A1 in English

WhoDat

How difficult is it to get an A1 in English? I always imagine that it's not the same as the sciences, or history or geography where you just write the facts and get the marks. With English it seems to be more down to the luck of the draw with regard to examiners. I consider English to be my best subject, I enjoy it a lot and I've been doing well over the last couple of years. My teacher is expecting a lot from me, but I'm starting to get worried. I feel like my teacher is marking me sometimes based on what she knows I'm capable of and what she's seen me write in the past rather than the quality of what I've written every single time. Sometimes I know I've written something that's a bit half-arsed and she still gives it a good mark. She told me the last day that she'd be "disappointed" if I didn't get the A.

Just wondering if any of you guys got an A and what do you think are the key points to getting an A?

Thanks!

Crow92

Answer the question, no learnt off essays, know points not paragraphs.

Refer back to the question often and think am I going off topic.

That's fact,

Personally I think it'd be easier to get an A if you take a new/different twist of things you think most people won't, or a poet most wouldn't do.

gaeilgegrinds1

I got an A1, was tough as hell back then to get one. Much easier now going by my students. What was said is useful, I found bringing in other knowledge I had seemed to be very well received. I was very well read, excellent grammar & wide rang of vocabulary...how things have changed!

fauxshow

Omg story of my life! I think the key to getting an A is not necessarily being a good writer, but understanding the marking scheme and almost learning how to beat the system as such.

I think the biggest mistake most people make is just to spend excessive amounts of time on prescribed poetry, single text and the comparative. Paper I is worth 50% and the unseen poem on Paper II 5%... people say you can't study for these but I find practise makes perfect. In terms of knowing what they're looking for in Paper I answers as such I found reading a revision book - Shortcuts to Success: English Essay Writing cover to cover the day before my mocks seriously helped me understand how to do an examiner-friendly Paper I that was of good quality but also ''safe.'' They also give sample essays on Paper II stuff and give a guide to writing each of those essays.

The second key I think to getting the A is to spend most of your Paper II prep time on the comparative cos it's woth 17.5%. Quoting lots makes your essay stand out a mile - at the end of the day there's no point referencing stuff in the texts if you're not able to back it up with examples. Most English teachers go into a load of thesis BS with comparative prep - you don't need a HUGE amount of analysis, just CONSTANTLY compare each text to the other and you'll do well.

For Lear avoid summarising the play in your answer and quote LOTS. Prescribed Poetry is worth the same amount as your Reading Comprehension or Diary Entry etc. in Paper I - not a huge amount of marks, so I wouldn't tear your hair out trying to learn a load of poets inside out! Again, quoting lots differentiates an A student from a B student, and to be on the safe side depending on the subjectivity on examiners, I'd be writing about 5/6 poems per essay. It's a lot easier to do if you structure your essay to talk about different themes as headings e.g. use of imagery, use of religious metaphors etc, referencing different poems under these headings and comparing them etc. You don't need to re-tell the story of the poem, just offer a bit of analysis on it.

Hope this is of some help! Don't stress too much about it, familiarise yourself with the PCLM marking scheme and constantly keep that in mind and also the fact that you should be answering the question in front of you and constantly refer back to it throughout your answer. It's more subjective than other subjects, but at the end of the day they have to mark it in a way that a person who isn't necessarily a gifted writer but works hard at it and studies the literature and works at improving their essay writing skills can get a good grade. Good luck!

Bucklesman

I got an A1 by having confidence in my own writing and knowing the material on the course relatively well. Confidence is key; if you don't feel good about what you're writing, chances are the examiner won't fell too good about it either.

Stick to what you know and are interested in, because it shows if you aren't. If you are going to do a short story for the Paper 1 essay, don't try to wing it on the day and make up a plot. Work on what you've already done in class and what has got you As before.

For the poetry, learn some quotes made by your chosen poet or their critics. Most people won't look outside their textbooks when they study, so this can give you an edge.

Know what you're going to talk about before you start writing.

Don't waffle to fill space, it's a waste of time.

Try not to use the passive voice.

Spelling and grammar need to be watertight.

If you're making an argument, only refer to yourself if you are an authority. Don't water down your arguments with phrases like "arguably", be unequivocal.

Remember who your audience is at all times.

To be honest, it sounds like you have a good grasp of the subject already, so you should partly just do what feels right to you. You're going to do fine.

fauxshow

Oh I also forgot to mention to constantly bring in your personal response! This counts for all aspects of the paper, particularly in the poetry question but also the comparative - you can easily just throw in a sentence every so often like ''This aspect really interested me because...'' or even just ''I felt'' or ''Personally'' and link it in to some analysis. Examiners generally love that kind of thing and it also stops them thinking this is a learnt off essay etc.

DáireM

Before you tackle any answer have solid, distinct points ready to use in your answer and have suitable quotes for them. Well structured, well argued answers will get you high marks. There's no need to go over the top with vocab anywhere except your question B in paper 1 and the essay.

Have quotes from critics (loads of stuff out there for Shakespeare) and quotes from general literature will impress if used correctly. Don't crowbar quotes into answers just because you went to the trouble of learning it off, it has to be suitable.

This is gonna sound really nerdy but last year when I was doing the LC I used to write essays in my head if I was in the shower, couldn't sleep in bed etc. Think of colourful lines you can use and form really solid opinions on loads of different topics. This helped me a lot. There's no harm in stealing a nice line if you read it in the newspaper/a book. Remember that it's ok to be funny or cheeky, examiners will probably appreciate this as most stuff they'll be reading will be turgid ****e.

Good luck!

implausible

WhoDat wrote: »

How difficult is it to get an A1 in English?

....and what do you think are the key points to getting an A?

It's not as difficult as people think.

The main key point is simple - ANSWER THE QUESTION!

It doesn't matter how good your essay is if it doesn't address the title. Lots of students lose marks when they get too involved in trying to remember the essay they learned off by heart and forget to answer the question.

highlydebased

I'm hoping for an A1 buuuut goodness knows what could happen.

-Not learning off answers! big NO NO!
-Addressing the question. Take it by the scruff of the neck and deal with it properly!
-Knowing the material. Knowing some quotes to back yourself up. Some people overdo it.
-Putting your own approach on the stuff. An examiner with 200 scripts will be delighted to see something different..
-A personal writing style helps.

Ashashi

It depends really, some people excel at P1, and others P2. For me I got 89.5 in Paper 2, but then got 72 in paper 1 because my essay was quite poor.


I have improved on my personal writing while learning the main points in each of my texts and having a lot of quotes for poetry and Lear. Concentrate on your weak points, but also keep up your strong points, and you will be grand.

stainluss

Ashashi wrote: »

I have improved on my personal writing

You mean as in personal essays?

I was just wondering, how did you do this?
I plan to choose the personal essay for composition and im not sure how to improve.

People improve their short stories by reading and sometimes learning ones off, their article writing by reading magazines, but what do you do for personal essays?:confused:

I understand that you should practice, but titles are all so varied that you cant be sure if your really helping writing about a specific topic..

fufureida

I think personal essays are all about being and to ramble about one point for ages that's what I do.

Ashashi

I read some books, and I worked on my planning. I wrote 2 essays, and what I did was work on description, and dialogue, good dialogue can really keep a reader's attention. On both of those, I picked a period of time that I loved. So crusades was for both, and wrote on both sides of the story, which I got 85 and 90 on them.

I also picked a speech to write out and I got an 83, which is a massive improvment. So do some writing, and have a teacher look at it.

cally5

I got an A1 in English last year, and I seriously didn't expect to. I had honestly thought I banjaxed both papers cause I was repeating and had to learn new texts and poets in the year. I paniced in the exam and forgot all my quotes, but just tried to focus on what the question was asking and my own personal opinions. In paper one I just relaxed and for my essay just wrote something that came to me at the time, I really strongly disagree with learnt off essays. Also its important to just remember the PCLM marking system in every question you answer ( Purpose, Coherence, Language and Mechanics.. at least I think that's what it means! ) But seriously don't let your teachers expectations make you feel extra pressure in the exam, just try to enjoy it since you seem to like English anyways. Good luck

caroline1111

I'm all for making up your own essays on the day but if you were to have a good short story learnt off as a backup and it fitted well into say one of the picture titles, could you still get top marks for the essay? Or is it true they rarely give good marks for good short stories because they presume you have it learnt off?

Lawliet

I doubt they could just dock marks on a great short story that suited the question, just because they suspect it might be learnt off.

LutherBlissett

Just in relation to the prepared poetry question. You do not need to know 5/6 poems to get an A1.

3/4 will suffice. 4 is probably the optimum number. Remember - you want to keep an answer tight and relevant. The more poems you do, the more chance you have of confusing yourself (and/or the marker) and detracting from the clarity and cohesion of your answer.

fauxshow

LutherBlissett wrote: »

Just in relation to the prepared poetry question. You do not need to know 5/6 poems to get an A1.

3/4 will suffice. 4 is probably the optimum number. Remember - you want to keep an answer tight and relevant. The more poems you do, the more chance you have of confusing yourself (and/or the marker) and detracting from the clarity and cohesion of your answer.

I said specifically in my post <b> to be on the safe side depending on the subjectivity of examiners </b> I did English grinds with a Chief Examiner who reccommended I do exactly this because the opinions of what is the sufficient amount of poems to cover varies amongst correctors or correcting groups.

And it also makes more sense seeing as it's supposed to be an essay about the work of a POET so to give a flavour of what the poet is about, for example Yeats, three poems really isn't enough to demonstrate the scope of his work. Also, why would the SEC put a large amount of poems on the syllabus if only learning 3 per poet was sufficient? They are very wary and very much against people trying to cut corners with English and learn less poets, less poems etc. with the predictions game.

Anyway, these things are always going to be disputed, especially with a subject like English where the marking schemes aren't as fleshed out or straight forward as in other subjects. This is my tuppence worth, take it or leave it!

stainluss

fauxshow wrote: »

demonstrate the scope of his work

You mean for a personal response?

Lately, you see, they no longer ask many personal responses, so you wouldnt need to demonstrate the scope of their work. (someone said they were getting tired of people regurgitating learnt off essays)Thus, many of the questions are getting more and more specific (e.g. shocking imagery, poignant theme etc.)

This means that you mean only have 3 or 4 poems in your itenirary that will match up with the question to write about.

That said, it would be good to learn 5/6 poems from your poets so that you can pick and choose depending on the topic of the Q.

Im hoping that writing about 3/4 with stong links to the Q asked will be enough, though.

Im guessing the SEC may give more choice on poems to get more varied answers. It would be inefficient to do more than two-thirds of the poems given on each.

highlydebased

caroline1111 wrote: »

I'm all for making up your own essays on the day but if you were to have a good short story learnt off as a backup and it fitted well into say one of the picture titles, could you still get top marks for the essay? Or is it true they rarely give good marks for good short stories because they presume you have it learnt off?

Seemingly they have indeed tightened up on the short stories in recent years due to the reasons you state.

Four-Percent

DáireM wrote: »

This is gonna sound really nerdy but last year when I was doing the LC I used to write essays in my head if I was in the shower, couldn't sleep in bed etc. Think of colourful lines you can use and form really solid opinions on loads of different topics.

Good luck!

I did this too, always used to think about how i'd make an ad more persuasive or how much better i'd be on the radio than one of the DJs... it really does help!

irish-anabel

I got an A1 in my mocks (I know it's not the real thing but whatever) and the BIGGEST thing that you need to do is, as said before ANSWER THE QUESTION!!! Just keep looking back at it and as you're writing the essays keep stopping and thinking have I related this point back to the quesion with EVERY paragraph.
To be honest I don't agree fully with not learning off essays. Even the best english student would find it difficult to think up, plan out and write an essay in 55mins. I have all my essays written and although I'm not gonna learn them off word by word I know I'm not going to be drawing up something totally new on the day, you simply don't have time.
Remember you don't have to be really good at english, you just have to pretend you are, pretend your opinion and feelings matter no matter how gay you sound.
And of course, it's a help if you're a reader. Even reading the paper and seeing how speeches and arguments are put will help you with paper 1.

OxfordComma

Sadly, getting an A1 in LC English isn't necessarily about being an excellent writer or being creative - yes, these things are important, but things like exam technique, time management, planning and structuring your answers, and most importantly answering the question you're asked, are perhaps even more important. It's the kind of thing that really makes me angry at the Irish education system, because I got an A1, and I can think of several people in my class that were much better writers than me and didn't do as well. I also thought Paper II was absolutely disastrous, so I've still got no idea how I did well in the exam at all!

Basically, the most important thing is to answer the question you're asked. This basically entails constantly referring back to the wording of the question, which gets tedious pretty quickly, but apparently it's what the examiners are looking for. You have to keep showing how every point you make is relevant to the question asked, so you should probably be referring to the wording of the question at least once per paragraph. If you're asked about what themes in Keats' poetry you enjoyed, you're going to have to say things like "I immensely enjoyed Keats' treatment of the theme of the immortality of art in..." and "Keats' treatment of the theme of love in... moved me greatly" and so on. Another very important point is that, for poetry, you have to give a (very) personal response throughout, so you have to show how this or that poem inspired or captivated or moved you. Avoid summarising any of the prescribed materials - analysis is what the examiners are looking for.

Planning your answers properly is another must. Before you start any essay, spend a minute or two designing an appropriate structure for your answer. Jot down whatever number of points you're going to deal with, and explore one point per paragraph. Planning is absolutely essential for the personal essay, because if you just dive in and start a certain title without doing anything, you might run out of ideas halfway through or end up writing something incoherent and poorly structured. I'd definitely recommend taking 5 minutes (or more) to decide which title to do and to draft a rough plan for your essay. Make sure you're picking the title that suits you best. It doesn't matter too much if you deviate from the essay plan, but it's essential as a rough guide.

Writing well and being original and creative are important too (thankfully). Try to make sure your writing isn't dull - vary your vocabulary a little, and don't keep using the same words over and over. Try to be original and give your own opinions on things as much as possible. Practice improving your writing for the next couple of days - you'll improve if you put in the effort.

errlloyd

15 of my year got A1s last year (including me), a further 12 got A2s...

Almost all of us were competitive debaters who wrote at least one speech in paper 1. I think markers get too many short stories and it's too easy to mark down short stories.

I personally wrote a short story for the shorter essay and a light hearted magazine article for the long essay. I got 100% of the marks in both Essays, got 95% on paper 1. Its a lot easier to learn little tricks for speeches then for stories. All you need to do is be persuasive and refer your audience and the marks will flow in.

Light hearted articles are even easier because that stuff basically comes from the head. Mine was about my time in school and I literally just wrote about my time in school, so its dead easy. In saying that I admit I got incredibly lucky. I got exactly 90% over all, an old English teacher once told me that LC examiners read your long essay first and whatever grade you get in it, they try to give you in the paper. I truly believe that's what happened to me..

For paper 2, its just quotes. I just learned quotes by rote, I used a lot of white space, so any quote more then 4 words had a blank line above and a blank line below. Some teachers recommend it, some hate it. Other teachers in the past recommended highlighting or underlining them. To me this would seem patronising to the examiner and waste time, but w/e.

There is a myth you can't get 100% on the essay, its just a myth.

SarcasticFairy

I got an A1 and went into the exam not knowing a single quote... My exam script wasn't completely devoid of quotes; odd words would come back to me from poems and I'd stick inverted commas around them, but I didn't go off learning reams of them. I wouldn't waste too much time on learning every line of the poems, or your entire play or anything. There's no need to put too much emphasis on the quotes.

Having said that, have a fairly decent grasp on what happens in each of your texts. I'd advise against learning off essays, but I did find it easy enough to write an essay on the spot. If you know the plot in your texts, it's usually not that difficult to apply it to the question.

Do apply it to the question. Do it really obviously. Make it clear that you're answering the question (and obviously, make sure you are answering the question asked). Use the words in the question, paraphrase the question, use synonyms of the key words - you get the point! Just make it clear that you're not regurgitating an answer you learnt off, with an introductory paragraph relating to the question. You need to refer to the question the whole way through your answer.

Don't forget to be familiar with the types of questions for Unseen Poetry. Easy enough marks to pick up, but don't forget about it, and do not waste too much time on it. There are more marks going for the essays, and you need as much time as possible for them. Get in, get out, don't hang around analysing the fúck out of it. Move on.

Paper One more comes down to your natural abilities to think shít up on the spot. You've no idea what will come up, you can't really learn anything for it, except for the different styles of writing and where they're used (which, to be fair, is kind of important....). You should know what kind of writing suits you best, and look for it on the paper. Stick to what you know and/or are most comfortable writing. I personally find it much more difficult to write a short story, than an essay because I can't pace my stories, but I can map out, in my head, how I'll structure an essay. Coherency is important, so avoiding stories, in my case, meant not losing the marks going for that.

But mostly, don't rely on predictions toooo much, or Drogheda might fúck you over. :P

fufureida

I don't learn quotes at all... They come to me on tge day dunno why!!!

ldxo15wus6fpgm

caroline1111 wrote: »

I'm all for making up your own essays on the day but if you were to have a good short story learnt off as a backup and it fitted well into say one of the picture titles, could you still get top marks for the essay? Or is it true they rarely give good marks for good short stories because they presume you have it learnt off?

I really wouldn't go learning off answers... unless you were extremely lucky and if fit the title perfectly it would be fairly obvious.
What I tend to do, as I consider myself a bit of a film buff and watch a ridiculous amount of movies, is try and think of a film that loosely fits the short story title/pictures and mess around with the story a little, and condense it into roughly 6-8 pages...

EDIT: I meant to say a certain part/scene/plotline from a movie... sorry for the confusion! Yes most movies would be way too big to condense into a short story... there are a few exceptions which have worked out extremely well for me though, the Running Man being one

tl;dr: no, plagiarise movies instead. :P

Lawliet

Our English teacher always discouraged us from doing that; it's too hard to condense a film plot into a few pages while also keeping the narrative flow, characterisations, etc. solid. You'd have to be a pretty skilled writer to be able to pull that off smoothly, most people just end up with a rushed, messy piece of writing full of clichés. It's always better to write about things you have personal experience with, but if you are going to borrow from films or TV shows, try to pick a certain scene that suits the title and expand on it. Trying to rip off an enter film will just cause you too much hassle.

fufureida

A whole film lol? That's a little silly... It's much easier to get it from a chapter in a book where something important happens.