Cramming for English, whilst an absolute last resort, is completely achievable if you’ve somehow failed to study up until now. That being said, no matter how confident you are in the subject, cramming for English in the last few days before the exam is a great way of solidifying your knowledge, ensuring that you’re prepared for any question, and getting through the most boring exam of your HSC (in my opinion, anyway). So, what is the best method when you’re cramming for English, and how do you ensure you get the best mark possible given the limited time-frame?
Learn Your Quotes
This might seem like a really obvious point, but when you’re cramming for English, you need to make sure to learn your quotes. Quotes are essentially the proof of any essay; you’re building up an argument, weaving a text into some sort of thesis, but you can’t do that without evidence from the text itself. If you’re reading this, you’re probably extremely stressed about your English exam, and so I assume that you might not even have your quotes sorted by now. If you have, congratulations! You’re already doing well 🙂
If you haven’t got your quotes together by now, it’s too late to skim through the text. Look them up on Shmoop, Sparknotes or any similar website. Use only quotes that are relevant to your themes, and that contain techniques. Make your quotes as short as physically possible. Don’t go for two sentences at a time; it’s too late to learn them all at this stage! A single word quote, or a three word quote, is just as good as a sentence long quote if it contains a technique. For you Hamlet lovers out there, the quote “quintessence of dust” is fantastic; easy to remember, short, and easily analysed. Remembering the entire soliloquy is an absolute waste of your time!
Get 4-7 quotes per theme (in my opinion), make them as short as possible, and write them out on palm-cards by theme. Write them out, again and again. Spend thirty minutes writing them out every three hours, and I promise you’ll have a solid chance of memorising them all! This is seriously important though; get your family to test you, implement any techniques you can think of to make sure that, whilst cramming for English, you don’t forget to learn your quotes.
Don’t Use Past-Papers as your Main Form of Study
I don’t believe that, with 48 hours to go, it is worth spending too much of your time on past papers. You need to go in confident no matter what question they throw at you, and if you spent time cramming for English writing 3-4 past papers, you’ll only go in confident for 3-4 question types. If you had a week to go, even two, I would definitely recommend past papers. However, at this stage, you’ve probably missed the boat on that one.
So, if you’re not supposed to do past papers at this point, but you still have some time to cram as much study in as physically possible, what should you be doing? Essay plans, my friends, essay plans.
Planning Responses: A Crammer’s Best Friend
Personally, with 48 hours to go, if you want to make sure that you’re cramming for English effectively, I would focus on essay plans. If you’ve planned out every type of question that can be thrown at you (and each plan only takes 10-20 minutes), then you’ll be 100% more confident with that type of question when you walk in the room and open the paper. Essay plans, in my opinion, are even more important that practice essays, because you will rarely be able to emulate an essay perfectly from your study, but you will almost always be able to copy an essay plan you’ve created before hand!
Go through each module, and write out all past questions from the past 5 years. Put them into categories (it should be really obvious what ‘categories’ each question type fits into) until you’ve whittled down the potential question into a couple of distinct types. You might decide that the types of questions asked for a certain modules are ‘Relationships’, ‘Context’, ‘Power’ and ‘Representation’. Put these as big titles at the top of blank pieces of paper, and move on to the tough part.
First, figure out what quotes you have that will help you answer the question best. Write them all briefly in the top right of the page (this will mainly help you memorise your quotes some more!). Then, write a thesis statement at the top of the page. This should be a complete statement, maybe two sentences, that encapsulates your thesis in all of it’s nuance. This is the statement that you’ll come back to throughout the actual essay (were you to write it out fully), and is seriously important in your study.
Now, write out each of your two/three themes as subheadings down the page. Write the quote that will go into the theme, and a very brief analysis. Finally, explain how the quote is relevant to your thesis. Describe how the overall theme affirms your thesis, briefly outline points to make in an introduction and conclusion, and there you have it! A colorful, neat, beautiful essay plan. Do that for the different types of essays, and you’ll be golden 🙂
Using your Essay Plans
Basically, a lot of your study is just going to be reading over your notes, rewriting quotes, rewriting essay plans, and thinking about your thesis. Cramming for English definitely won’t be fun, but sometimes it won’t even feel like study. You just want to give yourself the best chance possible of being able to answer any questions thrown at you. So, read over your plans, talk about them to your family, explain your thesis to your dog; whatever you need to do, just keep going over everything. Don’t waste time, because right now you don’t have time to waste.
Cramming for English: Non-Essay Sections
For the other sections, you need to study slightly differently (although I wouldn’t be spending much time on this). Read over some short stories you’ve written in the past, and highlight beautiful sentences, techniques, colors etc. that you used. Hopefully, you’ll remember the stuff you’ve highlighted on the day, and be able to write it out again in your new story. For the comprehension section, just recall how important looking to the number of marks that a certain question is worth is. If it is 1 mark, identify one quote and one technique. Two marks; two quotes and two techniques. Even those of you who dropped Maths can figure out the rest.
Cramming for English: Let the Bullshit Flow
Now, I’ve tried to be extremely restrained so far, but let’s be honest; a lot of English is just about writing as much believable bullshit onto a page as you have the time to do. There’s something about sounding fancy, making points that seem fairly legit, of using big words, that get English teachers going. So, it’s seriously important that you walk into the exam as confident as hell, like the cocky bastard you really are deep down inside. It doesn’t matter how scared you are, it doesn’t matter how stressed you are, and it definitely doesn’t matter if the question caught you completely off-guard. Write CONFIDENTLY, write like you’ve already done three practice essays on the same question, write like you’re giving the teacher the opportunity to mark what will inevitably be the most incredible essay of all time. When you put yourself in this mindset (as I did for every single assessment I ever sat), you will ooze so much confidence that it will be absolutely evident it your writing. Remember, confidence is sexy; even English teachers know that.
So, be confident.
You’re going to do amazingly.
You’re going to smash the exam out of the park.
Be confident, cram for English, and bullshit the rest.
But don’t stress too much, because it isn’t worth it.
Good luck 🙂
