45+ in English

[Chavi]

Exactly. #1 tip of VCE english is: play the system

[Streaker]

Here's something I posted on another thread on another board...

With English, not only should you be writing a lot of essays in the lead-up to exams, but try to perfect each essay you do. For example, let's say three weeks away from the exam you focus entirely on context that week. Write out a context essay and give it to your teacher to mark. Get some feedback from him/her and then write a new and improved essay the next day. Keep doing this over and over until you're entirely satisfied with your mark and feel that you can pull off a quality essay on the exam. You might be reading this and thinking 'crap...that's a lot of essays' but trust me, when you're less than a month away from exams then you will want to write heaps of essays - I never stopped and thought 'wow I have to do lots of essays' - just achieve your short-term goals and eventually your long-term goal will be reached. Another small tip: for context, make sure you have somewhat of a template or format to your essay that can be easily adapted to the prompt they give you. I had a fully memorised piece that could be adapted to any prompt and that saved me SO much time on the exam. Ended up scoring 10/10 for it.

There is such thing as studying for English without writing actual essays, such as practicing introductions, explaining quotes and writing up character profiles. I used the York Notes Advanced study guide for text response, seriously the quality of stuff in there is guaranteed to get you a 45+ if you read it thoroughly and jot down useful phrases that you could incorporate into any essay. Try to have a memorised introduction to your text response too, but of course one that can be adapted to the question given to you. I got 9/10 on my text response in the exam.

I'll be honest and say I did zero study for language analysis, matter of fact I probably did 5 language analysis essays for the whole year, I still pulled off a 10/10 for it on the exam but personally I found it to be easy (DO NOT DO WHAT I DID FOR LANGUAGE ANALYSIS - every person has their own strengths and weaknesses so this may not apply to you). I did end up getting 46 which I was happy with, but my teacher marked SACs very harshly. I'm not fussed now though.

[Streaker]

Exactly. #1 tip of VCE english is: play the system

And completely agreed. Be tactical about how you go on about things in VCE.

[Predator]

Your teacher should also give you the marking system for how each essay is graded such as what is needed for a high range response, medium range response and a low response. Using this you will see what you will need to do correctly to get a high mark on SAC's and exams.

Also, ask your teacher if they have a checklist for what you should put into each essay. Most teachers give these out to help those who are unsure what to put into the essay and how much they should put into it.

Also, if in need of help such as asking if a quote you have analysed is correct or something that you are unsure of just ask the question. This is the year for you where asking questions should be the norm, teachers might seem a bit annoyed at first with a bunch of questions but will soon see this as a good thing since they know you want to do well underthem and as a result will help you out.

[lishan515]

I'd recommend you have a look at this thread from about a month ago: http://vce.atarnotes.com/forum/index.php/topic,35674.0.html
"How do you get a 50 in English?"
Contains heaps  of useful information from high scoring English students