English

Caoimhe

It seems to me that no matter how hard I push myself with English, how much I study and how well I think I've done in the exam, I come out with a disappointing result. My teacher keeps telling my parents and I that I should expect an A2 at least in my Leaving Cert exam, but I just don't see how this is possible when I consistently get 76% or lower in my Christmas / summer / mock exams.
I've noticed a good few people with high english grades in the Mock Results thread and would welcome any advice you have on bringing up my grade. I'm despairing at the moment because I can't figure out where I'm going wrong!

Skyuser

It's a tough subject, just always write something. Never leave the answer blank. The length of your answers need to be about ten times the marks given. 50 marks = 500 lines, 100 marks = 1000 lines etc.
English has opinionated answers, so as long as you know what your talking about, your answer is never wrong.

mikemac

I did my leaving in 1999. Nothing you ever do once you leave secondary school will ever be as hard again. College was a doss by comparison.

I've no real advice but be assured that just about everyone moves up a few grades from their mocks to the leaving cert.
I got 46% in my English mock and got a bollocking over it from the yearhead. Studied like mad for the final term and got an A1. You mightn't believe me but it's true. It can be done

It may too late now but in future in college try to apply mind maps and read books by Tony Buzan. That stuff realy does work. If you've ever seen Derren Browne on Channel 4 you'd see it in practice. That man is brilliant!

Best of luck

Caoimhe

Writing isn't my problem, I always write plenty. It just I'm losing marks for no apparent reason. I'm an avid reader and have been since I was about 5 years old and I'm very opinionated, I just don't seem to be getting the marks. It seriously gets me down.

Skyuser

Well, ya obviously must be doin something. Were your Mocks sent off to be marked? If not, maybe its the teacher that doesn't like you, lol.

Caoimhe

o.0
Nah, she likes me They were sent out to be marked and my teacher said that she thinks they were marked a little hard but I still want to bring it up to an A1, I really need it.

mikemac

Have you a couple of essay's prepared?

It doesn't have to be very specific, just something prepared that can be applied to the essay choices that will be given

What I did was learned off an essay from the Reader's Digest about nature and it was full of colorful and descriptive language. Simply applied to a title about friendship and in a roundabout way I tied it all together.

I was warned that examiners will deduct marks for irelevant and learned off content but obviously not in my case.

Why not approach the exam like you would history? Basically, trying to identify possible questions, prepare answers and variants of these answers and then learn them off. Using mind maps is the best way of doing that.

hum

hey, im not saying that this is true in your case but many teachers do consistantly mark work harder than an examiner would because they want you to keep working hard even if you are an A student with still months to go. I know this because a few weeks ago my English teacher was just reading a passage in class from one of my classmate's Hamlet answer. she said he got a C1 in it but if he could learn it off and reproduce it in an exam scenario then he would get a B, she kinda let that slip and tried to back pedal but it was too late! she is a great teacher and she does mark hard but man im not saying just because she said that that im not working half as hard or anything, mainly i think she might do it to keep everyone working.
its just an aspect to consider thats all.

rainbow kirby

I think if you get too wound up about the exam your writing doesn't flow as well. I was a C3 student for the 2 years of senior cycle, went into the exam relaxed as hell thinking 'this is grand, I'm not counting this for points' (go doing 8 subjects), and came out with a B1. Viewed the paper out of morbid curiosity, and I was about 3 marks off an A2. And I'd gotten a ridiculously good paper 1. Just because I wasn't wound up about it.

Sully

Skyuser wrote:

It's a tough subject, just always write something. Never leave the answer blank. The length of your answers need to be about ten times the marks given. 50 marks = 500 lines, 100 marks = 1000 lines etc.
English has opinionated answers, so as long as you know what your talking about, your answer is never wrong.

Your answer is partly incorrect. You dont need to write 50 lines for 50marks.

Anyway, things that will bring you down in English is the following:
Spelling, Language used it the answer & is it answering the question?
Preperation answers is a good way of achiving results in the Leaving Cert -- write out a good sample answer, ask your teacher to correct and grade it - when you get it back, if not already stated, find out where you went wrong? What can you do to improve them?

Most people are brought down by the Essay -- so work hard on essays and if possible have a few preperation answers ready. Do English past papers regulary, go over them and get them corrected and find out where you went wrong and so on.

Two points to remember: 1) Its quality and NOT quantity. 2) The pres and so on would of being marked slightly harder and the whole point of the pres are to find out your mistakes and learn how to fix them.

Hope I was of some help. The Exam Brief is coming out in the Indo today I think, goes over some papers and stuff like that so it might be of use. I liked the one previous to it anyway!

- Sully

angeldelight

I don't necessarily agree with people saying learn off essays then change them to suit the title... you could end up getting really scared if essay titles came up that you couldn't relate what you'd learned to instead of thinking of something yourself.

I know you said you wrote plenty and had your own opinions but are you backing them up with quotes? You need to use plenty of them particularly in your single text and studied poetry, then as much as you can in your comparative. It can also be impressive if you can fit any relevant quotes/song lyrics into essays.

Which parts are you going down in? If its the comparative make sure you don't fall into the trap of just re-telling the story. You can presue that the examiner is familiar with your text and all you need to focus on is the question at hand, you don't ened to explain the story. Also make sure you're using lots of linking phrases ( similarly, as in text Y, unlike text X...). Another good tip for the comparative if you're going for a high grade is try and start off with your 1st sentence linking and then your last sentence linking them. Then try not to deal with every text on its own, i.e. have 2 paragraphs on the 1st then 2 paragraphs on the 2nd then 2 on the 3rd and bring them together in the summary. Each paragraph should deal with more than 1 text if you're going for an A (generally), but it can get confusing so you need to practice it and get your teacher to look over them for you. If its not the comparative thats bringing you down ignore all that

FOr a surprising number of people the reading comprehensions get them down, you shoud pick your QB first then A cause B generally needs more thought and don't forget you can't do A and B on the same text.

And in all your answers use "I" a lot. They're looking for your opinion, not your teacher's opinion or a learned-off textbook so even if you're using different notes change them around a bit and say I believe that or I think that or in my opinion.
And good luck

JCB

If u posted up an answer we could see wat u r doin wrong.

Dave Larkin

English is one of those tricky subjects with a lot of material to be studied and learned off. On the one hand, you have your essays, comprehensions, etc. On the other, you have your single text, comparative texts and poetry.

It does seem like a lot, no question. I'm a 5th year student myself at the moment and with my teacher - who is not too good, by the way - we're making quite a bit of progress in everything but poetry.

Your success in essay writing is reliant on your spelling, punctuation, grammar and ideas. As many people have said in this post, make sure your answer relates directly to the question. For example, write a paragraph, then refer back to the question itself. Include a small bit at the end which ties it all back to the question.

As for poetry and the texts, it's up to you to learn the quotes, read the novels/plays again (possibly over the summer) and know them very well. With the comparative texts, make sure you have a good knowledge of the crossovers in them i.e. similar themes.

Good luck.

the smiley one

Caoimhe as you already know, I totally relate with the English thing. I really don't know how I am doing! Up until now I have consoled myself with the presumption that my teacher was marking hard, however one of the newer teachers in our school is a registered marker and he now consults her when calculating our marks - no cop out!!

What might be helpful is looking at the standard of the class as a whole, for example if you are in a top honours class then perhaps you are marked harder (bell curve etc....)

Also what id really helpful is to look at the mark breakdown of the paper (do you get your papers back if they are marked from outside the school??) well, if you do then see what your mark breakdown was like on paper 2 versus paper one. If the lower mark is in paper 2, this is actually good news because all you need to do is revise more, it is fixable. If it is on paper 1 then it is going to be harder to improve and the only way to do this is to read everything you see and also practise lots - hand up extra comprehensions, "part b's" , essays etc. But it is also very fixable.

When in your darkest moments and about to burn the damn "New Explorations", console yourself with the fact that last year a German girl in my school got an A1 in English - nothing is ever impossible!
(wasn't really meant to sound quite so Mary Poppins-esque, but you get the general jist!)

Caoimhe

Thank you all for posting up advice I've asked my teacher if she'll go through my mock with me and be ruthless as to where I went wrong. I never lose marks on mechanics because I have excellent spelling and grammar.
My problem isn't knowing my quotes or telling the story of the texts, because I have plenty of quotes and I know exactly what I'm doing in the comparative and in the single text. I think that examiners just don't like my style. I was really happy with my essay coming out of the exam but only got something like 67% on it. My comparative question I had learned off, gotten an A2 for it from my teacher, but in the exam only got 73%.
Hence my being utterly baffled by English exams in general...

angeldelight

Well get your teacher to go over it with you and see what they say. Tbh there has to be something, yes english can depend on the marker but also there must be some aspect you're not concentrating on or something, you got an A2 for a Q you did then got lower, was the wording of the Q EXACTLY the same? SOmetimes there are subtle differences. Only your teacher who has seen your work can give you a proper answer so talk to them asap!

Scarinae

Don't go by those stupid guidelines as to how much you should write in the exam. I was all panicked after the mock exam because everyone was saying stuff like "I wrote seven pages on Emily Dickinson, how about you?" and I was there thinking oh CRAP because I only wrote two and a bit... But as it turns out, I got the best mark in my class. Examiners don't want pages and pages of waffle. Write as much as you need to make your points, but don't overstretch what you're writing to fit a ceratin number of words
As for the essays... I don't know what your essay style is, or what titles you go for, but I have two pieces of advice - firstly, avoid narrative essays and essays inspired by photographs; it is very difficult to write a GOOD short story in that amount of time, and the photograph ones apparently don't get many marks. Go for the discursive and factual type of ones, as its easier to get marks. Secondly, try to do something different to what everyone else will be writing. The examiner is going to be correcting piles and piles of papers and does not want to be reading loads of boring essays about the same things - make yours a breath of fresh air for them

The reason for my second point is because of an essay we did last year. the title was "After the War", and our teacher said they were the most boring set of essays he's ever corrected because we all did pretty much the same thing (third world war arrives, family hides in shelter, come out of hiding afterwards, have to rebuild the world blah blah blah) He said he nearly fell asleep correcting them cos they were all basically the same story. However, one girl did something TOTALLY different and so got really high marks, cos she grabbed his attention. Her essay was about a rapping contest in Detroit called "The War" and the tension it caused between rival gangs after the results. Not that I'm saying you should write essays about gangsta rap, but do try to be original

Ms Beanbag

I remember doing that "after the war essay"
Anyway, I think grammar and spelling only counts for 5%.
Its a complete waste of time learning out essays and spewing them off. As someone else said, learn a few good prhases and try and incorporate them in your essay.
You must answer the question asked! My teacher told me that you should try to mention the question in every single paragraph of your essay, as a very high percent is given for answering the question that is asked.
Aswell, maybe your're just not as good at english as you think you are. Maybe you should concentrate on your other subjects

When answering questions, be very clear and concise. Keep to the question, don't go off on tangents - make sure what you're saying is relevant.

First summarise your answer, then expand on your choice and back it up, then conclude your answer by reiterating your main point in relation to what you have just said.