I suck at English essays :'(

PurpleFistMixer

Congratulations on the other A. (See previous comment re internet solving all.)

Chuck Palahniuk (guy who wrote fight club) writes essays on the topic of writing, and he's got them on his site. I find them rather useful and interesting so, yes. Link, here. Those'd be summaries of the past essays and from there you can get to the current ones (which would be Distinction Essays.)

Raphael

That guy owns...Fight Club is an excellent book

Raphael

Also, those things are really damn short. Are all Junior cert essays that short?

This is my latest English h/w, got me an Excellent

*A few seconds later*

The hell? It won't upload Rtf's.....

*sighs, and converts to .txt*

PurpleFistMixer

JC essays are rather short, as far as I can tell. Difficult to translate between computer and A4/copy pages, but.. we had an essay writing test with 40 minutes to do so last week and most essays were a freakish 4 copy pages short or so...
Well, whatever it is, 9 pages is allegedly "too long for exam purposes"... and that story didn't look long 'tall 'tall on the computer...
And for some more shameless promotion, this one didn't appear to offend my teacher into calling it too long, so it must be around the length, so.

declan_lgs

whoa... all those essays are unreal... They make mine look like dirt.
the chuck palahniuk site is cool... thanks for that link PurpleFistMixer, some cool info on that site.
that essay was class Raphael...
I had to do an essay on beginning with "Finally the smoke cleared and I could see..." before too... I wrote about a UFO landing and got a C (which I was *really* happy with).
I usually write bout 3-4 copy pages for my essays... I can hardly write any more.
thanks for all the congratz + advice + links + etc ppl... I really appriciate it

edit: anyone want Gmail ? I got 3 more invites to waste

Raphael

Dude, I have 6, there common as muck these days. And yet they're still being sold on ebay.....

declan_lgs

lol,
yea, that sucks... I wish I could just delete mine :rolleyes:

Corruptedmorals

I suck at English essays...The picture option is probably best. You can bull**** on about anything.

For example, the picture option for my JC was the camel in a taxi in NY. Someone in my year said it represented an Arab in NY and bull****ted on for pages about American-Arab relations. I think he got a B...

PurpleFistMixer

Funny, because it's a llama. Which is a south american animal.

But yeah, I'm keeping my hope on the picture. Although I'm fairly confident in my ability to twist everything to my liking.

coconutmonkey

Picture?? What picture?! I've never been told about any pictures in the exam! This is English, right? So do they just give you a random picture and you have to write about it?

PurpleFistMixer

D'you not have yer exam papers?

In the personal writing section, you get like... 7 options, and one of them is to use one of the pictures (there are 2, one is for media studies) that come with the exam paper, and write a composition on it. It's a good idea, I reckon.

declan_lgs

yup, it sure is cool the way you can twist those things about...

Raphael

Oh yeah. Gotta love Larry the Llama....and his many pictorial friends

Rozabeez

Do you have some sort of obsession with that llama?

PurpleFistMixer

You should have seen his SN...

Although Llamas do rock, you just have to accept it. Especially when they're using paid transport. Such as taxis.

Rozabeez

Yeah the rock, i wonder if he payed the taxi driver though?

PurpleFistMixer

No way, Llamas are too cool for that kind of acceptable behaviour.

Rozabeez

*smacks forehead* well obviously! now why didnt i realise that?

Raphael

It wasnt a taxi driver. It was first person narrative, and I found larry in a monastery full of deaf, dumb, and blind monks

AdMMM

One of the main things to remember is that you should aim to write an essay that you would enjoy writting. All to often, on the run-up to the JC, I was writting essays that I just got bored of after a short while and the quality deteriorated as the story went on.

My advice to you would be to keep practicing, remember, the teacher is always there for you. So maybe if you have a bit of spare time, you could write an essay and then hand it up to your teacher and ask them to mark it for you. Thats the only way you can improve your essays, if you know what you're doing wrong!

On the topic of humour, its encouraged, but only try and do it, if you can! Think of it this way, if you're the type of person who tries to crack a joke, but get no reaction, it will be the same when you're trying to be humourous with the essay and will be boring for the examiner to read. Remember thats the person who's going to decide how much money you get from your parents, so always have him/her in a good mood!

Finally, all I can say is keep trying. The essay is a vital part of the exam (70marks iirc) and to leave it out would be absurd!

declan_lgs

hmm..
well I wont skip it anyhow... I'll get the rest of the stuff done first and the essay last.
I'd love a factual essay to come up...

Raphael

Never do that man, always hit the essay first

declan_lgs

?
Its not unlike me to start an essay and eventually get lost in it, and cant complete it.
dont want that to happen... so Iĺl read thru the essay options and stuff and be thinking bout the story while Im doing the rest of the exam.. thats the plan, I think

Geranium

One thing to bear in mind is that you don't actually have to write a STORY, youy can just write about your opinions on things/people in an interesting style. Make sure to wrap it up with a closing paragraph though. That's what I did for my J.C. last year and I got an A.