How to get better at the English composition?

**Timbuk2**

Overall I'm fairly good at English, but I tend not to do that well on the short story/composition question.

How do you get better at these? I'm completely against the idea of learning essays off - it's a waste of time, time that could be better spent improving your ability to write worthwhile ones.

I read a lot so my English is usually good, but the problem lies with coming up with ideas, and structuring the essay, and sticking to the point. I also tend to 'tell' more than 'show', if you understand my meaning.

My friend is really good at them, but he has a better imagination. His advice is to 'try and think differently' - for example, I told him for the 2009 essay title ("The Decisive Moment") that I would write about a man making a decision and how it had consequences, but he said he would have started with the decision, make the rest of the essay like a 'flashback' telling the reader what happened to lead to the decision, and then to finish it with what happened at the start. I think his idea sounds great, but I wish I could come up with these things myself!

My strengths lie in the Maths/Physics/Accounting area (numbers basically!) so I don't have the best imagination, although Paper 2 in English is ok for me because you can study for it, and do well!

An essay we were doing in class the other day was a fairytale but in the 21st century and I couldn't think of anything! How can I improve at the composition question?

Thanks for the help in advance. Hey look at that, this whole post turned out to be essay-length!

gemxpink

I have the exact same problem, no imagination but I'm more logical. I don't have any advice but I'm going to stick around this thread to look for some, good luck!

Orlaladuck

I'm quite good at these so I can give a leetle bit of help.

Number 1 - Structure and PLAN. Even if you don't have the best imagination just take your own life and write about it and twist it into a story. We had to write 'The Decisive Moment' which was from last year as well so I essentially wrote about a night out and the decision to get into a car with a drunk driver or take the bus and as it turns out the bus crashed. Not overly imaginative but still a story. Just take everyday situations and use them to your advantage. I made the plan for my friend on this as well and since her parents are divorcing I told her to write about trying to 'choose' which parent. Do that rather than trying to make an epic novel out of it.

Number 2 - Write from first person perspective for the next while until you're really comfortable with it rather than rushing into the passive voice .ie 'sarah said x and walked into the bar' just say it from your own eyes.

Number 3 - If you really hate short storys, try taking the article option or the personal essay. I find personal essays Great because you can just write as if telling someone something about the subject. Articles are just like reviewing something, even speeches - just giving lots of key points. If you have a lack of imagination then try focusing on other ideas. Our teacher is always saying to Never do the short story unless you are a storyteller to begin with. Really work on stories and twist them to suit the topic.

Hope this helps

felic

Hmmm, interesting topic.

You're right. English is one of the more demanding subjects on the course and very difficult to predict how you did on the day with either Paper 1 or Paper 2.

In terms of the composition, every student is going to have a different approach, and no way can be deemed the right or wrong way. Really look into how the marking schemes go and what the examiner will be looking for.

With English, its all about how you express your ideas, develop themes, use of techniques, etc.

Its very difficult to tell someone how to approach such a question because its such a wide open subject; very unlike maths whereby you have one right answer.

So you're asking how to deal with this question.
Ill take your essay title and talk about how I would approach this.

"The Decisive Moment"
Here you could make that about so many things.
Whats best is to think of something that you know a lot about. So the first step is to draw up your plan.
Every piece of writing has to have a beginning, a middle and an end. And you have to have bridges between all three so that every ties up and makes sense. So whats a good idea is to always read back over your first paragrah before you wirte the ending one, and try come up with something that brings you right back to where you began.

This title to me sparks an idea about someones life and having to make a big decision on what to do.
So you could open up with a bold statement, like what your friend did, immediately bringing the end to the start.
For example...
"As I stood on the platform with the receding wave of passengers sifting back into the terminal and watched the train fade into the abyss, like a common thief, taking my one true love away from me, I collapse in a heap of mixed emotion, wondering if I would ever see her again."

Something like this immediately sets the theme of what you are going to be writing about and puts the reader right in the middle of the authors despair.

So then you would go on from this and do your flashback, 5 years ago, type thing and follow everything through to the point you return to that platform.

The ending has to have as powerful a kick as the beginning so you could maybe take the man home and have him going about his life, but then he finds an unopened letter from his departed girlfriend explaining a secret... say for example, shes expecting their first child. And then end it there leaving the reader with a new set of emotions to obliterate the despair, yet questioning.. what now what now what will he do, will he go after her...


So thats one approach.
Another could be say picturing yourself writing for a newspaper column. Again you start with your bold opening statement.

'Are we a nation gone insane?' and then you go on about whats happening in the current situation with society and governments and blah blah blah. And end it with a statement...
'Seems to me our little blue planet has become an asylum", so you are answering your own question and listing the evidence between question and answer in the body of your text.


Its difficult to do this in an exam where timing is not your friend, but with practice, and experimenting with as many styles possible between now and June, you'll be flying. Ideally you should be handing an essay up to your teacher every week, but not all English teachers do this. But you will get a sense of whats good and whats not with practice.

Rossie17

felic wrote: »

Hmmm, interesting topic.

You're right. English is one of the more demanding subjects on the course and very difficult to predict how you did on the day with either Paper 1 or Paper 2.

In terms of the composition, every student is going to have a different approach, and no way can be deemed the right or wrong way. Really look into how the marking schemes go and what the examiner will be looking for.

With English, its all about how you express your ideas, develop themes, use of techniques, etc.

Its very difficult to tell someone how to approach such a question because its such a wide open subject; very unlike maths whereby you have one right answer.

So you're asking how to deal with this question.
Ill take your essay title and talk about how I would approach this.

"The Decisive Moment"
Here you could make that about so many things.
Whats best is to think of something that you know a lot about. So the first step is to draw up your plan.
Every piece of writing has to have a beginning, a middle and an end. And you have to have bridges between all three so that every ties up and makes sense. So whats a good idea is to always read back over your first paragrah before you wirte the ending one, and try come up with something that brings you right back to where you began.

This title to me sparks an idea about someones life and having to make a big decision on what to do.
So you could open up with a bold statement, like what your friend did, immediately bringing the end to the start.
For example...
"As I stood on the platform with the receding wave of passengers sifting back into the terminal and watched the train fade into the abyss, like a common thief, taking my one true love away from me, I collapse in a heap of mixed emotion, wondering if I would ever see her again."

Something like this immediately sets the theme of what you are going to be writing about and puts the reader right in the middle of the authors despair.

So then you would go on from this and do your flashback, 5 years ago, type thing and follow everything through to the point you return to that platform.

The ending has to have as powerful a kick as the beginning so you could maybe take the man home and have him going about his life, but then he finds an unopened letter from his departed girlfriend explaining a secret... say for example, shes expecting their first child. And then end it there leaving the reader with a new set of emotions to obliterate the despair, yet questioning.. what now what now what will he do, will he go after her...


So thats one approach.
Another could be say picturing yourself writing for a newspaper column. Again you start with your bold opening statement.

'Are we a nation gone insane?' and then you go on about whats happening in the current situation with society and governments and blah blah blah. And end it with a statement...
'Seems to me our little blue planet has become an asylum", so you are answering your own question and listing the evidence between question and answer in the body of your text.


Its difficult to do this in an exam where timing is not your friend, but with practice, and experimenting with as many styles possible between now and June, you'll be flying. Ideally you should be handing an essay up to your teacher every week, but not all English teachers do this. But you will get a sense of whats good and whats not with practice.

I have to say that a great post, plus great bolded sentence.

spurious

Read and then read some more.
Read collections of short stories from different authors and times.
Read short stories translated from other languages.


Read.

jumpguy

As spurious said, reading is rather essential. You just kinda get into the way things are written.

As for subject matter, which is more challenging in my opinion, go for what you know. Personally, I'm rubbish at making up stories off the top of my head, I'm much more of a logical thinker. Therefore, I always try to go with the essay I can relate to real life.

For example, in the 2009 paper Q5. "Write a newspaper article on some of today's respected figures, exploring the qualities that make them worthy of respect". I'd write about Obama and go down through the list of reasons, giving the reason, and my personal response, and how he exibits it. It gives a nice structure, and it easy to write.

Another good idea it to create an idea tree. Draw a circle, and then have idea bubbles coming out of it, giving seperate points. This is invaluable and also gives structure to your essay.

implausible

My advice is simple - DON'T DO THE SHORT STORY. Most students aren't very good at them and it needs to be brilliant to get an A. A good discursive essay/speech/article that does what it says on the tin will get an A.

If you are mathematically-minded, these types of questions should suit you. You can learn off a method, a structure and useful phrases and use them on the day. Think of the essay plan as a formula.

e.g. Method for a speech: figure out who you are and why you're giving the speech. Decide on an approach or what side you're on. Brainstorm ideas and narrow down to the best 4/5 that you can expand into paragraphs.

Structure: in your intro introduce yourself and the topic of your speech, welcome your audience, let them know what to expect and maybe throw in an anecdote about why you're interested in the topic. Write a paragraph for each point, making sure to link and introduce each point. Your conclusion should recap on your points, reinforce your view, thank the audience for listening and hope they learned something.

Phrases: use phrases that refer to the audience like "as I'm sure you are all aware", "I'm sure everyone here has been in a situation where...", "there isn't a person here who hasn't..."

Hope this helps.

Lawliet

I am so awful composition questions. I read loads, and I can usually come up with interesting plots and characters and write about them pretty well. But when I'm sitting the exam, I panic; I can never think of anything half way decent to write and end up with three pages of nonsense. It happens every single time. I don't know what to do about it

felic

Lawlit, theres thousands of people with the same panick in an exam. The only way around that is practice practice practice. Get out exam papers going back as far as you can find them and imagine being given those topics to write on. There has to be at least one of them that interests you and grabs your attention. Then its just a matter of blocking out everything around you, the people, the exam hall, the silence, and focussing on that one topic for however long the exam and question runs for. You nearly need to spend more time on the planning and rough sketch of the ideas than you would spend on actually writing the final draft. Thats so important because its like the foundation work of building a skyscraper. If you plunge right into the essay without developing your plan, just like the skyscraper, you'd get so far and then be stuck and throwing nonsense down on the page just to fills the space.

Its not a thesis, its just a piece of writing to show off your technique and the skills you learned in class.

pathway33

spurious wrote: »

Read collections of short stories

Everybody should read the short story 'Hunters in the snow' by Tobias Wolff http://www.americanliterature.com/Wolff/SS/HuntersintheSnow.html

**Timbuk2**

Thanks for the replies everybody! They were really helpful!

Another question - should I do the plan (probably a spider-diagram-like-thing) in the same answer book as I write my actual composition in, or could I get marked down for this?

felic

You can do it in the same script. I think what I did was the minute the exam started, up went my hand for a second answer book script. I did my plan on the first page of that script and had it open in front of me while i was writing the essay in the other script.
You wont be marked down for it. In fact, I would imagine the person correcting would be worried if they didnt see it.

jumpguy

**Timbuk2** wrote: »

Thanks for the replies everybody! They were really helpful!

Another question - should I do the plan (probably a spider-diagram-like-thing) in the same answer book as I write my actual composition in, or could I get marked down for this?

I'd do it in the same script, if the examiner see's it, they automatically can see you put some thought into the essay, and sub-consciously, they're expecting structure, so you could get a few marks. It's better doing it in the script.

theowen

I do wish I read more instead of having my hands glued to the Playstation as a child. My problem is getting over this barrier. I've got a B1 in my last 8 or so essays, including the LC 09. Gah...

DancingQueen:)

I read a good bit, and if i'm given a day or a week to write an essay it'll be great and i'll get an A or B but when i have an hour or so in an exam it doesn't really come together that well. There's some great advice here i'd say that practise under exam conditions and to spending a lot of time on the plan are the best options, so going to try them asap!

**Timbuk2**

Thanks again everyone!

What is the time allowed for the composition on Paper 1 (HL) and what proportion of this should be spent planning, and spent actually writing?

theowen

**Timbuk2** wrote: »

Thanks again everyone!

What is the time allowed for the composition on Paper 1 (HL) and what proportion of this should be spent planning, and spent actually writing?

Varies really, but I think the average is an hour and a half. The planning would depend on the person. It takes me from 2 minutes to 20 to get a plan going:P

DancingQueen:)

**Timbuk2** wrote: »

Thanks again everyone!

What is the time allowed for the composition on Paper 1 (HL) and what proportion of this should be spent planning, and spent actually writing?

It should say it at the start of your exam papers but i can't find mine atm. I googled it and it said:

Recommended Time Allocation

Scanning through paper 10 minutes
Question A 40 minutes
Question B 45 minutes
Composition 1 hour 15 minutes

Checking over paper 5 minutes


but it'd probably vary from person to person.

felic

Id agree with that breakdown. So say 1hr 15mins goes to the essay, 75 minutes.

depending what the topic is, when uve picked what one you want to do, write three columns. Beggining, middle, end...
And then under these three jot down the ideas that come into your head. When those ideas are jotted, read over them again and kind of get thinking about how you are going to make the connections etc... make ur extractions and additions...
make ur solid final plan, and then, plough ahead with the writing.

If you have 75 minutes, a good 20 to 25 minutes should be spent on the plan.
That leaves you with 50-55 minutes to do the writing, read checks, etc.

jumpguy

DancingQueen:) wrote: »

It should say it at the start of your exam papers but i can't find mine atm. I googled it and it said:

Recommended Time Allocation

Scanning through paper 10 minutes
Question A 40 minutes
Question B 45 minutes
Composition 1 hour 15 minutes

Checking over paper 5 minutes


but it'd probably vary from person to person.

Quick question, why would you waste 10 minutes scanning through the paper?

**Timbuk2**

jumpguy wrote: »

Quick question, why would you waste 10 minutes scanning through the paper?

I'd imagine it's to decide which questions to pick. Remember, there are three reading texts that you pick one part A out of, and another part B from a different question. It's important to read through the part Bs so as you don't pick a part A that gets rid of your favourite part B, for example (I'd rather write a diary extract than a radio report!).

Orlaladuck

I'd ask why spend 5 minutes looking over. You'll spend that 10 minutes making the decisions. I can't remember the timing we were given for paper 1 but I do remember our teacher giving us an essay and saying to time it to a max of 1hr20mins.
Best thing to do is after the mocks, take an old question and time yourself One Hour and try to write as much as you can in that hour. That'll give you a really rough estimation of how long it takes per page to write. You need between 4 and 6 pages in total I think. Also I'd say leave it til last and do Q A and B first.