How to Study English?

jw93

Hi everyone,

This is probably going to sound stupid but how exactly do you study English (ie. What exactly do we need to get done between now and the leaving?)

Thanks alot

JonnyMcNamee

First of all a good way to improve your vocabulary is to read..a lot! Novels or newspapers it doesn't really matter what you read because its all going to be beneficial.
As regards to Paper 1, for the Part A's of the comprehensions just go over the questions in the exam papers. There's not really much you can do to study these except practicing the questions in the papers. For the Part B's you should study the different languages e.g language of argument, language of persuasion. You should know how a piece of, for example, argumentative text is generally laid out and what the examiner generally looks for when correcting one. Your knowledge of the different types of language will also help you in analysing the text for Part A.
The composition is a bit more difficult. To start off with you really have to find your niche, what your comfortable with. Some people will love writing personal essays and others will excel at speeches. When you find one your comfortable with, do a question and hand it up to your teacher to be corrected. When you get it back take into account where you lost marks and try again. Repeat this until your happy you have mastered that type of composition Its always good to be familiar with another type of composition for the exam incase the question doesn't go well for you on the day!

Paper 2 I find is a more learning rather than practice based process. For poetry you should generally choose 4-5 poets to study but that's really personal preference- some choose more, some choose less! Prepare essays on each of these poets analysing 5-6 poems. Repeat until perfected. A high standard poetry answer should be able to be twisted on the day to suit the question.
For the comparative study you should first analyse each of your texts under the three headings General Vision and Viewpoint, Literary Genre and Theme or Issue. Then, when you are comfortable with each text under these headings, you should form answers which contain all three texts. These should compare and contrast between your texts and contain phrases such as: similarly, as in, In complete contrast to etc.. And again as with everything else, hand your answers up to be corrected and take into account where you may have lost marks.
At long last we've come to Hamlet, the bane of most English student's existence. The key to compiling good Hamlet answers is to have a good knowledge and understanding of the texts and quotes. Quotes are fairly vital like, so you should probably have around 10 general ones learned that you can stick into any essay and about 3-4 specific ones per essay. Prepare essay plans and compile your answers slowly always bearing in mind what was asked in the question. Straying off the point will lose ya vital marks. Have about 10 essays prepared, covering characters and themes. And again practice questions and hand them up

Right, in my opinion if ya do that you should be sorted but am open to correction like. I'm mot a teacher, it's just my opinion. Sorry for the essay anyway, but I hope you get some advice and help from this!

Wesc.

I learnt off a short story for the mocks and it fitted in well...but maybe that's a bit too risky for the leaving cert!

SeanMadd

JonnyMcNamee wrote: »

First of all a good way to improve your vocabulary is to read..a lot! Novels or newspapers it doesn't really matter what you read because its all going to be beneficial.
As regards to Paper 1, for the Part A's of the comprehensions just go over the questions in the exam papers. There's not really much you can do to study these except practicing the questions in the papers. For the Part B's you should study the different languages e.g language of argument, language of persuasion. You should know how a piece of, for example, argumentative text is generally laid out and what the examiner generally looks for when correcting one. Your knowledge of the different types of language will also help you in analysing the text for Part A.
The composition is a bit more difficult. To start off with you really have to find your niche, what your comfortable with. Some people will love writing personal essays and others will excel at speeches. When you find one your comfortable with, do a question and hand it up to your teacher to be corrected. When you get it back take into account where you lost marks and try again. Repeat this until your happy you have mastered that type of composition Its always good to be familiar with another type of composition for the exam incase the question doesn't go well for you on the day!

Paper 2 I find is a more learning rather than practice based process. For poetry you should generally choose 4-5 poets to study but that's really personal preference- some choose more, some choose less! Prepare essays on each of these poets analysing 5-6 poems. Repeat until perfected. A high standard poetry answer should be able to be twisted on the day to suit the question.
For the comparative study you should first analyse each of your texts under the three headings General Vision and Viewpoint, Literary Genre and Theme or Issue. Then, when you are comfortable with each text under these headings, you should form answers which contain all three texts. These should compare and contrast between your texts and contain phrases such as: similarly, as in, In complete contrast to etc.. And again as with everything else, hand your answers up to be corrected and take into account where you may have lost marks.
At long last we've come to Hamlet, the bane of most English student's existence. The key to compiling good Hamlet answers is to have a good knowledge and understanding of the texts and quotes. Quotes are fairly vital like, so you should probably have around 10 general ones learned that you can stick into any essay and about 3-4 specific ones per essay. Prepare essay plans and compile your answers slowly always bearing in mind what was asked in the question. Straying off the point will lose ya vital marks. Have about 10 essays prepared, covering characters and themes. And again practice questions and hand them up

Right, in my opinion if ya do that you should be sorted but am open to correction like. I'm mot a teacher, it's just my opinion. Sorry for the essay anyway, but I hope you get some advice and help from this!

Just to shorten the workload, I think you only need to study two out of the three headings, as two come up on the paper so you'll definitely have an option

JonnyMcNamee

SeanMadd wrote: »

JonnyMcNamee wrote: »

First of all a good way to improve your vocabulary is to read..a lot! Novels or newspapers it doesn't really matter what you read because its all going to be beneficial.
As regards to Paper 1, for the Part A's of the comprehensions just go over the questions in the exam papers. There's not really much you can do to study these except practicing the questions in the papers. For the Part B's you should study the different languages e.g language of argument, language of persuasion. You should know how a piece of, for example, argumentative text is generally laid out and what the examiner generally looks for when correcting one. Your knowledge of the different types of language will also help you in analysing the text for Part A.
The composition is a bit more difficult. To start off with you really have to find your niche, what your comfortable with. Some people will love writing personal essays and others will excel at speeches. When you find one your comfortable with, do a question and hand it up to your teacher to be corrected. When you get it back take into account where you lost marks and try again. Repeat this until your happy you have mastered that type of composition Its always good to be familiar with another type of composition for the exam incase the question doesn't go well for you on the day!

Paper 2 I find is a more learning rather than practice based process. For poetry you should generally choose 4-5 poets to study but that's really personal preference- some choose more, some choose less! Prepare essays on each of these poets analysing 5-6 poems. Repeat until perfected. A high standard poetry answer should be able to be twisted on the day to suit the question.
For the comparative study you should first analyse each of your texts under the three headings General Vision and Viewpoint, Literary Genre and Theme or Issue. Then, when you are comfortable with each text under these headings, you should form answers which contain all three texts. These should compare and contrast between your texts and contain phrases such as: similarly, as in, In complete contrast to etc.. And again as with everything else, hand your answers up to be corrected and take into account where you may have lost marks.
At long last we've come to Hamlet, the bane of most English student's existence. The key to compiling good Hamlet answers is to have a good knowledge and understanding of the texts and quotes. Quotes are fairly vital like, so you should probably have around 10 general ones learned that you can stick into any essay and about 3-4 specific ones per essay. Prepare essay plans and compile your answers slowly always bearing in mind what was asked in the question. Straying off the point will lose ya vital marks. Have about 10 essays prepared, covering characters and themes. And again practice questions and hand them up

Right, in my opinion if ya do that you should be sorted but am open to correction like. I'm mot a teacher, it's just my opinion. Sorry for the essay anyway, but I hope you get some advice and help from this!

Just to shorten the workload, I think you only need to study two out of the three headings, as two come up on the paper so you'll definitely have an option

Yeah totally agree, dunno why I said three. Personally I don't really like Lit. Gen so I'd say I'll do V+V and and Theme or Issue