Writing essays...

There's absolutely no way I'll claim I know the perfect formula for writing essays. No. But my efforts are passable, certainly, and I do very well in testing situations. I know some of you doing English or Literature as a subject are facing the prospect of upcoming end of year exams. I really don't know if any of this will help, it's just a thought I had - my something good for the day, you know? So I thought I'd write out a couple tips I found useful, or that I've been told over the years.

1. Answer the question.

This sounds incredibly patronising, but we've been exposed to a few feedback sheets in Lit class and the markers make it very evident that people lose marks for failing to read the essay question properly. This means that part of the question is not answered in the response, or you just lose your head completely and don't answer the question at all. The key to solving this is having the question in front of you; think of the text you intend to use to respond to the question; highlight key words and ideas in the question, i.e. the concepts such as ideas, and the terms such as assess or evaluate or comment; create a mindmap of sorts whereby you annotate those highlighted parts with brief summaries of each, thereby ensuring you've summarised the intent of your essay. This should only be quick and rushed, nothing fancy at all.

 

For example, a practice question taken from a past WACE exam. This process has been carried out using the text Frankenstein by Mary Shelley.

2. Make a plan.

Because you're probably given an hour at most on each individual essay in an exam, this does not need to be fancy either. Just sort the above into usable paragraph planning, just as a little nudge when you get stuck on what to write (ideally, this should just help you get unstuck). There is no need for detail, or to write down quotations - just a short sentence summary to remind you of what your aim is to convey in that paragraph. All in all, both steps should only take about 5 minutes. Instead of writing heaps of essays, just practice this; it really helps you think, and begin to sort out your quotes and ideas mentally in your head, thus becoming faster.

3. Don't write essays when practicing writing essays.

This sounds stupid, but I promise it isn't. You spend a lot of time writing an essay; you devote a lot of time to finding good quotes to prepare for answering the question, and the essay you write, because you have the time, is near perfect in your eyes. You memorise it, and go in the exam and write it. You feel good about it; then you get your paper back, only to find big fat crosses or question marks everywhere. Because in practicing so hard, in spending so much tie preparing for any number of responses you DIDN'T PREPARE FOR THE QUESTION. Instead of writing essays, write plans on individual questions including quotes. Make a really general plan with three or four quotes per point, encapsulating all the reading strategies possible for the text studied; this way you learn a bunch of quotes under headings that are workable for exam time (since basically all questions discuss reading practices in some way, shape or form).

4. Research outside the text.

You get so caught up in preparing for the text itself, that when you come to the most suitable exam question and you find that it contains information on context, or devices, or conventions that you don't understand. Bummer. So, when preparing for your text, compile some information about the time period in which it was written or published. What were the values of the time period? What social movements occurred? Political, economic unrest? Power balance? This helps you provide a more nuanced, thoughtful essay when it comes to dealing with context and prevents you from making generalised statements about the context of the text's production, thus setting you apart from the rest. Having a good understanding of literary terminology will stop you from tripping up in an exam when asked for something like the correlation between structure and the presentation of ideas and values.

5. Look to your betters.

Sometimes, all the preparation in the world isn't enough to boost your mark up. You wonder why you try so hard and still fall down, when your classmate barely puts in the effort and soars. Why? It comes down to expression, essentially. It isn't enough to have good ideas anymore - you have to be able to know how to express them. If you're having trouble with that, ask someone to help you. Ask a proficient classmate if they have any saved practice essays lying around that you might be able to read over, to get a feel for the language. Ask a teacher to read over some of your practice essays with you, to correct some mistakes, and maybe even ask them to rewrite a paragraph to show you where you aren't meeting the standard. Ask a good mate that does well in English to read an essay, or part of an essay, and offer critiques; or, take your ideas and rewrite them, so that you might compare them and see the areas you need to improve. This is not cheating; it is the absorption of alternate ways of expressing ideas, because that is usually where the majority of people fall down.

6. Swallow a dictionary.

No, jokes. But become familiar with alternate ways of expressing things. Come to think about it, this isn't all that different from the previous advice. What I mean is, instead of stating 'she believes that old ideas are bad', you could instead state 'the character in question believes outdated ideologies negatively impact society'. Use a thesaurus to find 'smarter' words if you have to. But please, don't do a Joey from Friends and replace every word with a synonym because it just won't make sense. If it sounds too simplistic, find a better word. Expand your vocabulary. Read more books - classics are really great for expanding your word bank (hint hint). Just read in general; there is a definitive correlation between good marks and those who read more, across all subjects requiring language and communication.

7. Read the text more than once.

Pretty self explanatory. If you read the text multiple times, you gain an understanding of things you may not have picked up before, and its also great to refresh your memory.

8. Finally, don't panic in the exam room.

If you know all the stuff, you've learned the quotes, you know your text inside out, what are you panicking for? It only screws with your head, messes your concentration and leads to bad marks. Don't listen to how worried other people are. It is okay to be confident. Nail it.

That's all from me. Happy studying. Thanks for reading!