A question about Junior Cert English?

fontdor

Hey guys hope you are all doing well.(I am board out of my head with studying for my mocks and stuff) anyways i wanna know any tips on how to study for a Junior Cert English Honours so you can get a A? For our Drama we did the Field and for our Novel we did Of Mice And Men by John Steinbeck.

fontdor

Will someone please answer by tonight?

yellowsky169

If you ever find out tell me because I found it the worst subject to study for when I did my mocks!! That being said, having answers to all the studied things helped, I basically had one answer that could be used for lots of topics, which helps with timing. Then in class we did practise questions were instead of giving us the hour that we would hopefully have in the exam to write the essay our teacher only gave us 40mins. Stuff like that really helped but apart from practising old questions theres not much you can do, I think.

spurious

Read. Read as much as you can - all styles of writing.
Make sure your grammar, spelling, punctuation etc. are error-free.
Make sure you always answer the question you are asked in an exam.
Read some more.
Practice different styles of writing yourself, then read some more.

Desire to Aspire

Know your studied drama, novel, and poetry inside-out, upside-down, and back-to-front. Seriously, there is no excuse for not knowing the only things you can properly study for.

I'd suggest maybe reading your novel and drama again in your spare time, taking note of things that you should know. Learn the quotes from each chapter then as you finish it.

Practice, practice, practice. Just do past exam questions. That's all you can do really. Do as many past questions as possible and time yourself. It is very important that you are able to manage your time in the exam, so practice now -- not while sitting your Junior Cert.

Like Spurious said, just read, read, and read some more. Reading around on Boards will help (study, great excuse to come here :P) as you will be exposed to many different styles of writing. Maybe head over to the Literature forum, I don't know?

Anyway, good luck!

Slow Show

I missed all these threads before, so I'm just gonna resurrect this.

But yeah, what everyone said - read, read, read and read some more. I read an unhealthy amount of books when I was younger and it kinda dried up for a few years but I started again not so long ago and it's really been helpful. English is the one subject that I just feel absolutely comfortable with. I think it's kind of a natural ability for me stemming from all the reading I did.

Also, practice a wide variety of essays for the exam. I'm not saying learn anything off, but you might get lucky and be able to manipulate one on the day. As for studied stuff, I find most of my poems and my play (MOV) really interesting and enjoyable, I'm kind of a massive English nerd in that respect, so I think just try and find parts of your studied stuff you like and focus on them, it makes it so much easier to answer questions about it. I think examiners like when you're able to put a bit of your personality and how you feel about your studied pieces into your answers, because that's what I did and I got full marks on studied poetry and close to it in drama and fiction.

Functional writing and media studies is a matter of learning what has to be learnt imo. It's kind of hard to prepare for all of the unseen stuff that comes up, I'm gonna have to say 'read' again. I'd read the book for unseen fiction in my mock, and it was a help tbh, and it made me feel kind of awesome when I read the title.

Tl;dr: READ.

bluejay14

Like everyone else has already said but I'm gonna say it again anyway just for the extra emphasis: Reading has to be one of the best things that you could ever do, not just to get an A in the J.C. but I would have to say ever.

I did the JC last year and in TY this year, I' ve noticed that all of the best in English in my class are/were huge readers. I've always had a massive thing for books and I've been through hundreds I'd say (I have kind of dried up too, just like Emma because I've been so busy lately )

But anyway.....enough about me.....reading is the key. It's surprising how much of a difference it can make and can actually be a handy way of letting off some stem coming up to the JC.

Also don't bother learning off essays, your far better off just going for it on the day because essays that have been learned off are really easy to sspot if you're the one reading them. If you're going to do anything like it, the instead of learning off the actually essay just learn off the plans for the essay and a general outline for each paragraph as a guideline, that way you can mix and match paragraphs from different essays to make a really good essay on the day.

Practice is essential too. Just write essays after essay after essay, even if you don't have to or you havn't been given them to do for homework or anything. Just pick an exam question, write the essay and hand it up to your teacher to correct. Most of them won't mind correcting extra essays, especially of they can see that you've out the effort into doing it properly and the more you write then the better you should get at it.


Good luck!:)

FunkyOxygen

FELLOW JC 2011 STUDENT HERE -What has helped me sooo much (83% in mocks) was just writing out all the quotes I needed for my play, and learning one a night. You will be surprised how easy they are to remember after a while!

Then i learnt the major scenes in detail (we're doing Rome & Juliet so Act 3 Scene 1) And doing this can help you apply the scene to some questions.

For Novel, I just got notes off the internet and complied character sketches for the characters. This has helped me sooo much because when learning one of the character sketches (we're doing to kill a mockingbird) I learn important quotes, their role in the play and important scenes etc. so i kill a few birds with one stone!

For poetry, this is where I find I have the most work to do because our English teacher is a bit crappy! I need to brush up on this section to gurantee me an A.

For Personal writing I find the best thing to do is to read , luckily I am blessed with being a good story-writer and so my vocabulary is quite extensive naturally. However, even scanning through books and highlighting words which you find useful or just identifying the styles and how the writer plows through the story can help you a lot!

Good luck and don't fret, we're all in this together!

SChique00

FunkyOxygen wrote: »

FELLOW JC 2011 STUDENT HERE -What has helped me sooo much (83% in mocks) was just writing out all the quotes I needed for my play, and learning one a night. You will be surprised how easy they are to remember after a while!

Then i learnt the major scenes in detail (we're doing Rome & Juliet so Act 3 Scene 1) And doing this can help you apply the scene to some questions.

For Novel, I just got notes off the internet and complied character sketches for the characters. This has helped me sooo much because when learning one of the character sketches (we're doing to kill a mockingbird) I learn important quotes, their role in the play and important scenes etc. so i kill a few birds with one stone!

For poetry, this is where I find I have the most work to do because our English teacher is a bit crappy! I need to brush up on this section to gurantee me an A.

For Personal writing I find the best thing to do is to read , luckily I am blessed with being a good story-writer and so my vocabulary is quite extensive naturally. However, even scanning through books and highlighting words which you find useful or just identifying the styles and how the writer plows through the story can help you a lot!

Good luck and don't fret, we're all in this together!

WOOHOO FELLOW JUNIOR CERT STUDENT HERE TOO! I'm having a lot of confidence issues with English also, because I was really hoping for an A in the mocks and only got 77%. However, it helps if your teacher's a really tough marker, because then you're pushed to do your best in the real exam and the examiner will likely be bowled over because they're reading such good work with no previous judgement on you. I agree with everyone else with the Personal and Functional Writing sections; READ!! Even if it's just the odd newspaper or magazine article (though make sure it's an adult, unisex magazine as they are the only type with correct grammer), you'll be able to extend your vocabulary base immensely and brush up on grammatical mistakes without realising it.
Paper 2 is a toughy; the best thing you can do (according to my teacher anyway) is bull**** your way through the unseen questions, and know your studied literature inside out. This is the area I have the most trouble in but I read on one of the threads (maybe it was this one?) that you should prepare a scene, main character and theme question for fiction and drama, and know lots of quotes from each of your texts. Quotes are the best things to lengthen your answer when you need some filler, but remember to always relate them back to the question. Get another teacher apart from your regular one to mark them as they have no bias for or against you.
I agree with FunkyOxegen and everyone else who has posted; reading and not allowing silly mistakes in your writing is the best way to secure the marks for a pass. You can improve if you really need to. Now if only someone could reassure me.... Anyways, good luck, and as a matter of interest, is anyone doing any revision courses over the break? I'm going to them this week

SChique00

OH, and before I forget, don't neglect your vocabulary. Learn the appropriate words (copy, contrast, font, etc) for different questions. This is especially important for Media Studies, a seemingly easy question. I find using big words sparingly makes you sound like you know what your talking about, even if you don't, but SPARINGLY!! Otherwise the examiner will see through any flaws in your answer and crucify you marks-wise. I am talking from experience... but nonetheless, a good vocabularly and appropriate use of language techniques and words is vital. Don't use a word unless you are sure of what it means in context (again, talking from experience; I once described Atticus Finch from 'To Kill A Mockingbird' as detrimental to the plot; not a smart move!) :):)

Geo10

I did my JC last year. I got a D in English for the mocks and went up to an A in the real thing. This is how I prepared for the different topics:
Comprehension: Do past ones and look up sample answers on examit.ie to see roughly how much you need to write for the different qs with different marks. It sounds silly but one of the reasons I went down in the mocks was because my answers were one big block of text filled with random quotes from the comp. rather than being a few small PQE paragraphs each (I generally did one of these per 5m).
Personal Writing: If your planning of doing a short story (which I always did) don't just learn off a plot and try to use it (what I did for my mocks) it only turns out messy trying to fit it into one of the titles and usually the examiner notices this. Do, however, learn off loads of great descriptive vocab and better ways of expressing emotions etc. They look great on your essay.
Functional Writing: Just learn the layout to letters, reports, articles, CVs, etc.
Media Studies: Past exam qs give you a general gist of what you need to be able to do here and know proper vocal for this section e.g advertisements use of superlatives, puns, buzz words, visual images etc.
Drama: What really helped me here was (after having done lots of past Qs) writing out the quotes I used the most and then learning those quotes and constantly looking over them. Watching the play on TV helps you remember what happens too because let's face it.. nobody would want to read it again.
Poetry: Learn off and notes on one poem on all the main themes (e.g nature, love, war, grief/death etc), one to do with a place, one with beautiful imagery and two poems by one poet. You can really focus on one poem because usually a general question comes up (e.g I really focused on Mid Term Break and ended up being able to use it).
Novel: Again learn the main quotes and the main themes and characters of the novel.

Missyelliot2

Hi, I'm doing the junior cert in 3 days and I was wondering, is it a certainty that a debate speech will come up for (HL) english? I was looking over the past personal writing questions over the years and a debate speech has come up 12 out of the 14 years in our exam papers. The last time it hasn't come up was in 2004. Is it a definite question?