What is wrong with my essay

[Manikyanivas]

yea we did have a single planning period where we were given the topic to look at

[TrueTears]

Ok the first problem is that you memorised an essay and used it for the exam. If you read the examiner's report it always advises you not to do that.

I've done that for 3 SACs so far and it's going pretty good heh

20/20, 19/20 and 19/20

SACs=/=Exam marks, as evidenced by the opening post... =/

Also, were these multiple-period SACs where you had the topic already, or cases of you adapting pre-written essays for a SAC?

remember points to write on and ideas, maybe a couple of exact sentences and practice writing on topics you've never seen before.

And as the TS has shown, it can get you places in SACs but examiners can see through it.

Agreed heavily on both points, the first one in particular.  In particular, it helps not only with your writing, but with your confidence, as it means there's less chance of you freaking out at something completely unexpected...

No these were 1 hour periods with unseen topics.
Basically I do EXACTLY what shinny just said for every SAC, exam or anything that relates with English.
I memorise more essays than people normally do and then I try to always 'link' it with the topic I am given with. I find the more essays I memorise, the more things I can write about and the more topics I can familiarize myself with.

I am not of those people who can spontaneously think of stuff to say/write for English (nor for any language LOL), so memorising a sh*tload of essays is the only way I can do English.

[Manikyanivas]

I mean is the piece written the way that it is supposed to be written. Like how "trenna" said no using quotes e.t.c. any other things that i may have done wrong (other than deviating off the topic in the exam, which i agree i may have).

[EvangelionZeta]

Ok the first problem is that you memorised an essay and used it for the exam. If you read the examiner's report it always advises you not to do that.

I've done that for 3 SACs so far and it's going pretty good heh

20/20, 19/20 and 19/20

SACs=/=Exam marks, as evidenced by the opening post... =/

Also, were these multiple-period SACs where you had the topic already, or cases of you adapting pre-written essays for a SAC?

remember points to write on and ideas, maybe a couple of exact sentences and practice writing on topics you've never seen before.

And as the TS has shown, it can get you places in SACs but examiners can see through it.

Agreed heavily on both points, the first one in particular.  In particular, it helps not only with your writing, but with your confidence, as it means there's less chance of you freaking out at something completely unexpected...

No these were 1 hour periods with unseen topics.
Basically I do EXACTLY what shinny just said for every SAC, exam or anything that relates with English.
I memorise more essays than people normally do and then I try to always 'link' it with the topic I am given with. I find the more essays I memorise, the more things I can write about and the more topics I can familiarize myself with.

I am not of those people who can spontaneously think of stuff to say/write for English (nor for any language LOL), so memorising a sh*tload of essays is the only way I can do English.

Oh, fair enough.  I guess Shinny's (and your) method, though untested by myself, would get around most problems associated with the pre-memorised essays for VCE English marking.

[shinny]

I don't see much wrong with the style. You haven't written it much like a text response at all and have used your texts appropriately (from what I remember at least) by incorporating it as evidence into your ideas, rather than using your text as a basis for your ideas (perhaps I didn't make this part clear enough so just mention if you don't get what I mean). Also, you've used examples outside of your text and such so I see nothing wrong. I personally used quotes from my text and I never got picked up for it in SACs, trial exams, and hopefully not the real exam (I never got a statement so I'm not sure).

[ice_blockie]

Further to what shinny said, you SHOULD NOT memorise an essay AS IS. For example, if you're memorising an essay about encountering conflict using The Crucible as a reference, you should 'memorise' or 'reuse' the same linkages and references to the text, i.e. regardless of what the exam topic, you should be able to use your previous essays as a basis to which to write your essay. Here's an example:

Practice Essay Topic: "That conflict reveals the worst in people." So pretend you wrote the following passage in this essay:

"...Where they stand to gain from conflict, the greedy and selfish in any community often reveal their true colours, and manipulate the schism of society to maximise their personal benefit, regardless of the devastative effects on society. One such person, is Thomas Putnam in Miller's The Crucible, whose insatiable desire for land and power causes him to jettison his moral inhibitions to accuse innocent villagers of witchcraft to seize their property, revealing himself as someone driven purely by a materialistic selfish..."

Practice Topic 2: "That conflict is a natural phenomenon driven by an innate human desire for power"

The above passage could be changed to read:

"...For centuries, people, regardless of age, race or status, have fought over the need for power. With power comes assurance of one's success, fortune and future wellbeing. This human desire is exhibited in Miller's The Crucible, where a landowner's need for power and recognition surpass those for social and moral conformity lead him to accuse innocent others of witchcraft, so that he could acquire their land. Such selfish actions only serve to fuel the conflict which plagues the Salem community..."

Practice Topic 3: "Where humans are involved, conflict is inevitable."

Again some manipulation:

"...People have continually fought over land, an age old source of conflict. Given that people rarely give up land of their own free will, conflict undoubtedly results. Such a situation is played out in Miller's The Crucible, where a local villager Thomas Putnam, who has an insatiable desire for land, resorts to accusing others of witchcraft in order to seize their land. His jettisoning of social and moral inhibitions are only further indications that humans freely resort to conflict, if it means they are able to satify their own needs..."

So this is just an indication of what you need to be able to do in the exam, rather than regurgitate BIG slabs of info. (Plus don't bag what I just wrote, I have left English for about 6 months, so some of this may be grammatical incorrect and verbose or not fluent etc etc I wrote this on the spot just now).

[dejan91]

Shinny, how did you memorise whole essays? Like I mean reading them, or reading and rewriting, or memorising your own ones?

[shinny]

I didn't intentionally memorise them (as in, I never sat down and kept reading them over and over again to rote learn), but there were paragraphs which I always had to write and so I'd naturally remember them. This wouldn't be word for word or anything, but I'd remember key words in certain sentences and the rest would string itself together. And yes, these were always my own essays that I've already written before; not ones off other people or companies or whatever. This was definitely more common in context since the each context has a pretty narrow range of prompts they can ask and I always ended up writing the same paragraphs, but for text response, I'd usually have to write one or two relatively fresh paragraphs but this rarely caused any issues.

[wombifat]

Oh ok that's fair enough. you made it sound like you rote learnt essays and then repeated them come exam time. That's probably not a very good strategy.

Personally, I'm terrible at memorising things and find that I work a lot better if i don't even try. For example, on last year's exam I got a topic practically the exact same as one I'd already written a practice essay on, but when I tried to remember what I wrote for the practice essay it just came out sounding really crap. So I started from scratch and it was way better. But everyone's different I suppose.