ATAR Notes: Forum
VCE Stuff => VCE English Studies => VCE Subjects + Help => VCE English & EAL => Topic started by: rachaelcool on August 06, 2012, 07:00:49 pm
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Just curious... how many essays do you write (per week, say) for your English subject? Or, how many did you write?
:)
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Two months before the end of year exam, I wrote one every week. I ended up writing about nine or ten essays. I have no idea if this is more or less than the average person. At the moment I'm trying to get back into the habit. :)
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I've written 1 practice essay so far this year, and that was for our first SAC.
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For my 'Ransom' sac (which is next week), I've written about six - seven so far. Usually only write about four, but I had some trouble with a couple of essays.
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Last week I did 5. I usually try to do around that much before a sac.
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I usually just write one or two before each SAC, but it's getting closer to the end of the year so I probably should start writing more.
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I usually just write one or two before each SAC, but it's getting closer to the end of the year so I probably should start writing more.
That's pretty much what I did. 3 LAs and 3 Text Responses and 2 contexts before each SAC :)
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i think i've done around 20 - 25 for the year so far which is under what i was aiming for (35 - 40 at this stage)
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Thanks guys!
Yeah I tend to write about one a week for English, and the equivalent length in Revolutions questions. I write next to nothing extra for Literature though, should change that..
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Don't delude yourself into thinking writing heaps of essays will get you a good mark though. It's important to spend an equal amount of time (or even more) developing the complexity of your understanding and interpretation of the text, which will take your essays to the next level. In my opinion the real benefit of writing essays is becoming efficient in articulating your more prominent views on a text so that they become essentially second-nature heading into an assessment.
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7 Language Analysis + 5 Ransom + 1 Streetcar + 3 Spies = 16 essays for this year so far (still managed to get A+ for every English SAC so far)
I spend a lot of my time writing essays when I first start out, and I correct them until I think they're perfect enough, before I go under time-constraints.
The 1 essay for Streetcar was drafted and edited a lot, with context you probably don't need to write as much essays as you would for text response and language analysis, seeing as how the prompts for context easily link in with another and are pretty open-ended.
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Just one or half of one a week hehe. Will hopefully be doing 2-3 a week come exam revision time
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Thanks for all the input guys!
And charmanderp, I definitely agree it is super important to have a thorough knowledge of the text/context before writing a load of essays -- however I do find that if I address a similar argument from one essay to another this also helps in extending my interpretation, because I find writing stuff down in essay format really helps me formulate my ideas in a coherent way as opposed to having all these half-baked thoughts floating around. But this is only after finding those ideas anyway, so I'm basically just +1ing you all the way :D
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Besides the SAC's
1 Cosi text response
1 Context
1 Interpreter text response
trying to finish my second interpreter essay within the next hour.
From now on I think I'll make thursday my essay day and write one essay during private study. Even though I need much more than 1.5 hours for 1 essay atm. Hope I'll be able to bring down the time until the exam.
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Wow you guys are so dedicated. I have dead-set only wrote three essays this entire year.
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Ah, amilss, but for me English is probably my only hope for a really good score - I've gotta exploit that! :)
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Roughly 2 or 3 a week from late September until the exam. Like some people have said, make sure it's quality over quantity. And also get these essays marked!!! Get your teachers and tutors to mark them, however an important skill you need to grasp is to mark your own essays very critically. This will subconsciously force you to keep in mind the criteria and things not to do, when you write your next essay. :)
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Roughly 2 or 3 a week from late September until the exam. Like some people have said, make sure it's quality over quantity. And also get these essays marked!!! Get your teachers and tutors to mark them, however an important skill you need to grasp is to mark your own essays very critically. This will subconsciously force you to keep in mind the criteria and things not to do, when you write your next essay. :)
Yes! I mark all of my essays and plenty of my friends' essays and I find this lends itself really well to improving my own writing. Particularly in terms of structure, you'll realise that some things simply DON'T work and will inherently start to purge them from your essays.
After you write an essay read it aloud to yourself. Some of the things which might have sounded great on paper might
suddenly sound incongruous and you'll want to make subtle changes. That really helped my simplify my writing, which was a major problem I had early last year.
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an important skill you need to grasp is to mark your own essays very critically
Ah, fantastic tip! I tend to keep the criteria in mind while I write (sometimes), but this sounds so helpful! I do read over mine critically but I don't mark them to the criteria per se. Will do this, thanks!
And charmanderp, yeah we're told religiously to read our writing out loud. Its so useful, my sentences can tend to be of monolithic length over and over and over again. My exam hall will probably be filled with people whispering to themselves!
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I've written 4-5 for the entire year. But what I usually do is write down the ideas and put them on the wall..so whenever I enter my room I repeat what I've written. Practice essays will contribute a lot to your time management in the exam. so they are helpful
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A farewell to Arms: 4
Cosi: 3
L.A: 2
Growing Up Asian In Australia: 4
So really not many...
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Just wondering how many essays shld a yr 11 student write, particularly ESL students? Should we write more essays than English students?
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As many as you feel you need to. There's no set limit. I know people who don't write any and people who write over 100 and both perfect grades. It's all up to you; how strong you are in the subject and how confident you are. Obviously the more the better, as you'll learn something new every time you write an essay. I'd recommend one a week, and give it to your teacher to mark it, maybe over the weekend.
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I wrote zero essays leading up the exams for English and I scored 37 (A on the exam, A sacs). The only essays I wrote all year were the prac SACs and actual SAC. But there's no denying that essay practice is beneficial.
It honestly depends on what score you're after.
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Do u think it is beneficial to memorize some common topic A+ essays for text response and context?
Will the exmainers be giving out common topics or rare ones? and usually do we get to choose from 2 or 3 topics for text response and context?
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Will the exmainers be giving out common topics or rare ones?
Depends on which text you are doing. I am expecting rare topics for Ransom, for instance; while contrariwise the examiners seem to have a penchant for giving out really obvious prompts for OTW.
and usually do we get to choose from 2 or 3 topics for text response and context?
2 topics for each text response text. One topic for each context.
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Do u think it is beneficial to memorize some common topic A+ essays for text response and context?
Will the exmainers be giving out common topics or rare ones? and usually do we get to choose from 2 or 3 topics for text response and context?
Well, you are aiming for 50 in ESL looking at your sig. If you are then a high achieving student I see no reason why you'd need to memorise essays?
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Do u think it is beneficial to memorize some common topic A+ essays for text response and context?
Will the exmainers be giving out common topics or rare ones? and usually do we get to choose from 2 or 3 topics for text response and context?
Well, you are aiming for 50 in ESL looking at your sig. If you are then a high achieving student I see no reason why you'd need to memorise essays?
Exactly. I know many people who say that memorising essays 'works' for them but I've never known any student who aims to or gets 46-50 and prides them self on being a strong English student to do this.
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First of all.. why in the world would you memorize an essay for a random prompt? How would your essay make any sense, since you don't even know what the prompt you are writing about is?
I abhor this tactic because this leaves rooms for people to use A+ essays written by their tutors to gain fantastic marks.. which not only is it disingenuous it defeats the purpose of the English exam - which is writing essays which are formulated on the spot which attempt to discuss the prompt at hand.
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First of all.. why in the world would you memorize an essay for a random prompt? How would your essay make any sense, since you don't even know what the prompt you are writing about is?
in context anyway, a lot of the prompts are very similar, so with two or three essays memorized you could actually pull it off, not the best idea though as what charmanderp said, i know a few people who were extremely good at english who actually tried this last year for the exam and it screwed them over, i would just make sure i have a very strong structure and board range of complex ideas before going into the exam, for how many essays to write i would be aiming for about 2-3 a week at the moment which will slowly increase we move closer to the exam.
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Personally, I do 1-2 per week, mostly Context and Text Response (ceebs touching L.A just yet). But before SACs I tend to overwork myself, for my last Context SAC I did 9 essays :P
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Do u think it is beneficial to memorize some common topic A+ essays for text response and context?
Will the exmainers be giving out common topics or rare ones? and usually do we get to choose from 2 or 3 topics for text response and context?
Well, you are aiming for 50 in ESL looking at your sig. If you are then a high achieving student I see no reason why you'd need to memorise essays?
That just means I shldnt memorize essays beforehand but i thought remembering key points for some essays is not that bad. I don't ever think I can memorize so many essays tho. Is there anywhere besides essay writing that can improve my essay writings and construct a well written essays. I always went blank in sacs for not knowing to start writing.
Thanks for the valuable advice, i will just take it :)