English Advanced Question Thread

[jamonwindeyer]

well i'll have to discount "teachers" because i accidentally fell asleep in class and she's HATED me ever since lmao

so i guess its gonna be posted on AN
thanks for the info jamon

I'm sure she'd be willing to help if you asked - Especially if you start by apologising for falling asleep, if you never did

But yep, look forward to seeing it on here!

[jazcstuart]

Hi, I was wondering if it is possible for NESA to specify a poem for Module C? I'm doing WH Auden's poetry, and my teacher said they could, but I'm not sure how this would work considering they usually only have one question for all the texts in each elective. Thanks

[katie,rinos]

Hi, I was wondering if it is possible for NESA to specify a poem for Module C? I'm doing WH Auden's poetry, and my teacher said they could, but I'm not sure how this would work considering they usually only have one question for all the texts in each elective. Thanks

Hey, Welcome to AN!!
No, they can't specify poems for module C because there is only one generic question for all texts.
Hope this helps!

[jazcstuart]

Hey, Welcome to AN!!
No, they can't specify poems for module C because there is only one generic question for all texts.
Hope this helps!

Thank you, that makes it easier for me!

[amelia20181]

How should you prepare for the short answers on discovery? what should you do if you really lack confidence with writing and always don't think your ideas are good enough and doubt yourself.

what should i do for my creative? pls help

can you still manage to get a band 4 if you wrote learn an essay and it doesn't answer the question

[angewina_naguen]

How should you prepare for the short answers on discovery? what should you do if you really lack confidence with writing and always don't think your ideas are good enough and doubt yourself.

what should i do for my creative? pls help

can you still manage to get a band 4 if you wrote learn an essay and it doesn't answer the question

Hey, amelia20181!

I will try my best to answer your questions but I'm also doing my HSC so I'll just offer my insights based off what I believe 

I am currently preparing for short answers by exposing myself to past papers and trials papers. The best way to know what you have in stall is by looking at different text types and seeing what kinds of texts have been in the unseen section before. Lacking in confidence in writing can be improved by simply believing in your study and knowing your stuff!  For subjects that have unseen sections, I try to learn as many different techniques as possible for different text types to  allow me to quickly identify where an anaphora has occurred, or if the use of vectors indicates a notion. Knowing techniques and attempting to identify them in past papers can help you formulate your ideas. If in doubt, refer back to the question in your responses  They are provided to give you a guideline on how you can answer the question and present your understanding of Discovery. Knowing the rubric can help prepare for any types of questions that may arise.

As for your creative, memorise it and practise mentally adapting it to different stimuli. This can help you prepare for any potential stimuli provided in the exam and may even help develop your story further. I found writing my ATB creative difficult without any stimuli to work with so I took one from a past paper and utilised that for the foundation of my creative. You immediately tick off the relevance to Discovery box and from there, it is a matter of conveying that process of discovery throughout. If you find areas of it needing improvement, post it on ATARNOTES and hopefully someone will be able to look at it before your exam if you need feedback 

I am not too sure how the marking guidelines are like but I do think it is more preferable to know your quotes and texts and go in answering the unseen question from scratch than pre-preparing and writing out an essay that does not answer the question. This is just my suggestion though so it is entirely dependent on you!

Hope this helps and good luck with your English exams 

Toodles,

Angelina 

[owidjaja]

How should you prepare for the short answers on discovery? what should you do if you really lack confidence with writing and always don't think your ideas are good enough and doubt yourself.

what should i do for my creative? pls help

can you still manage to get a band 4 if you wrote learn an essay and it doesn't answer the question

Hey there,
The only way to prepare for short answers is to do practice papers! Get used to how the marks are distributed and how much to write for each question. Essentially, the way you should be structuring your short answers is that 1 mark = 1 technique/rubric dot point, so get to know the rubric! It's almost formulaic, because your first point should be the rubric dot point, how that rubric is shown (i.e. technique) and the effect of that technique. You literally follow this structure for all short answer questions. Even in the 5/6 mark question, you combine all the techniques and analyses you've done in the previous question and into one mini essay (which should be over a page). Even if you think you don't think your ideas make sense, as long as you put down a relevant rubric point, you should be able to get a mark.

As for the creative, while I'm no expert in coming up with ideas, I would suggest starting with a plan. I started by looking at creative writing prompts and try and plan out a short plan, i.e. orientation, problem, and how the problem is solved. I also looked at the AOS rubric to try and form a 'thesis.' For example, if I wanted to focus on unexpected discoveries, I could brainstorm with ideas that could be 'unexpected.' Think about your daily life- have you encountered anything 'unexpected'? Maybe you weren't looking forward to travelling to the countryside and was pleasantly surprised by how peaceful the natural landscape was. Remember, the HSC markers aren't looking for a Stephen King novel. Creative writing is supposed to be a long process of refining so forcing you to write a 40 minute creative isn't gonna be Pulitzer Prize level. Also, don't dramatise things! It's highly not recommended to write stories about gore, gangs, gun fights, or any themes from a Hollywood blockbuster film. Keep it simple. Literally, my creative centres around my character and her grandma and barely any dialogue.

As for essays, I personally believe in knowing quotes, a malleable thesis and essay plan (with a few more ideas in case my initial essay plan doesn't go with the question well). This stops me from not answering the question, and it actually worked well for me last week (this is coming from someone who was exposed to unseen questions for the first time). I'm not sure what your school has said, but my teacher has said that you should at least try to answer the question- if you don't address the question in any shape or form, the best you can get is a D. So try and be flexible with your essays! If you decide to wrote learn an essay, at least not learn it word for word and let it be open to some alterations (e.g. thesis, topic sentence, analysis of the quote to make it relevant to the question).

Hope this helps!

[jazcstuart]

How should you prepare for the short answers on discovery? what should you do if you really lack confidence with writing and always don't think your ideas are good enough and doubt yourself.

The best tip I've learnt for short answers is that you don't have to find complicated techniques, something simple like a simile or alliteration can prove your point just as effectively, as long as you analyse it with reference to the question. I think I used second person pronouns as a technique in 3 out of the 4 texts from my trial! Also your ideas on discovery don't have to be as complex as in your discovery essay, so I just make sure I identify and use the key words from the question, and try to include other references to the discovery rubric (you probably already know that you need to know the rubric really well).
Good luck!

[amelia20181]

Hey, amelia20181!

I will try my best to answer your questions but I'm also doing my HSC so I'll just offer my insights based off what I believe 

I am currently preparing for short answers by exposing myself to past papers and trials papers. The best way to know what you have in stall is by looking at different text types and seeing what kinds of texts have been in the unseen section before. Lacking in confidence in writing can be improved by simply believing in your study and knowing your stuff!  For subjects that have unseen sections, I try to learn as many different techniques as possible for different text types to  allow me to quickly identify where an anaphora has occurred, or if the use of vectors indicates a notion. Knowing techniques and attempting to identify them in past papers can help you formulate your ideas. If in doubt, refer back to the question in your responses  They are provided to give you a guideline on how you can answer the question and present your understanding of Discovery. Knowing the rubric can help prepare for any types of questions that may arise.

As for your creative, memorise it and practise mentally adapting it to different stimuli. This can help you prepare for any potential stimuli provided in the exam and may even help develop your story further. I found writing my ATB creative difficult without any stimuli to work with so I took one from a past paper and utilised that for the foundation of my creative. You immediately tick off the relevance to Discovery box and from there, it is a matter of conveying that process of discovery throughout. If you find areas of it needing improvement, post it on ATARNOTES and hopefully someone will be able to look at it before your exam if you need feedback 

I am not too sure how the marking guidelines are like but I do think it is more preferable to know your quotes and texts and go in answering the unseen question from scratch than pre-preparing and writing out an essay that does not answer the question. This is just my suggestion though so it is entirely dependent on you!

Hope this helps and good luck with your English exams 

Toodles,

Angelina 

Thanks Angelina!!

Hey there,
The only way to prepare for short answers is to do practice papers! Get used to how the marks are distributed and how much to write for each question. Essentially, the way you should be structuring your short answers is that 1 mark = 1 technique/rubric dot point, so get to know the rubric! It's almost formulaic, because your first point should be the rubric dot point, how that rubric is shown (i.e. technique) and the effect of that technique. You literally follow this structure for all short answer questions. Even in the 5/6 mark question, you combine all the techniques and analyses you've done in the previous question and into one mini essay (which should be over a page). Even if you think you don't think your ideas make sense, as long as you put down a relevant rubric point, you should be able to get a mark.

As for the creative, while I'm no expert in coming up with ideas, I would suggest starting with a plan. I started by looking at creative writing prompts and try and plan out a short plan, i.e. orientation, problem, and how the problem is solved. I also looked at the AOS rubric to try and form a 'thesis.' For example, if I wanted to focus on unexpected discoveries, I could brainstorm with ideas that could be 'unexpected.' Think about your daily life- have you encountered anything 'unexpected'? Maybe you weren't looking forward to travelling to the countryside and was pleasantly surprised by how peaceful the natural landscape was. Remember, the HSC markers aren't looking for a Stephen King novel. Creative writing is supposed to be a long process of refining so forcing you to write a 40 minute creative isn't gonna be Pulitzer Prize level. Also, don't dramatise things! It's highly not recommended to write stories about gore, gangs, gun fights, or any themes from a Hollywood blockbuster film. Keep it simple. Literally, my creative centres around my character and her grandma and barely any dialogue.

As for essays, I personally believe in knowing quotes, a malleable thesis and essay plan (with a few more ideas in case my initial essay plan doesn't go with the question well). This stops me from not answering the question, and it actually worked well for me last week (this is coming from someone who was exposed to unseen questions for the first time). I'm not sure what your school has said, but my teacher has said that you should at least try to answer the question- if you don't address the question in any shape or form, the best you can get is a D. So try and be flexible with your essays! If you decide to wrote learn an essay, at least not learn it word for word and let it be open to some alterations (e.g. thesis, topic sentence, analysis of the quote to make it relevant to the question).

Hope this helps!

Thank you! That was very helpful

The best tip I've learnt for short answers is that you don't have to find complicated techniques, something simple like a simile or alliteration can prove your point just as effectively, as long as you analyse it with reference to the question. I think I used second person pronouns as a technique in 3 out of the 4 texts from my trial! Also your ideas on discovery don't have to be as complex as in your discovery essay, so I just make sure I identify and use the key words from the question, and try to include other references to the discovery rubric (you probably already know that you need to know the rubric really well).
Good luck!

Thanks Jazcstuart! 

Mod edit: merged triple post. Next time you need to add something else right after your post, please click the 'modify' button on your first post and add it there --Calebark

Is paper 1 10 mins reading and paper 2 5 minutes

[Mada438]

Is paper 1 10 mins reading and paper 2 5 minutes

It sure is!
The extra five minutes is given in paper 1 so you have time to look over the unseen texts.
So paper 1 ends up being: 2hrs 10mins
And paper 2 is only: 2hrs 5 minutes

[amelia20181]

when doing paper 1 is it best to do short answers first then the essay then creative

[Mada438]

when doing paper 1 is it best to do short answers first then the essay then creative

I usually do the short answers first as it gets me into an analytical mindset which i then carry over to the essay
And i would tackle the creative last

[owidjaja]

when doing paper 1 is it best to do short answers first then the essay then creative

It's definitely better to do short answers first. Since you've just spent 10 minutes reading the texts, it would be a waste of that 10 minutes to not do the questions. Doing the creative first then essay is definitely up to you- I tend to do the paper in order, but the essay would take up a lot more time (considering the expected amount is 800-1000 words) and creatives tend to be a bit shorter, so maybe you can do essay then creative.

[jamonwindeyer]

I usually do the short answers first as it gets me into an analytical mindset which i then carry over to the essay
And i would tackle the creative last

This was my approach as well, just to lend to discussion I think going with your gut is best tbh! Different things will work for different people!

[moq418]

Now that the trial are done.
how to do i get ready for the hsc?
How or what is the most effective way of memorising english essay ( 4 essays for paper 1 and 2)
how do i ace paper one short answer
how do i get a band 6 essay for paper two essays equestion?
please tell me how and give me advice on what i should be doing now until octocber hsc begins....?