I haven't got 50 yet (%) but I just feel bad about my sac haha....
Just gotta put the hard work in , and I guess doing awesome on the exam will help significantly.
Do you think teachers will ever accept bribes? Honest question
This is how I feel right now for english. There's no hope for me. It seems as much as I try I just see no improvement haha
Okay, I know the posts above are at least partly in jest, but I'm going to answer these seriously because I think there's an underlying problem here that's unique to English subjects.
Most subjects consist of a fairly straightforward series of tasks: sit down, do exercises 1-5, Qs. a-g; memorise vocab list from chapter 4; do a practice exam, that sort of thing. Many people would argue you can treat English the same way, and that it's just a matter of finding the right activity to work on.
This approach isn't invalid. Plenty of people have scored very highly by simply understanding the system, writing heaps (/"spamming" essays as I'm told da kidz are calling it) and memorising chunks of whatever works.
I feel like this is perpetuated by a lot of schools, tutors, and even professional companies because it's a comfort. Being told you can write a certain number of essays and be certain of a reasonably good mark is nice to hear. And whilst it's not totally untrue, I do think it's contributing to some serious misconceptions regarding the subject.
The best kept secret, I've found, is that although
you may score well if you know what to write, you will definitely score well if you know how to think.This is an unpopular view for good reasons; it's not like a teacher with a class of 30 can feasibly teach students how to think within 8 months, ~4 hours a week, whilst also conforming to a syllabus and the pressure of exams. I'll admit I've caved to this pressure as well with a few of my students, and end up just focusing on criteria and assessment because of time restrictions or other issues.
But English is a subject that rewards thinking.
You can rote-learn. You can know your texts inside-out and study high-scoring responses and annoy your classroom teacher until they give you so much feedback you can predict what they're going to say. What's more, you're going to feel good about this, because you're physically doing tangible work that your brain associates with progress. Even if you're hitting some mental blockades with the content, it'll still feel like improvement because you're working at it.
For some people this is the only way they learn. Quite a few people in my year level would be writing essays from day one. They were atrocious essays, and were in no way indicative of their abilities, but for them, it was a way of consolidating their knowledge.
But the only reason why this works is because of the (often unintentional) tangential benefits.
Doing the 'class-assigned' kinds of activities is a slow-but-effective way to better your thinking. So why do this when you could go for a fast-but-effective method?
Well, partly because it's going to feel slower. You'll be doing unfamiliar things, and for a long time, you'll probably be doing them badly. However, as someone who's seen the system from both sides now, I've concluded this is a much better way of tackling the course.
For starters, let's clarify what's meant by 'thought.' We all know what it means, but strangely it's not a word that gets tossed around in English classes quite so much as 'juxtaposition' or 'inclusive language' might. This can be attributed to it's abstract-ness: your teacher can't see you thinking, save for seeing the result of the process in essay-form.
So when you're getting essay feedback, you're receiving criticisms for the product of your thinking, right? (-Excluding handwriting issues or minor structural things that you maybe weren't aware of.) Here's where problems start to arise...
For anyone who's worked in retail/ hospitality, you'll probably be familiar with copping blame for things totally out of your control. I used to work in a chicken and chip shop, and I'd have customers who would come in and complain about everything under the sun; chips aren't cooked right, the salt is to salty, the chickens are too small, why does this salad have lettuce in it? etc. etc.
I was but a mere server-girl, and so, realistically, if these bitterly displeased customers actually wanted their problems solved, they would have addressed the root of the problem and not hurled abuse and/or utensils at me.
Your English teachers, in this somewhat tortured metaphor, are akin to my old chicken shop patrons. They're not trained to consider the source of their discomfort, be that a misunderstanding of the text or the fact that our shop was drastically understaffed most nights; instead, their natural inclination is to blame what is made apparent: the wrong words in a body paragraph, or a slightly dirty fork.
When you get comments on your essay like 'needs development' or 'I'm not sure about this,' what your teachers are actually-sort-of-kinda-but-not-really-trying-to-say is
change your thinking! But that sounds weird because it's easier for them to focus on your essay itself, and it's less strenuous for students to obsess over numerical scores or criteria than it is to consider the possibility of mind-altering-
drugs-study instead.
Now prepare yourselves for
Lauren's foolproof guide for How to Think Good
To demonstrate this we're going to look at a textual excerpt. You don't have to know anything about it, in fact it's better if you don't. I'm adapting this from an Andrew Bovell play called 'Speaking in Tongues' if anyone's interested.
VALERIE: [answering machine] John, it's me... Valerie. I wish you'd let me do the message.
You sound so... I don't know... distant.To learn how to think properly for English (/Lit, which is what I usually use this example for, but tomaito tomahto) all you have to do is answer this question:
What do you know about Valerie and John?That's all. But fair warning, my answer to this question is over 2000 words long, and that's all without reference to the play this came from.
Most people will fumble for a starting point at first, like 'well, we know she's talking to John on an answering machine, and that she wants to do the message instead of him.' Later, once you get past the basic, denotative stuff, you'll end up in 'assumptions' territory, eg. maybe they're not getting along, and that's why he sounds distant and she's not allowed to do the message. Keep building on this, and eventually you'll reach full blown implications:
John is trying to maintain some semblance of power in their marriage by exerting control over petty things like which of them record an answering machine message. Meanwhile, Valerie is able to undermine his authority through criticism; she is still able to voice her objections, meaning he does not have complete command over her.That's not to say there is a 'right' answer. You could go in a completely different direction, eg.
The fact that the two are communicating via an answering machine - an innately indirect form of conversation - suggests they are not able to engage with one another on any level. Both John and Valerie are "distant," and without artificial conduits like answering machines between them, their relationship has very little holding it together.Evidently what I'm talking about here is more like
overthinking than just thinking, but perhaps that's appropriate.
Let me be clear: this will not directly help you. You should not spend 200 words in an English body paragraph analysing two sentences from the text/article. This is not about a subject-specific skillset, this is about rewiring your brain to look at things differently.
In the above exercise, I extrapolated from two lines of dialogue and concluded that the couple had a serious communication barrier between them, and were likely in the midst of some confusion regarding the power balance between them. I could be wrong, but that's not the point. The point is that I can justify my thinking.
I had a teacher who conducted a similar exercise in class and ended it with 'of course you couldn't say something ridiculous like 'this excerpt suggests John wants to grow a beard' or anything.' But I disagree.
John's lack of control over Valerie signifies his emasculation ,which is exacerbated by Valerie's implied criticism. She is able to express her wants in no uncertain terms, and her power is marked by a stereotypically feminine "I wish you'd let me" brand of passive aggression. Thus, it seems logical then for John to gravitate towards physicality as a means of reasserting himself with something equally gender codified; perhaps a handlebar mustache, or even a proper, fully-fledged man-beard - an ideogram of his patient but firm dominance.Note: I would never seriously write that in an essay. This was an exercise in
thinking, and taking my analysis further than the surface level. Do this often enough, and you begin to get a feel for what actually belongs in an essay, and what's just conjecture.
I know this is quite text-heavy, but a willingness to read is just important as a willingness to write for English
Yes, it's frustrating when you're not making obvious numerical improvements, and yes, working out what constitutes as "useful" study is a lot tough in English than it is in other subjects, but it ultimately boils down to your willingness to engage with the material.
Think about stuff, and learn how to demonstrate this thinking in the best way possible. No magic required