Hiberno-English" label on it doesn't make it some quaint idiosyncrasy .

Turtle_

So as you can gather, OP, your English teacher is full of sh1t. Maybe not intentionally lying, but definitely full of it.

As an example, I recently did exams where some of the questions required an essay style answer. If you couldn't answer the question in 4 pages (medium sized writing on exam booklets with the column down the RHS), you were waffling - you were either going into waaaaay too much irrelevant detail or you were dancing around the question and doing very little to answer it.

Your best bet is to sit down with sample questions and structure answers. The first thing is to identify which points you need to make in order to answer the question comprehensively. Introductions are best when they read a bit like an executive summary - Identify the question then give an outline of what you're going to say and any conclusions you draw. Then comes the main body of the essay. Paragraphs should deal with one point only. What is the item? How is it demonstrated? (Quotes to support) etc. etc. What can you conclude from this? Are there any arguments or is there any evidence against this? (All of the above as relevant). Then a brief summary of what you've written. Absolutely NOTHING new in the summary. If it's new, it should have its own paragraph in the main body of the essay.

There's really nothing worse than reading an essay that's a train of thought - it's horrible to read - so make sure your answer has real structure in it.

I find it useful to practice a few essays on my computer so that I can chop and change them about, get a feel for how much detail is too much in terms of time. Know how many minutes you have per mark and stick to that ruthlessly. You get more marks that way. As a rough guide, about 1.75 pages of 12pt Times New Roman with normal formatting and proper use of paragraphs will take about 45 minutes to write in an exam. So figure out how much time you have for the essay and make sure any essays you plan can be written down in the time you have available.

emersyn

Mechanics, aka spelling and grammar, only account for 10% of the overall marks in the English exam, so at this stage your time would be far better spent improving the other three marking criteria: purpose, content and language. People like to make themselves feel smart by picking at other people's spelling and grammar, but mechanics are worth very few marks in the exam relatively speaking, and people place far too great of an emphasis on them.

TSMGUY

selectamatic wrote: »

An almost acceptable error/idiosyncrasy in Hiberno-English but it does take away from my sly dig :P

.

You are more full of ****e than a TCD Classics student :D:D I'm gonna write my whole English paper in "Hiberno English" and when I get a fail, I'm gonna appeal on the basis my writing was of an "almost acceptable" standard.

I love how vain people are, though. Ever since your comment everyone's been on their best behaviour spelling and grammar wise, lest they get called out.

LOL.

reason vs religion

This report gives exemplar answers, which you can use to gauge expected length... examinations.ie/archive/examiners_reports/cer_2008/LC_English_2008.pdf

Alf Veedersane wrote: »

People in glass houses.

While it's questionable grammar, it's not misspelt.

ryansapienza

4-5 pages is more than enough for poetry and single text. Comparative should be 5-6. Composition I'd say 8 pages max, but that's pushing it.

DublinArnie

wench wrote: »

10 pages seems excessive. I never went past three or four, and managed an A.
If you have all the correct information, or a well constructed essay, there is no need to pad it out with waffle.

How big is your hand writing?

wench

DublinArnie wrote: »

How big is your hand writing?

Pretty normal, not small enough to squeeze 10 pages into 3 anyway

justmelindsey

Thanks for the advice, my English teacher must be wanting us to like over work or something, ugh.

jcd5971

I'm really trying to not come across as an ass or grammar Nazi, but come on op, that post is a mess.

dubrov

jcd5971 wrote:

I'm really trying to not come across as an ass or grammar Nazi, but come on op, that post is a mess.

I think you need to try much harder.

aon1998

Chief advising examiner said to me 3 1/2 to 4 pages is all thats needed, and that he's given A1's on 2 3/4 pages but thats obviously very rare.

readytosnap

Only 8 more pages to go.

Ursus Horribilis

justmelindsey wrote: »

Yeah my spelling is literally ****e I know that, but sadly not LYING

Here's a question for you. If you admit that your spelling is "literally ****e" and you don't appear to be able to write coherent sentences, why are you doing higher level English?

finooola

There is nothing wrong with the use of "ye" or "ye're", so get off that poster's back. That's how a lot of us speak here and is perfectly acceptable and not an error on an Internet forum. You wouldn't use it in an English essay, obviously.

OP, I don't know what the marking criteria for essays is, but I doubt it involves an arbitrary minimum length. I'd imagine clarity, clear structure and getting your points across are more important. You'll be fine in English anyway. The only exam in the LC I ran out of writing time on was geography. Although that was quite a few years back now...

TSMGUY

Odus fell down wrote: »

Here's a question for you. If you admit that your spelling is "literally ****e" and you don't appear to be able to write coherent sentences, why are you doing higher level English?

I think this takes the cake for rudest comment in this thread. Well done. You do know how a guy writes on an online forum isn't representative of his writing in a real life situation, right? Like my face doesn't actually turn blue when I roll my eyes IRL. :rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:

DublinArnie

wench wrote: »

Pretty normal, not small enough to squeeze 10 pages into 3 anyway

I average out between 7-9 words per line, but aim to get a page for every 10m (always struggle to do this for King Lear Q and composition I struggle to get past 6pages.)

DublinArnie

aon1998 wrote: »

Chief advising examiner said to me 3 1/2 to 4 pages is all thats needed, and that he's given A1's on 2 3/4 pages but thats obviously very rare.

I wish every examiner was humane.

Ursus Horribilis

TSMGUY wrote: »

I think this takes the cake for rudest comment in this thread. Well done. You do know how a guy writes on an online forum isn't representative of his writing in a real life situation, right? Like my face doesn't actually turn blue when I roll my eyes IRL. :rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:

I'm sorry if I've hit a sore nerve here. It was a genuine question, not an attempt at trolling or being rude. Yes I know that when people post on internet forums, they will make errors and write in a way they won't in real life. I do it myself, especially when I'm writing on my phone. Having said that, when someone's admitting to having trouble with spelling and has written sentences that other people have pulled up for being incoherent, it makes me wonder. It's as easy to write a sentence properly as it is to write like ugh Im overworked lol.
Oh, and I hope you don't turn blue from all that eye-rolling

TSMGUY

Odus fell down wrote: »

I'm sorry if I've hit a sore nerve here. It was a genuine question, not an attempt at trolling or being rude. Yes I know that when people post on internet forums, they will make errors and write in a way they won't in real life. I do it myself, especially when I'm writing on my phone. Having said that, when someone's admitting to having trouble with spelling and has written sentences that other people have pulled up for being incoherent, it makes me wonder. It's as easy to write a sentence properly as it is to write like ugh Im overworked lol.
Oh, and I hope you don't turn blue from all that eye-rolling

You haven't hit a nerve at all - Honours English was my only A1 last year! I was actually telling my mum yesterday that I wanted to do English in college and I was saying the only reason we get a bad rap is because of the stereotype of a gammar nazis going around rebuking everyone and making them feel like ****e for how they talk/write.

I just wish people would lighten the f*** up about tiny grammatical errors on these boards. That snarky comment on the 1st page inexplicably has 33 likes or so.

emersyn

Odus fell down wrote: »

Here's a question for you. If you admit that your spelling is "literally ****e" and you don't appear to be able to write coherent sentences, why are you doing higher level English?

The absolute maximum percentage you can be docked for spelling mistakes is 10%. It's possible to spell every single word wrong in the exam and still get an A1.

jcd5971

dubrov wrote:

I think you need to try much harder.

That's probably fair

randylonghorn

Give over with the grammar nazi-ism please.

OP, quality not quantity (given a basic minimum ofc, you're unlikely to get an A on a half-page answer).