Every year, Advanced English students make the same mistakes as their peers gone years before. They are simple, totally fixable, and mainly just require a mindset tweaking!

  1. Thinking that all essays use the same structure and the same observational frame.

You have to write four different types of essays in Advanced English. Area of Study wants you to write concept based, not text based. Module A requires you to be comparative. The Module B essay requests your personal response. Module C needs you to make connections between people and another factor (people or landscapes). The criteria for each essay is screaming “treat me differently to the others!”

The biggest mistake in Area of Study is that students do not write conceptually and instead let their essays be dominated by their prescribed text and ORT. In Module A, you have to deal with both texts adequately, giving the “parent” text due credit, even if it is the older text (and probably appears to be more removed from your preferred leisurely reading on the surface). Module B wants your personal response! You are being asked for your response to the text(s). Lastly, Module C wants you to explore the way that people interact with either politics or landscapes. Yes, all have an introduction, a body and a conclusion! The difference is within that standard scaffold, and the actual structure and content of each paragraph. When you study Advanced English, you are expected to recognise these differences and use them to your advantage. If you click the hyperlinks embedded in this paragraph – you’ll be taken to a guide written by a Band 6 student that helps you write an essay for that module!

  1. Restricting your textual evidence.

So it is your second internal assessment of the year for Advanced English, you have been asked to respond to the “pursuit of power” in Module A. Naturally, you do what you need to do for this assignment. That means, you are searching for quotes relating to power, you are analysing power as a major theme, you are building up a really cool bank of textual references that strongly relate to the pursuit of power.

Now fast forward and you’re at your trial exam time. You look back on everything you have for Module A, ready to realise that you’ve prepared yourself well and you have an awesome bank of quotes up your sleeve and their relevant techniques and analysis sitting in the essay.

Your teacher proposes that the question could in fact be about emotions. Then you look at past questions, and realise they have previously asked students to respond to the landscape. What. The. Flip. But the pursuit of power?!

You may have aced that internal assessment, but you didn’t set yourself up well for the trial or the external exam. Of course, some of the quotes will overlap and be really universal. Perfect! However, many won’t. When you study a text for the first time, you need to be broad in the evidence you study, keep past questions in mind, and have a go at predicting future questions. This optimises your time and study notes!

  1. Not reading the texts thoroughly AND on time.

I’m sure you’ve heard fluked stories of people never reading past the first Chapter and still getting a Band 6 in Advanced English. This doesn’t make you cool. It is demanding to have to read a novel on top of other HSC burdens. It is! But, you need to make time. The Advanced English course has variation between modules because they genuinely want you to find interest and enjoyment in the English language and the texts associated. How can you walk into an exam with any confidence of achieving your best when you haven’t read the conclusive paragraph of your prescribed text? The feeling of being prepared trumps the guilty weight in your chest any day. Furthermore, if you consider your class on a tandem bike, the ones who have read the text are wanting to cycle to the highest mark possible. When you sit on the back without reading the text, you are a dead weight for the class community. Strength through unity!

  1. Providing more context than analysis in the essays.

It’s really cool that this text is a bildungsroman novel from the Industrial Revolution where the protagonist explores the bearing of the class system on individuals (Great Expectations – Charles Dickens). It’s really cool because you are exploring a text that explores moral growth, because it’s from a different time period, because it explores the class system, because it informs the reader as an introduction to the text and it is EVEN COOLER if you are interested in the context.

It isn’t cool, when a marker is looking to give you marks on textual analysis and it is lost in your contextual details and story retell. A little background detailing – absolutely. Each module has a different quota for this. In each essay, you need to find the perfect balance. What I can guarantee you, across Module A, B and C? Your textual analysis should take up more space in your body paragraphs than the context.

  1. Inadequately dealing with language features AND textual form.

Examples of language features: Onomatopoeia, personification, idiom, hyperbole.

Examples of textual form’s features: Sonnet form, enjambment, linear narrative structure.

In other words, the textual form’s features are the actual structural basis of the text, and the techniques at play there. The language features are the techniques happening within the sentences. You  need to effectively deal with both of these features in the Advanced English course!

It is easy to fall distracted from the form when you are focusing on the exact quotes you wish to discuss. Why did the composer choose a sonnet over a ballad? Why did the author choose a novel without chapters? Textual form is so heavily neglected that when you write about it in an essay, your marker’s eyes will pop and you’ll have their interest confirmed.

Are you interested in receiving advice from Band 6 Advanced English students, tailored to your questions and needs? You can head over here and post your questions and our team will get back to you as soon as possible!

Perhaps, you are interested in how to study for Advanced English? Click here!