Hi! 
What's your opinion on people memorising their essays and creative pieces going into exams? I am being told that it's the best thing to do, but I'm not sure..
Thank you!
This has long been argued, and I can see why. However, what you choose to do depends on many factors: how much time you have, how good you are at memorising, whether you have the question, what ideas you've thought of for your creative, etc. There are pros and cons to each method.
Firstly, depending on their natural English skill, people often decide whether to memorise, or write 'from scratch' (I say 'from scratch' because ideally, all your quotes, techniques and analysis should be memorised and you've written out practice essays multiple times). It's true, some people
do just naturally have a flair for English, and those people typically write their essays 'from scratch'. This is advantageous as you can easily adapt to the question and with practice (perhaps also marking from a tutor, teacher, or ATAR Notes' mods), you'll have some really good ideas prepared, and can just go for it when you get the question! However, anybody can learn to write a good essay from scratch, but it takes practice and time, which is why many people resort to memorising essays.
Memorising takes a significant amount of effort as well. Often used by people who aren't 'naturals' at the subject, this is the method of writing out a pre-prepared essay in the exam room. Obviously, for this you need an essay that you have perfected, which also takes a lot of time to type/write up. It might seem 'safe', but just remember that if you blank out (personally hasn't happened to me, but can happen to anyone), your essay is gone. Furthermore, memorising an entire essay takes a significant amount of time, even up to 7 hours (I have personally taken this long before). Also, if you decide to memorise your essay, I highly recommend memorising a few days before, and practising with various questions so that you have the hang of adapting your essay to different questions. As you can probably tell, I do often memorise and adapt my essays, as I have tried both methods and this gets me the best results. If you have a method that you have gotten good marks consistently with before, I recommend doing that. It's risky, changing methods with your writing mid-year, unless you still haven't found something that's worked for you.
The key to any good essay is a LOT of practice. You can incorporate both methods and memorise your key ideas, introduction (including a strong thesis), quotes, techniques and analysis, and learn how to adapt this to the question, but either way, the best results come with practice. I admit that I have gotten full marks a few times with an adapted memorised essay from the
night before, but I don't recommend this at all as I sacrificed sleep which is NOT a good idea the day before an exam. Your best bet is putting in the effort to write out an essay at home under timed conditions, from scratch, then getting it looked at. How did you do? After a few tries, if whoever you asked to mark it (ideally a teacher) is still not satisfied, perhaps memorisation of key points, etc. or an entire essay (but after learning how to
adapt, obviously) would work better for you.
As for creatives, since they're my stronger point, I can walk into an exam with just an idea and get satisfactory results, so I personally have never memorised a creative. It's recommended to have an already-created character and/or a setting to adapt into your story, if these aren't provided in the stimuli- makes things a lot easier, really
Writing a good creative also comes with practice, especially if you don't have the flair for it.
tl;dr- You can literally write a good
anything with
or without memorising, you just need practice. Find out what works for you and
stick to it!!
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Topic: English Advanced Question Thread (Read 1241983 times)