How to write English essay's

Cian92

Right I got 66% in my English christmas exam it consisted of a poetry essay and a normal essay. How would I improve it? My spelling(I know in saying this somebody is going to pick out a spelling mistake, in my post but meh), punctuation and paragraphing were fine. Does anyone have any tips?

LizT

English essays not english essay's!

The main piece of advice I can give you is always refer back to your question. A lot of people tend to give a synopsis of the poem/novel/play, when this is clearly not asked for. Underline all the key words in the question and make sure you answer, or at least refer to all parts.

E.g. If it says discuss the theme of hatred and revenge in....
Don't just do hatred and then have a sentence or two on revenge.

Johnny Giles

Use your imagination.

DancingQueen:)

Also if it's a personal response make sure you keep making about you and what you think and don't summarise at all, i keep forgetting this!

lizt

lizt wrote: »

English essays not english essay's!

The main piece of advice I can give you is always refer back to your question. I lot of people tend to give a synopsis of the poem/novel/play, when this is clearly not asked for. Underline all the key words in the question and make sure you answer, or at least refer to all parts.

E.g. If it says discuss the theme of hatred and revenge in....
Don't just do hatred and then have a sentence or two on revenge.

I was going to point out the grammar mistake too...gosh I'm such an insufferable pedant.

I agree with what lizt said. Make sure you're actually answering the question. Most of the marks go towards clarity of purpose and coherence of delivery (check the marking scheme online), so if you don't answer the question exactly you'll lose a lot of marks in both those areas. Make sure you're using accurate and relevant quotations (or reference to key scenes) to back up all your points when you're discussing texts & poems. Spelling & grammar mechanics only counts for 10% so don't worry about it too much at the moment.

(but fyi, apostrophes are used to indicate ownership or that a letter is being left out, not plurals. :P)

theowen

Learn off essays for poetry. Yes, I went there.

NightOwl91

Doing LC myself! Want an A!:eek:
You should probably identify what writing style you work best with for paper 1..
Im handing up short stories to my teacher nearly every week and hopefully my short stories can be morphed to suit the theme in the big exam .
You should try this. Also read alot. Newspapers, books etc.. Pick out descriptions etc
As for the poetry and single texts, Im learning off my favourite 5poets (as they'll stick in my mind) I suggest know them inside out. People are saying Boland, Yeats, Longley, Kavanagh, Eliot are likely to come up. Even if you learn these, you should get at least one. I doubt Keats, Walcott, Rich will come up. Keats and Walcott came up last year. Rich came up in 2008 and Boland came up in 2005 so, Boland is more likely to come up then Rich.

For single text Im learning off about 10 quotes I can use for every essay concerning Wuthering Heights.
The more I found I practised paper 1 section 2, the better I was at writing essays all round..
Try to do questions on poets in your papers when you have time(40 mins a week wont kill)! Hand them up even if you dont finish them in time. The more you practice, the more your grades will improve..
Also, English key notes 2010 is a god send!!
:PGood luck ! See you at the finish line lol

jesus!tony

Anybody else think here that their teacher is artificially keeping scores low to make you work harder. In our honours class everyone gets a C/D and rarely a B.

Cian92

jesus!tony wrote: »

Anybody else think here that their teacher is artificially keeping scores low to make you work harder. In our honours class everyone gets a C/D and rarely a B.

Sounds exactly like my teacher!

Johnny Giles

jesus!tony wrote: »

Anybody else think here that their teacher is artificially keeping scores low to make you work harder. In our honours class everyone gets a C/D and rarely a B.

Maybe the class lack imagination?

Johnny Giles

Cian92 wrote: »

Sounds exactly like my teacher!

Maybe you're in the same class?

Aoifums

OP, what do you mean by a normal essay? I might be a bit thick, but I've no idea what a 'normal' essay is.

jesus!tony - I don't know. I've heard my teacher is nice to us for the first term of firth year but marks the sixth years really tough. I keep getting the exact same marks on every single essay though. It is so freaky.

thomond2006

I got an A2 in HL English and I don't know how I managed it tbh.

Stick to factual essays in Paper 1 would be my advice, it's must easier to stray off the point in stories while keeping structure in a factual essay is quite simple.

NightOwl91

jesus!tony wrote: »

Anybody else think here that their teacher is artificially keeping scores low to make you work harder. In our honours class everyone gets a C/D and rarely a B.

Thats my teacher too!!!:D
I always get dissed for "a little rushed?" what the....:D

jesus!tony

Johnny Giles wrote: »

Maybe the class lack imagination?

No

Johnny Giles wrote: »

Maybe you're in the same class?

No

implausible

jesus!tony wrote: »

Anybody else think here that their teacher is artificially keeping scores low to make you work harder. In our honours class everyone gets a C/D and rarely a B.

A 'C' is the most common grade at HL LC, so your class is average.

christina_x

NightOwl91 wrote: »

. Rich came up in 2008 and Boland came up in 2005 so, Boland is more likely to come up then Rich.

dont rule Rich out completly.. look through past papers, theres a few poets that came up 2 years in a row...some female poeet for for the life of me i cant think of her name... but anyways! I dont think shes up on next years course.. check with 5th years.
she could well come up because she was on 2008, 2009 and 2010's course, and she only came up once? chances are she could come up again. just check for patterns in the papers, and theres always a female poet up

ps3man

christina_x wrote: »

dont rule Rich out completly.. look through past papers, theres a few poets that came up 2 years in a row...some female poeet for for the life of me i cant think of her name... but anyways! I dont think shes up on next years course.. check with 5th years.
she could well come up because she was on 2008, 2009 and 2010's course, and she only came up once? chances are she could come up again. just check for patterns in the papers, and theres always a female poet up

id rather not answer a question atall than answer a question on Rich, shes an idiot, doesnt deserve to have me scribble about her useless life for an hour or so

allandanyways

In my experience, Leaving Cert students tend to learn off stock phrases and ideas that are published in the various supplementary notes books that you get or the notes in the front/back of the book. Although it is the Leaving Cert and you are all studying basically the same thing, what makes an A1 or A2 student stand out is some original perspective, on top of flawless spelling, grammar, punctuation and spacing.

I don't know what the play, for example, is this year, but I did Macbeth in 2007 (and got full marks for my answer) and instead of solely concentrating on the themes outlined in the supplementary notes/front of book/other notes from the internet or whatever, I expanded on each of my points about X theme with some original perspective. One problem, I've gathered from talking to English teachers, is that students tend to lay out there essay as such:

Introduction
Point one- learned off notes
Point two- learned off notes
Point three- learned off notes
"In my opinion"/"From my point of view" etc
Conclusion.

It's predictable and you can tell straight away what's coming in the essay. What I did, and what I would advise others who want to get higher marks to do would be to engage with the material and have an opinion about what you're writing. People who regurgitate notes without any input of their own rarely get the high marks (although I'm open to being corrected on this, as I know it works for some areas of Geography and fact-based subjects). The thing about English (especially if you go on to study it at 3rd Level like I have) is that you have to show the examiner that you've engaged in the material someway.

Some teachers are very strict about the use of the "I" in literature essays, and prefer them written from an impersonal point of view, but you can still express an opinion when using the impersonal way of speaking. "One could argue..." "It could be suggested that..." etc etc.

Teachers and examiners know all the SparkNotes and the other ones in the books, they can recognise them from a mile off. Make it personal, put your own stamp on it, even if you don't say "I think that...", there are many ways in which to express what you think of the text and even if you hate it, fake it, if you can pretend like you give a crap about Yeats or Macbeth for the sake of one essay, you could well get full marks. (I hated Frost, did my question, got 45 out of 50 marks or whatever it is for Poetry)

Hope that's of some help, just what I've gathered from personal experience, talking to English teachers and helping out my sister's friends last year.

implausible

allandanyways wrote: »

Some teachers are very strict about the use of the "I" in literature essays, and prefer them written from an impersonal point of view, but you can still express an opinion when using the impersonal way of speaking. "One could argue..." "It could be suggested that..." etc etc.

Any teacher doing this is shooting the students in the foot! The SEC are all about the personal response, and using 'I' is the most obvious way of doing it.

Your other points are spot on though. Use your notes but ffs, don't just throw them onto the page, you must adapt them to the question and give a personal response.