Memorising essays

[m@tty]

Respect, thats no small feat. Definitely deserves 46

[TrueTears]

Could you write any of the 55 now?

lol man as soon as English exam is over I flushed all essays out of my brain for more Maths storage space

What about on the day of the English exam?
I agree maths is a much better use of brain room

Yeah ofcourse, on the day of the English exam all those essays were in my head, I just had to pick one for the topic available.

But yes as soon as English (and VCE) was over I chucked everything in the recycling bin (and emptied it) and now my brain only holds maths.

If you memorized essays, then how long did it take you to write them out?

I didn't write the essays, they were from past students from school.

I didn't write them out, I memorise by reciting not writing.

[kyzoo]

Lol i mean in the exam

[TrueTears]

Lol i mean in the exam

lolz I see, hmmm since I didn't have to think what I had to write, I wrote 'more'.

So it took around 50 mins for both context and text response.

Leaving me around 1:20 hrs for the language analysis, which I found quite good this year cause I used so many phrases I memorised. This relies on luck on many aspects (and I'm not a lucky person) because there have been practise language analysis pieces which I could hardly use any phrases I memorised, however the one in the exam this year, I used so many.

[kyzoo]

Very interesting way of doing things, I still can't conceive how your system works but that's probably because I try to use as little rote-memorization as possible.

[TrueTears]

Yeah, see if you gave me a pen and told me to write an essay, there's no way in hell I could even write a paragraph, I'm literally disabled to write essays.

[kyzoo]

Yeah, see if you gave me a pen and told me to write an essay, there's no way in hell I could even write a paragraph, I'm literally disabled to write essays.

haha it's all about practice

[humph]

You can pretty much work out what the essay questions will be for certain texts by looking at past exams and seeing which major themes haven't come up yet. I did that with the texts I studied for english and managed to correctly predict one. My study for the english exam basically revolved around working out what the essay questions would most likely be, writing essay plans to them, and memorising the plans. I found it best that way - memorise the structure, key points for each paragraph, and quotes for each key point - then in the exam I just fleshed out the plan (which should be like second nature by the time the english exam comes around, because of years of writing essays in high school english classes).
Most of the other high-achieving students (3 other 50s, a 49, quite a few 48s, etc) at my school used this same technique; even the very best (Premier's award and natural genius at english) didn't go into the exam and make it up as he went along.

[vitir]

could you ellaborate on your theme finding thing?

how would we go about doing it for this year humph?

[humph]

Well it's a bit different now with the whole context thing. Back in my day ('06 lolz) we had two text essays, a "Part One" and a "Part Two"; you had to write on different texts for your two essays. Part One was character-based questions, whereas Part Two was theme-based. What I did was look through the last few years of exams and look at the various topics; with Part Two especially, they'd usually ask a question based on a different central theme each year. And of course I knew all the main themes, so you could just see which ones hadn't come up yet and anticipate a question based on that. Part One was a bit trickier because there's usually a bit more scope for questions, but it was still possible to work out what questions they might ask (although the one in the exam threw me a bit, though I still managed to write a good essay).
I'm not sure how well this might work in the new exam structure though, but I found it a good way to study.

[simpak]

The examiners pretty much know if you have come in with a pre-prepared essay.
It's easy to prepare for general ideas and talking points for context essays, because the prompts are relatively easy to guess.
I suppose this helps you in your planning time, giving you more time to write.
But I certainly do not recommend learning an essay word for word.  VCAA likes to mix it up a bit depending on your text for Section A, and it would be an unwise waste of time in my opinion.  Focusing on the concerns of the text is one thing but becoming overly obsessed with memorising an entire essay is a different story.  Context, it is a lot easier for; memorise examples and points to make (depending on which type of essay you plan on writing).  And clearly you can't memorise section C

[redmosez]

Well it's a bit different now with the whole context thing

I actually found context easier to memorise essays for than Text response. In fact I only memorised 1 creative piece for context that could be skewed to pretty much any question.

Basically I compiled a list of every question I could on both context and text response (including practice exams).

I then put them into broad categories (ie Illusions [for whose reality)

I then wrote essays for each category that were easy to manipulate into each specific question.

I did about 10 for Citizen Kane and oddly enough I decided to memorise 1 for Maestro which I wrote for a sac and really liked. Ended up writing on Maestro.

Not quite perfect but I got a 49, so pretty happy

[natty]

I actually found context easier to memorise essays for than Text response.

I have to agree. I found that the ideas for context and the relevant examples were so much more flexible in the context section, and they could be easily altered to the topic. For the exam, I was able to use an essay written on a different prompt, and adjust it slightly to fit the exam prompt. Whereas text response tends to be more topic specific.

[Raymond]

i didn't do exceptional like you guys got a 40 though which I'm ecstatic about! But basically for text response i had a few major ideas that link to particular questions as well as relevant quotes and examples to support these ideas, but for context i basically memorized an essay i worked on throughout the year (expository type essay) and applied it to different exam questions and for context because it cant really change that much it wasn't to hard in the exam to alter some phrases to suit the essay question. this method worked for me but again if your aiming for 45+ scores then possibly pre-prepared work isnt that good?? Overall though, its really want works for you and what you find comfortable doing which will lead to success in English.

[spontaneouscombustion]

For all year 12's english SACs I memorized my responses.

Then when I got to the exam period I realised this was VERY BAD exam prep. I had not done many practice essays and the text response question in the exam was one I had completely not touched on before.
Like others have said, if you're not very talented in English, memorizing ideas that fit into a range of questions would be adequate. (this is only for text response)
For lang analysis, do what TrueTears did. (which is how I survived it too)
Context....well, I do not know how to give advice for this one as I was swinging between expository and creative all year. In the exam I just came up with something completely random and spontaneous (something like 'chasing pregnant sheep' if I remember correctly....since the Imaginative Landscape prompt was stupid)
If you're confident in english, write your essays from scratch both in SACs (good exam prep) and in the exam. If not, then write lots of essays and memorize the ideas which you think are better and more likely to come up in the questions.