Differences between C and A standard English answers?

DublinArnie

Looking through the marking scheme for a few English papers, I'm having trouble visualising grade standard answers. I know people who have written very well and quite similar answers with little structural differences, yet their grades vary.

Would a few eloquent and well placed words and phrases bring you up?

Some of my answers have gotta +85%, but to me they are the same style as my C answers. I'm reading a lot of well crafted books at the moment, and can see my vocabulary and grasp on English improving.

I always answer the question.

Peg14

Personal Engagement
Using the poetic language -ie the techniques
Individual interpretations
Use of quotes - seamless use?
How you structure your answer - paragraphs, grammar, expression
Using connectives, linking sentences
Gripping intro, good conclusion
Ordered chronologically
Enough points discussed?


There loads of things but of course answering is the most important part, but really just the first step.

is mise spartacus

DublinArnie wrote: »

Looking through the marking scheme for a few English papers, I'm having trouble visualising grade standard answers. I know people who have written very well and quite similar answers with little structural differences, yet their grades vary.

Would a few eloquent and well placed words and phrases bring you up?

Some of my answers have gotta +85%, but to me they are the same style as my C answers. I'm reading a lot of well crafted books at the moment, and can see my vocabulary and grasp on English improving.

I always answer the question.

I'll explain why well placed words and eloquence will not bring up your grade as much as you would think.
I'll use the 2011 question on Hamlet as an example.

"Claudius can be seen as both a heartless villain and a character with some redeeming qualities in the play, Hamlet.” Discuss both aspects of this statement, supporting your answer with suitable reference to the text.

Now the words in red and green must be mentioned in various ways throughout your answer, juggle back and forth why he is a heartless villain and why he redeems himself. Vary your vocab for heartless, villain and redeeming.

DO NOT tell the story of the play, no marks for that. They want what is in red and green discussed. Hence why both is in blue. Again juggle. And yellow is your quotes.
PQE: make your point, backed up with a quotation and then explain it further. 25 quotes min for a play and I usually don't go less than 30 for poetry.
P is Clarity of Purpose (basically answer the question)
C is Coherence of Delivery (structure your answer sensibly... paragraphs and varying sentence length)
L is Language
M is Mechanics (spelling and grammar).
90% of the marks for any question is divided evenly between the first three criteria, and the final 10% is assigned to Mechanics.

I hope I was somewhat helpful otherwise :o:o

DublinArnie

Peg14 wrote: »

Personal Engagement
Using the poetic language -ie the techniques
Individual interpretations
Use of quotes - seamless use?
How you structure your answer - paragraphs, grammar, expression
Using connectives, linking sentences
Gripping intro, good conclusion
Ordered chronologically
Enough points discussed?


There loads of things but of course answering is the most important part, but really just the first step.

Didn't think of that one, thanks.

DublinArnie

is mise spartacus wrote: »

I'll explain why well placed words and eloquence will not bring up your grade as much as you would think.
I'll use the 2011 question on Hamlet as an example.

"Claudius can be seen as both a heartless villain and a character with some redeeming qualities in the play, Hamlet.” Discuss both aspects of this statement, supporting your answer with suitable reference to the text.

Now the words in red and green must be mentioned in various ways throughout your answer, juggle back and forth why he is a heartless villain and why he redeems himself. Vary your vocab for heartless, villain and redeeming.

DO NOT tell the story of the play, no marks for that. They want what is in red and green discussed. Hence why both is in blue. Again juggle. And yellow is your quotes.
PQE: make your point, backed up with a quotation and then explain it further. 25 quotes min for a play and I usually don't go less than 30 for poetry.
P is Clarity of Purpose (basically answer the question)
C is Coherence of Delivery (structure your answer sensibly... paragraphs and varying sentence length)
L is Language
M is Mechanics (spelling and grammar).
90% of the marks for any question is divided evenly between the first three criteria, and the final 10% is assigned to Mechanics.

I hope I was somewhat helpful otherwise :o:o

What do you mean by "don't tell the story"? Would you just pick out scenes relevant in order to answer the question? Wouldn't the beginning, key scene and end be vital though?

That's a lot of quotes to learn off :pac:

The_N4sir

DublinArnie wrote: »

What do you mean by "don't tell the story"? Would you just pick out scenes relevant in order to answer the question? Wouldn't the beginning, key scene and end be vital though?

That's a lot of quotes to learn off :pac:

As in if you are given a statement to discuss, do not just give a summary of the play. That will just get you a C at best.

is mise spartacus

DublinArnie wrote: »

What do you mean by "don't tell the story"? Would you just pick out scenes relevant in order to answer the question? Wouldn't the beginning, key scene and end be vital though?

That's a lot of quotes to learn off :pac:

Don't summarise the story. Answer what the question asks without summarising the play/poem. That's just waffling and will get you a high D or a C at most. If a question asks you to discuss importance of images, then discuss the images and why they were used to make an impact
don't tell the story & answer the question properly

I can't stress this enough

Blue giant

DublinArnie wrote: »

What do you mean by "don't tell the story"? Would you just pick out scenes relevant in order to answer the question? Wouldn't the beginning, key scene and end be vital though?

That's a lot of quotes to learn off :pac:

Also you don't need to learn off 20 or 30 long quotes for everything. Sometimes a quote of one word is more than enough. For Othello I have about 20ish quotes written down and I go over them frequently. Most of them are less than 4 or 5 words so it's not that much to learn off.

is mise spartacus

Also I forgot to mention that the chief examiners report is great to read

DublinArnie

is mise spartacus wrote: »

Also I forgot to mention that the chief examiners report is great to read

Is that accessible on examinations.ie?

is mise spartacus

DublinArnie wrote: »

Is that accessible on examinations.ie?

Report for 2013 English

https://www.examinations.ie/archive/examiners_reports/Chief_Examiner_Report_English_2013.pdf

And if you want more, they're all here
https://www.examinations.ie/index.php?l=en&mc=en&sc=cr

DarraghF197

I think the examiner makes a huge difference as well. Our papers were corrected terribly for the mocks, so bad that the examiner didn't bother do a PCLM format, just wrote down the mark and a bull comment that made absolutely no sense.

I just hope the leaving cert examiners aren't as bad as the mocks examiners.

I also get that feeling of answers being less or more than expected. Sometimes I don't really understand, I get 75% for what was one of my best essays on poetry, but my teacher circled five syntax errors and said coherence should take preference. Found it quite confusing as coherence only contains 15 marks.

Anyways, rant over! As English is such a subjective subject, the results can vary a good bit.

spurious

Answering the question is where many people fall down, partly because of learned off nonsense.

Troxck

spurious wrote: »

Answering the question is where many people fall down, partly because of learned off nonsense.

Spurious' point is very important, she always says it in forums like this and no one really notices how important it is. I didn't realise it properly until the mocks. Some lad in my year wrote roughly 25 pages for his English Paper II exam, got a C2. I wrote roughly 14 and got a B2. I never really remember learning off answers (for any subject). I always have an A4 page for each poet etc in English and learn their key techniques and so on. I remember learning "PQE" in 1st Year and I still apply it now in 6th Year. I'm not great at English, absolutely hate it. Yet I know what the examiner wants and I don't waffle.

Play to your strengths, especially in Paper I. I hate creative writing so I ALWAYS do the speech/debate. The topics you have to talk about are fairly similar every year.

Personal engagement is a huge thing, especially in the poetry section. Examiners say it every year after the mocks and after the real exam. Too many people write out learnt off answers, not referencing or responding to the question.

Beca19

spurious wrote: »

Answering the question is where many people fall down, partly because of learned off nonsense.

Particularly in English because as part of the PCLM method whatever you get in 'P' is the maximum you can get in the rest of them. So if you don't answer the question properly and only get 8/15 for P you can only get max 8/15 for coherence and language even if it's deserving of a 15/15!

MikeSD

Answering the question is crucial. I still think the marking of English is a bit of a grey area.

SuperSayian

DarraghF197 wrote: »

I think the examiner makes a huge difference as well. Our papers were corrected terribly for the mocks, so bad that the examiner didn't bother do a PCLM format, just wrote down the mark and a bull comment that made absolutely no sense.

I just hope the leaving cert examiners aren't as bad as the mocks examiners.

I also get that feeling of answers being less or more than expected. Sometimes I don't really understand, I get 75% for what was one of my best essays on poetry, but my teacher circled five syntax errors and said coherence should take preference. Found it quite confusing as coherence only contains 15 marks.

Anyways, rant over! As English is such a subjective subject, the results can vary a good bit.

Take absolutely no notice of mock examiners. They're usually just college students trying to make a little bit of money! I got a B1/2 in my paper 2 mock last year and lost a total of something like 8 marks in my LC paper 2.

Beca19 wrote: »

Particularly in English because as part of the PCLM method whatever you get in 'P' is the maximum you can get in the rest of them. So if you don't answer the question properly and only get 8/15 for P you can only get max 8/15 for coherence and language even if it's deserving of a 15/15!

^^that is extremely important to keep in mind when you're writing your answer.