Learning off answers.

Dman001

Would there be any problem with learning off English Poetry sample answers from Revision books and using on the day, maybe altering them slightly where needed. The sample answers are much better than anything I would ever write.

Jam-Fly

Dman001 wrote: »

Would there be any problem with learning off English Poetry sample answers from Revision books and using on the day, maybe altering them slightly where needed. The sample answers are much better than anything I would ever write.

I think you're running the risk of plagarism if you use an answer too similar.

Copying the general ideas or themes is okay, but going word for word might get you in a bit of trouble.

xOxSinéadxOx

don't think you'd get in trouble tbh

Denerick

Dman001 wrote: »

Would there be any problem with learning off English Poetry sample answers from Revision books and using on the day, maybe altering them slightly where needed. The sample answers are much better than anything I would ever write.

A friend of mine did something similar to this in his leaving cert. He ended up getting a D in higher level. When he had it checked out he saw that he got 0 marks in his poetry and Shakespeare answers because he basically memorised a sample answer. The problem was that he answered the question he learned off rather than answer the question that was asked!

I would say this is an absolute no-no. People who do this kind of thing might get high marks for re-gurgatation but its a complete waste of time. Just read the text, write down a few major themes on a piece of paper and then try to expand on each theme, regardless of how insignificant it might seem, sort of like a family tree formula. Keep spreading it out, create sub answers - basically write all you know without checking any books.

Afterwards get out your text book and create a load of footnotes with the aid of that book, add in to certain sections things you should have written. Throw it all about in your head then. Don't feel worried about the text at all - just remind yourself its only a damn book, and that you're as clever as anyone else. Half the battle is getting over the intimidation of the text, that somehow its too 'complex' to understand.

I'm a bit rusty, but when I sat the L.C. three years ago I used this studying formula for English and I got an A1. Doesn't make me an authority on it or anything but I have a pretty piss poor writing style but examiners prefer enthusiasm and an original, well thought out independent answer. Reading sample answers worded differently back to them will result in you at most getting a B. Or at worst getting 0. I would say don't bother taking that sort of risk.

english4490

we were at an english seminar a few months ago giving by a guy who use to be one of the main people in correcting LC english, anyway a couple of years ago they handed out this sample answer from a LC student at the meeting of correctors or something because they thought it was such an amazing answer... then someone realised it was almost word for word of a sample answer giving in 1 of the papers before the exam! the student still got full marks for what they called "creative remodelling"......:rolleyes:

Dman001

Thanks guys. What I might do so then is use bits and pieces from sample answers.

ImJohn

I've learned off an essay for the short story. The only thing I'm scared of is that I won't be able to fit it in to the question asked!! I put in a lot of time studying it and I'd be devastated if I couldn't fit it in.

Aside from the short story, the usual essays come up every year, such as a topic about teenagers, war, and there is nearly always something on Ireland ; either it be about our culture or something else.

I think if your not an natural at English I'd advise you to learn off an answer beforehand. It's easy to change the answer to fit the question. Anyway, most of the people that get A1s in English have learned off everything beforehand.

rebel girl 15

Probably the best way to beat the system is learning off chunks of material, but make sure that you can FIT THE ANSWER TO THE QUESTION!! that goes for every answer in every paper - if it is not relevant, then it won't get marks! Some people find learning off paragraphs does for them, some people just learn off a whole answer.

Denerick, its not a complete waste of time - it is the only way for students who are not good at English to beat the system. Its the same in every other subject except Maths.

xOxSinéadxOx

I haven't learnt anything off cos I'm lazy but if you want to do well you're going to have to learn things off. I mean they don't give you enough time to think about your answers in the exam, you only barely have enough time to write what is required, writing non stop. if you learn stuff off you could easily mix it up a bit to fit the question unless you're completely dumb

RHunce

i dont think this works really well
one of the lads this this for junior cert and did really bad, he was normally a B student down to a D. but the problem that occurs is that you will try to fit the answer you learned off in to the question that was asked and it might be of minimum relevance.

dont do it!!

rebel girl 15

I'd probably advise people to learn off paragraphs, rather than full answers. Easier to remember and manipulate into an answer. For essays and that, learn off general paragraphs.

For my Irish, I learned off an essay, and was lucky that it came up as the last question.

The Irish education system has made it that to succeed, students need to learn off answers - e.g. for Irish essays, if you are not a native speaker, and try to do an essay without learning off stuff, you will end up having grammer mistakes, which lower your mark. It is all about beating the system and learning off answers is the way to do it!

SligoBrewer

rebel girl 15 wrote: »

The Irish education system has made it that to succeed, students need to learn off answers - e.g. for Irish essays, if you are not a native speaker, and try to do an essay without learning off stuff, you will end up having grammer mistakes, which lower your mark. It is all about beating the system and learning off answers is the way to do it!

Horse****. Tbh, if you learn off a sample answer that someone else has written you are cheating yourself and not 'beating the system'.

The English and Irish essay is built to encourage students to actually compose on the day, in a area which is entitled 'composition' or 'ceapadóireacht'. My Irish essays are usually littered with grammar mistakes, but there is a certain amount of leniency allowed.
We were shown an essay which had >20 grammar mistakes, but still scored 95ish marks due to the fact that the material, while it was padded out with phrases and seanfhocail, was original and valid. My essay in the mock was original, and I scored 85 marks, beating several word for word prepared answers (As everyone knew what was coming up before the exam.) and yet was littered with mistakes.
To get a good mark in the aiste or composition, one should be half decent at composing. Most learnt off answers in all languages can be sniffed out with ease.

rebel girl 15

SligoBrewer wrote: »

My Irish essays are usually littered with grammar mistakes, but there is a certain amount of leniency allowed.

We were shown an essay which had >20 grammar mistakes, but still scored 95ish marks due to the fact that the material, while it was padded out with phrases and seanfhocail, was original and valid. My essay in the mock was original, and I scored 85 marks, beating several word for word prepared answers (As everyone knew what was coming up before the exam.) and yet was littered with mistakes.

To get a good mark in the aiste or composition, one should be half decent at composing. Most learnt off answers in all languages can be sniffed out with ease.

That is crap!

What about people who are not half decent at composing?? You are beating the system by learning off answers. Thats what teachers all over the country do for every subject outside maths. Great for you getting your 85 marks in the pre, but from your comments, you obviously have a good grasp of Irish. Other people do not.

Have you actually looked at the marking scheme of Irish - 20 marks goes for subject matter and the other 80 go for the Irish - including grammer and structure. If someone makes a grammer mistake once, they are penalised for that once and not again, no matter how many times that they make the same mistake again. So how many grammer mistakes were in that 95 mark answer I wonder, if you use that counting scale.

The LC is a means to an end, no one gives a crap about your LC once you get your course in college, I know - I'm in college!

And to further a point I made above, about many teachers giving prepared answers to beat the system - there is huge evidence that this is going on, and the stats do not lie.

As for sniffing out learned off answers, yes it is very easy to see those answers if they have no relevance to the question. Other that that, it does not matter

Denerick

I personally wouldn't reccomend it. It seems a little dishonest to me for one thing. And its boring. Studying is actually relatively straight forward - its about remembering things. Learning off paragraphs has messed up plenty of people's exams - they focus on learning someone elses interpretation to the extent that have no capacity for critical thought themselves. English and history for example are two subjects which (Should) be aimed at evaluating critical thinking and to a lesser degree erudition. Spewing forth something you've learned off my heart is both counterproductive and its incredibly demoralising and boring.

Don't get me wrong, this is how most 600pointers get their 600 points. But they've probably been doing that since the moment they walked into school in first year. (And in quite a few cases they get found out when they go to college and they have to learn to think independently from day one) For the ordinary among us its endlessly more productive to think about these things yourself with the aid of the opinions of experts.

implausible

It's no harm to learn off answers. Examiners don't give a fcuk so long as you answer the question. The problem with this approach is when students focus too much on learning off an essay word for word and lose sight of the question. It's better to learn off a plan and some key phrases and quotes.

SligoBrewer

rebel girl 15 wrote: »

What about people who are not half decent at composing?? You are beating the system by learning off answers. Thats what teachers all over the country do for every subject outside maths. Great for you getting your 85 marks in the pre, but from your comments, you obviously have a good grasp of Irish. Other people do not.

Massive presumption here, but to be studying Higher level Irish, maybe you should have a fairly good grasp of the language.

rebel girl 15 wrote: »

And to further a point I made above, about many teachers giving prepared answers to beat the system - there is huge evidence that this is going on, and the stats do not lie.

As Fad knows;),
I have a lovely head for statistics. Back up what you said there plx.

rebel girl 15 wrote: »

As for sniffing out learned off answers, yes it is very easy to see those answers if they have no relevance to the question. Other that that, it does not matter

Student A has an unreal essay, word for word perfect. Not one grammar mistake.
But yet , fails to string two words together in the léamhthuiscint, or even understand it for that matter. It's obvious in other ways too.

rebel girl 15

the examiner won't care if the answer is learned off or not for an essay - my comment was based on essay question. They get close to the 100 marks. Some people find learning off general paragraphs are the best way to work, some people learn off a whole essay. Anyone doing higher will have a good grasp of the language naturally whereas others have to work, and learn off answers to get by! I did honours Irish, can speak it quite well, but putting together an essay that got good marks was difficult, so I learned mine off.

from your answers, I can safely assume that you are a good student who will do well in the LC - if your approach works for you, well and good. The learning off of stuff works for many other people.

as for the leamhthuiscint, lifting the answers out of the passage and changing a few words will get you the marks. I know people who were very bad at the composing element, kept making some bad mistakes, but were very good at the leamhthuiscint.

plx??

since you have such a good head, i'll leave u do the leg work! check out the numbers that sat the higher level paper in the three compulsary subjects for the last three years, what is the one subject in your opinion that people cannot learn off answers for and has the lowest higher level students? What is the one subject that keeps getting the most attention including a brand new curriculum? which one has the highest fail rate? why?

You mentioned critical thinking, it is obvious from those stats that students taking that subject cannot learn off the stuff, and simply have to understand it to do well.

Now I wonder why that is? teachers go out to beat the system - to get their students the points that they need for the course. I don't see why this is an issue, it happens in schools that students are given out prepared answers.

I agree with you that the syllabus is made out like you described, that those sections are supposed to encourage students to compose themselves, but that does not happen.

SligoBrewer

rebel girl 15 wrote: »

since you have such a good head, i'll leave u do the leg work! check out the numbers that sat the higher level paper in the three compulsary subjects for the last three years, what is the one subject in your opinion that people cannot learn off answers for? What is the one subject that keeps getting the most attention including a brand new curriculum? which one has the highest fail rate? why?

.

Fail rate:
Maybe because its next near impossible to bluff maths if you don't know it, unlike English or Maths.

AAAAAAAAAAAnd, I'd say that it's easier to get an A1 in Maths with work, iun comparision to English or Irish. In both English and Irish, a lot is left up to the mind of the examiner, not to a strict marking marking scheme. Impression marking and all that. In Maths , if you know you're stuff, you have no excuse.
Jot down what you've studied and you go literally expect an A1 come August. Can't say that in English.

Gloom

Well, for history, english, art and even business, I've written my own essays for past exam questions so I plan to learn them off. The main idea is manipulating your information to suit the question. A lot of people don't do this.

Piste

For English I've learned off essays for poetry and comparative. For Macbeth I've learned off essay plans. I wrote them all myself though so It's fine.


For Irish I'm determined to do the díospóireacht and I have about an A4 page of notes learned off, but it's all the formal introduction and closing which has to follow a certain pattern so hopefully it's forgiveable!

For French I've learned off a good few phrases to stick in here and there.

rebel girl 15

Bluff maths - it is impossible to learn off maths, that is why there is such a high fail rate in maths. Honours maths is nearly two subjects, and there is much less work involved in learning off answers to Irish and English, rather than doing countless maths problems, and still there will be a question that will come up that you will not have seen before. you have to implicitly understand the topics.

You cannot simply jot it down, you need to understand - in English and Irish, you can jot down what you learn, manipulating it to what you need. You cannot do that in higher maths, it is not that simple. to get on well, you need to understand it - something which is not required for other subjects. Thats why more people fail it than any other subject, because they simply cannot learn the stuff off.

Anyway, I think you have more important things to concentrate on rather than this, so we'll agree to disagree on this until after your exams.

Piste

For maths I'm learning off proofs, even the ones I don't really get. Also learning off the general term for MacLaurin ,which I definitely don't get.

HQvhs

rebel girl 15 wrote: »

Bluff maths - it is impossible to learn off maths, that is why there is such a high fail rate in maths. Honours maths is nearly two subjects, and there is much less work involved in learning off answers to Irish and English, rather than doing countless maths problems, and still there will be a question that will come up that you will not have seen before. you have to implicitly understand the topics.

You cannot simply jot it down, you need to understand - in English and Irish, you can jot down what you learn, manipulating it to what you need. You cannot do that in higher maths, it is not that simple. to get on well, you need to understand it - something which is not required for other subjects. Thats why more people fail it than any other subject, because they simply cannot learn the stuff off.

Anyway, I think you have more important things to concentrate on rather than this, so we'll agree to disagree on this until after your exams.

The honours maths failure rate for 2008 was roughly 4.2%. Higher than the previous two years when it was 3-3.5%. It's a high enough failure rate compared to other honours subjects, but nothing catastrophic. Also, a higher % of people doing it get As than in English or Irish.
Anyway, you need to understand both English and Irish if you want to well in them also. A good grasp of the language, an ability to analyse and to compose answers is necessary for both subjects.
Even in maths the vast majority of people do not understand what they are doing, they simply recognise where to use a method. How many honours maths students know why they use Calculus, Statistics, Sequences and Series etc or what they are for?

rebel girl 15

can we agree that for honours maths you cannot learn 90 per cent of the course off, like you can do with other subjects? I agree you need an understanding of english and irish, but you can use prepared answers for quite a lot of both papers, but not for maths.

I don't see what peoples problem is with using learned off answers, it is a way that works for people. Sligo - you are one of the people who obviously has good linguistic intelligence, so its okay for you. Good luck to you in your exam and I hope your method works for you.

Teachers find a method that works for them, that gets the students what they need, and that is found by helping students prepare answers and give them out answers. It works, and beats the system - the LC is a means to an end, its about getting into college - in college, the LC does not matter. So why does it matter how you get the marks you need? What matters is that you get the marks you need.

I personlly think the Irish education system overall is poor, and does not meet the requirement of what students need. But that is a discussion for another place and another time

SligoBrewer

rebel girl 15 wrote: »

there will be a question that will come up that you will not have seen before. you have to implicitly understand the topics.

And it will be worth what 20 marks or 2.5% :eek::rolleyes:

rebel girl 15 wrote: »

You cannot simply jot it down, you need to understand - in English and Irish, you can jot down what you learn, manipulating it to what you need. You cannot do that in higher maths, it is not that simple. to get on well, you need to understand it - something which is not required for other subjects. Thats why more people fail it than any other subject, because they simply cannot learn the stuff off.

Maybe because they do not do the work ,or practice their stuff is why they epic fail? They may know the basics but may not have put them to practice recently. It happened me, I failed my mock after I thought I'd walk it. But, I know that repetition is the key to maths, unlike English and Irish.

rebel girl 15 wrote: »

Anyway, I think you have more important things to concentrate on rather than this, so we'll agree to disagree on this until after your exams.

:pac::pac::pac:

SligoBrewer

rebel girl 15 wrote: »

So why does it matter how you get the marks you need? What matters is that you get the marks you need.

Right, you are putting out a person who is of a better standard from the college course that you (plural) want. It's the equivalent of cheating in my book.

I know others will see it differently

rebel girl 15

SligoBrewer wrote: »

Right, you are putting out a person who is of a better standard from the college course that you (plural) want. It's the equivalent of cheating in my book.

I know others will see it differently

Fair enough, you are entitled to your opinion, but that other person you mention, if they are of a better standard, they will get into college. Its not like people are going for one place! Thats horses**t; yours is quite a narrow minded view, but one that you are entitled to. If you think that is cheating, then you have no clue what cheating is!

The points system in Ireland is also wrong, there is no way that the LC is a fair examination of the standard of students - students learn pointless information that they will never use again, sit inside a classroom for three hours, write down what they know and forget it because it is not relevant to what they do in college! Sligo, are you aware of Howard Gardner? LC is not a standard by which to measure people.

If you think that is cheating, what is your opinion on HEAR? Do you think that is fair? That people who do not get the points should not be allowed into the course? I know people who have gotten into courses 20-30 points short of the CAO requirement through HEAR - should they be thrown out of the course and the points required for the course lowered by five to leave in other people who scored higher than the person admitted through HEAR?

HQvhs

HQvhs wrote: »

Even in maths the vast majority of people do not understand what they are doing, they simply recognise where to use a method. How many honours maths students know why they use Calculus, Statistics, Sequences and Series etc or what they are for?

That's where the main problem lies. It's a pity the new syllabus doesn't address this.

rebel girl 15 wrote: »

It works, and beats the system - the LC is a means to an end, its about getting into college - in college, the LC does not matter. So why does it matter how you get the marks you need? What matters is that you get the marks you need.

Your formal education doesn't just start at college; it starts when you start attending school. It does matter how you get the marks you need: if you get them honestly (I define honestly as not learning off answers), you will be giving yourself an education. Learning off answers is a waste of time, in my opinion. What are you actually doing for yourself? Nothing; fooling yourself; wasting your time (with regards to actually educating yourself; not concerning entry to college).

But, at such a late stage, some people may find learning off answers the best approach. The problem lies in the system: it should be disencouraging people from doing such things from the very beginning.

rebel girl 15

rebel girl 15 wrote: »

If you think that is cheating, what is your opinion on HEAR? Do you think that is fair? That people who do not get the points should not be allowed into the course? I know people who have gotten into courses 20-30 points short of the CAO requirement through HEAR - should they be thrown out of the course and the points required for the course lowered by five to leave in other people who scored higher than the person admitted through HEAR?

The HEAR issue has been done to death here. And anyway, they don't take "regular" places: HEAR students have a number of places set aside. So, they're not taking places from people with higher points.

rebel girl 15

-JammyDodger- wrote: »

But, at such a late stage, some people may find learning off answers the best approach. The problem lies in the system: it should be disencouraging people from doing such things from the very beginning.

I totally agree with the statement - people memorise the beat the system. Teacher encourage it because it works. And the system is where the flaw lies. The thing you said about educating yourself, schools don't give you a full education. You don't need a two thirds of the stuff that you learn in school in life.

I don't see where honesty comes into it - sure isn't that what you are doing in class anyway. You are learning off things in class to eventually reproduce in an exam. Personally, I learned off answers for my LC, got my college course and I'm doing well in it - and I don't lose sleep about!

Dman001

-JammyDodger- wrote: »

That's where the main problem lies. It's a pity the new syllabus doesn't address this.



Your formal education doesn't just start at college; it starts when you start attending school. It does matter how you get the marks you need: if you get them honestly (I define honestly as not learning off answers), you will be giving yourself an education. Learning off answers is a waste of time, in my opinion. What are you actually doing for yourself? Nothing; fooling yourself; wasting your time (with regards to actually educating yourself; not concerning entry to college).

But, at such a late stage, some people may find learning off answers the best approach. The problem lies in the system: it should be disencouraging people from doing such things from the very beginning.

Well the fact that I have to learn off answers tells you that I'm not good at English, and I don't care for poetry at all. Learning them off is not a waste of time for me and I don't care that I am not educating myself because I can honestly say I will never use English poetry again in my life. All I want to do is get a decent grade in English and I feel this is the way to go.

I do not see why you think it is cheating as everyone is free to do it.