How hard is it to get a B1 in Honours English -Leaving Cert.

Roisina_

Hi, I've just started LC 2011-2012 and I need some help regarding points! I'm doing all honours except for maths and I really want to drop to pass Irish. I need to get a B1 in English so I can drop to pass irish to keep my points where I want them. (around 460)

Does anyone know how hard or possible it is to get a B1 in honours english? I'm quite a good writer and am doing alright in the class but I have a lot of revision to do

Any tips/help would be greatly appreciated!

Markyy

I got a B2 and I was terrible at English, it really all depends on your paper one. You can't do a lot for it, English is partly based on luck unless you put in a lot of work, but it is very achievable to get a B1. It also depends on your texts and the poets that come up.

Roisina_

Markyy wrote: »

I got a B2 and I was terrible at English, it really all depends on your paper one. You can't do a lot for it, English is partly based on luck unless you put in a lot of work, but it is very achievable to get a B1. It also depends on your texts and the poets that come up.

Really? Paper One with the comprehensions and all? I though P2 would be the hardest? Yeah even a B2 would do me. Thanks for that

Bbbbolger

English is something you need both a flair for and a bit of luck. You can learn off essays and sample answers etc. and hope that they come up. If they do you're sorted. But when they dont come up you need to have the quotes learned and the language/expression to pull you through. English was my best subject all through secondary school. I took a chance on the poetry section and none of my poets came up. It cost me a whole grade.

Learn your quotes for everything, look at sample answers that have scored well and answers that havn't scored well (they'll be on the State Examinations website). These will give you an excellent insight into how you should structure your answers and also things you should avoid doing.

bscm

I got an A1 in HL English, as did 3 other girls in my year.

My tips:

DO flick to the back as soon as your exam begins and look at the essay titles, this gives your brain 1-2 hours to think of ideas while you continue with the comprehensions/Question B.

DON'T learn off answers, learn only quotes and techniques/aspects/themes etc to your texts/poems. Learning off entire answers causes you to regurgitate the information in a style which can easily be picked up by an examiner and marked badly. Know that this poem demonstrates the poet's ABC, X has hyperbole and Y uses imagery etc but don't learn off an entire answer.

DO look at answers/notes to pick up new themes/aspects etc

DON'T learn off essays, not only are you taking a risk as your topic might not come up, but also the examiner WILL see that you are reproducing an essay and you won't get high marks. Paper 1 is what will make or break you. Getting a good grade in Paper 1 is what will get you the A1.

DO read, read, and read again. Those of us who got the A1 in my school were bookworms or else focused on getting into journalism, so our standard of writing was quite high. Reading books improves your standard of writing more than you'll ever realise.

DO the unexpected. The examiner will have read 300 scripts of speeches on students fees, "My Favourite Place"... they welcome interesting and unusual essays. Everyone I know who got an A in HL English, always wrote an unusual essay. Each title has hundreds of possibilities, don't do the obvious.

DON'T pick and choose your poets. Teachers make you study 6 and you should go over all 6. Realistically, the night before the exam, you'll only get a chance to glance over 4 max, but do go over ALL of the poets. Nothing worse than getting a 2010 scenario and losing nearly an entire grade.

DM360

To be honest English is a bit unpredictable, or at least I found it to be. I was in the second-highest stream class in my school and everyone was getting less than B2s most of the time, myself included, throughout the year. Lower down the streams, in the fourth or so, there were guys getting really high marks.

In the actual LC my class did exceedingly well, I got an A1 (no idea how, must've got lucky) and several others got good grades while the students who had previously been getting B1s/A2s in the lower streams were disappointed with low Bs/high Cs.

You need a good teacher for English in my opinion. The have to be willing to criticise your work and never to just throw marks at you because you're a nice person. A natural flair is helpful but not essential for a high mark.

I'd say if you want a B2 you'd have to do some work, nothing massive, but enough. I enjoyed some of the texts and poetry on the course but detested others. Play to your strengths, study poetry you find interesting. For me Hopkins, Wordsworth and Dickinson were easy to talk about and I ended up doing some background research on them (just googled them, looked up wiki and stuff) to add. I wouldn't recommend doing all the poets in detail, in fact I wrote off a few from the word go. I chose 5 that I could write a good answer on and stuck with them, however the nights before I concentrated on my 3 best.

Sample essays are very important, read as many as you can and ask your teacher for them. They give you an idea of points you could use or structural ideas. For my comparative I had a variety of essays assembled form different sources which dealt with different parts of the text. I took bits and pieces from each and from my own head to make a decent answer.

I never expected an A in English, I would have been pleased with a B2, especially after I thought I botched my Paper 1, so I'd say go for it and just do as many answers as you can before the LC. Oh and definitely keep them when you get a decent mark! There's nothing better than sitting down 2 or 3 days before the LC, ready to think up some points for a question that seems likely than finding a scrunched up essay dealing with the exact topic

astonaidan

To get a A1 you really need a passion for english, Memorise the quotes, Pray your favourite poets come up, I got a A1 writing my essay on my favourite chicken they really want you thinking outside the box