English is a joke

Naikon

Dunno bout everybody else, but I got my English mock back yesterday expecting the worst and got a C2 in hons.
Not the best subject grade I suppose but I really dont care about English.
Now I haven't done any real work in English as of yet, and this leads me to believe this subject is a "bluffers" subject.

Opinions?:D

Haven't a Clue

Paper one, yeah, it's a bluffers dream without a doubt. Not so sure about paper two though. You need to know yer stuff there regarding the poets, the play and the comparitive. Especially with the comparitive, you need to have a good idea of what you're going to write before you go into the exam...

Nehpets

Yeah I did much better in P1 (as with everyone I'd say). P2, brought me down

ethernet

Nehpets wrote:

Yeah I did much better in P1 (as with everyone I'd say). P2, brought me down

Ditto. So disheartening to spend the best part of five hours slaving over two papers for a worthless grade.

My English teacher wasn't too impressed with the correction so she's going through our scripts.

AdMMM

You can "bluff" just over 50% of the exam, but to actually get respectable marks you will have to be well rehearsed in the subject. It's all very well bluffing your way through the essay but unless you're familiar with what's required of you and have practiced beforehand, you won't get a decent result.

Paper II is where it's relatively easy to pass with only a very basic understanding of the texts and prescribed poetry, but this is where those who achieve their A's manage to secure them through their extensive knowledge of the texts and poetry that they have studied!

claire h

Naikon wrote:

Now I haven't done any real work in English as of yet, and this leads me to believe this subject is a "bluffers" subject.
Opinions?:D

Hard to fail, also very difficult to do very well in, though - you can bluff your way to an acceptable grade but not an excellent one.

Hopkirk

Quick Question,
In the essay titles when they say "Write a short story prompted by one or more of the images" How tenous does the link have to be?
I presume a casual mention of a random picture that happens to portray your image is not a stong enough link.

AdMMM

The instructions that they give to the examiners is that "if it's barely relevant, it's relevant". Although it is at the examiners dicretion to decide if your essay is relevant or not. I wouldn't for example start writing about a picture of a football and then going on about how it's really a time machine...

Hopkirk

|.Murderer.| wrote:

The instructions that they give to the examiners is that "if it's barely relevant, it's relevant". Although it is at the examiners dicretion to decide if your essay is relevant or not. I wouldn't for example start writing about a picture of a football and then going on about how it's really a time machine...

So I couldn't go

Tom strolled down the expansive hallway. He paused briefly to admire a framed picture which hung on the salmon painted wall. *Input image description*, Rattle on with the story I want to write....

PurpleFistMixer

I'd say they'd penalise you for that sort of thing. 'Cause like, if you could do that, you could just prepare the most perfect wonderful essay ever and throw in the necessary reference at any point... thus eliminating the necessity to be able to write something new (enough) on demand.
Then again, I have no personal experience of this, it would just seem to make sense.

Hopkirk

PurpleFistMixer wrote:

I'd say they'd penalise you for that sort of thing. 'Cause like, if you could do that, you could just prepare the most perfect wonderful essay ever and throw in the necessary reference at any point... thus eliminating the necessity to be able to write something new (enough) on demand.
Then again, I have no personal experience of this, it would just seem to make sense.

Ya I know, The above was an extremist situation. But you could say use a picture of a man and model your description of the main character around him, To open your story place him in the same scene as depicted in the image. Once that is overcome you could then use your own essay. Obviously some adopting would have to be done and you could even try to include more images as your story progresses where possible, That would surely be more than a tenuous link,

Just a theory,

Nehpets

Well I sure they respect that fact that people will be creative. My "prison life" answer for question B was pretty much a story (meant to be journal I think, can't exactly remember) about a guy in prison and his friend. I wanted to write more but it was only for question B so I stopped myself

Naikon

Paper one was a godsend:D
paper two was....meh!

I wish more marks were allocated for Mechanics as I lost no marks at all under
spelling and grammar in all sections.
Hope this performance is repeated come June:D

I also did the prison life story, I just waffled on about some drug addicts everyday almost comical situations.
No doubt the Examiner wasnt impressed with the profanity ect.

ninebeanrows

I havent got my English mocks back, my teacher just ignores the subject but i bet she forgot to send them off..

Its been 1 and 1/2 months now :rolleyes: It's fekin ridiculous

md99

it often happens that an expected fail pulls a decent grade, while an expected A pulls a C. happened a lot in my class! ;-)

OctavarIan

Thing with english is, you need to be 'on form' the day of the exam, and hope you get a decent corrector. You can't tell ANYTHING from the mock english results, in my class the results in the mocks and the actual thing were topsy turvy, and the same for a few other schools I know of as well.

md99

OctavarIan wrote:

Thing with english is, you need to be 'on form' the day of the exam, and hope you get a decent corrector. You can't tell ANYTHING from the mock english results, in my class the results in the mocks and the actual thing were topsy turvy, and the same for a few other schools I know of as well.

agree totally with this....

all of ours were marked down for seemingly no reason, and while we expected our teacher to acknowledge that they were marked hard, she simply said 'ye can work a bit harder for the real thing' etc

eZe^

What I do for writing essays is have my opening paragraph closely related to the image, and then I have an A1 standard story I can manipulate around it. Like our teacher was showing how you can just have your opening paragraph as a fancy dress party, where you show up as on of the characters illustrated in the pictures, and then go off on your big storyline. Pretty damn handy!

Hopkirk

eZe^ wrote:

What I do for writing essays is have my opening paragraph closely related to the image, and then I have an A1 standard story I can manipulate around it. Like our teacher was showing how you can just have your opening paragraph as a fancy dress party, where you show up as on of the characters illustrated in the pictures, and then go off on your big storyline. Pretty damn handy!

Ya similar to me. In the mock I managed to incorporate a picture of Tony Blair throughout the story, just required some minor detail changes to the story I wanted to write, Just waiting now to get the paper back. Hopefully I'll get away with it.

Lia_lia

In our school it was completely of the walls.

In one honours class nearly everyone got A1's, in my honours class nearly everyone got a B2 ( I got a B1 ) and the Pass class got theirs back today and the highest was a C1 :rolleyes:

[SaB] Larsson

eZe^, I thought you said you were in fifth year??

cson

English is a lot harder than you think. If you write in the wrong register in paper one you get raped for it - the essay especially. You gotta know the 5 or so languages.

As for paper 2..... if you don't know your $hit, you are how shall I say.... F***ed. One thing to note though is that part 'B's on paper 1 are worth 50 marks, the studied poetry is worth 60 marks on paper 2 for which you're expected to write about 3 pages for, absolutely ridiculous in my opinion. Ranks alongside the Irish paper 2 for marking scheme craziness.

Anyway, you should be able to pass it with a little effort, I mean if you can't bluff the language you're fluent in.......

Corruptedmorals

Naikon wrote:

Paper one was a godsend:D
I lost no marks at all under
spelling and grammar in all sections.

I thought the same, got the paper back, with a few stupid mistakes in paper 1 essay under time pressure...'insteadly', 'from the age of weight'...????

Corruptedmorals

cson wrote:

the studied poetry is worth 60 marks on paper 2 for which you're expected to write about 3 pages for

It's worth 50. It's Macbeth that's the 60, and comparative is 70 (which you also get raped for if you don't have equal emphasis on each text).

Naikon

Lia_lia wrote:

In our school it was completely of the walls.

In one honours class nearly everyone got A1's, in my honours class nearly everyone got a B2 ( I got a B1 ) and the Pass class got theirs back today and the highest was a C1 :rolleyes:

Too true, I hate the way its technically easier to do better in Higher than Odinary due to the preconceived notion of examiners that you are less "able".

Considering I done Ordinary level for the JC and got a B and I am now sitting in the "mid Average" range in Higher considering I do less in English now is weird, and I am not boasting or bull****ting as I genuinely dont "study" English at all.
That teacher in third year lied to me:mad:

ninebeanrows

Got our English results back today have to say i was very disappointed.

The results were amazing, 9 A's 15 B's 3 C's

But i got 75% never thought i'd have been disappointed with 75% but i am:rolleyes:

It's obvious they were marked far too easy so its going to be a struggle but i'm hoping for a B2 in the real thing.. don't actually know where i stand though:(

eZe^

[SaB] Larsson wrote:

eZe^, I thought you said you were in fifth year??

Ya man, 5th year last year!

Nehpets

Since this is a thread about English.. I just looked at the Patrick Kavangh question for 04 and it says "select one or more of PK's poems from your course for inclusion in a short anthology entitled "The Essential Kavangh"

Does that mean that you could (if you were able) write on one poem only? :S

:|

PurpleFistMixer wrote:

'Cause like, if you could do that, you could just prepare the most perfect wonderful essay ever and throw in the necessary reference at any point... thus eliminating the necessity to be able to write something new (enough) on demand.
.

which is exactly what many people do!
Ah english, my most despised subject, I got an A2 though(?). I think the trick is just to practice a lot of questions, and pray you're on form on the day!

Nehpets wrote:

Since this is a thread about English.. I just looked at the Patrick Kavangh question for 04 and it says "select one or more of PK's poems from your course for inclusion in a short anthology entitled "The Essential Kavangh"

Does that mean that you could (if you were able) write on one poem only? :S

It sure does, but you'd want to know a hell of a lot about that poem. Wouldn't recommend it but they can't penalise you for it

AdMMM

Originally Posted by Nehpets
Since this is a thread about English.. I just looked at the Patrick Kavangh question for 04 and it says "select one or more of PK's poems from your course for inclusion in a short anthology entitled "The Essential Kavangh"

Does that mean that you could (if you were able) write on one poem only? :S

Of course there's no guarentee that you'll be only asked to write about one poem this year

Nehpets

I wasn't suggesting that