High scoring English-ers

[Coolgalbornin03Lo]

So did you plan essays like REALLY good ones? I want to start memorising a language analysis. Now bear with me. I HATE HATE HATE the idea of memorising I think it takes the fun out of English and personally (cause I’m annoying like that) think it’s cheating. I mean memorising good linking sentences I.e “ author shifts focal point of article from argument x to argument y to evoke xyz in the audience”. So not actual memorising just knowing how to have good expression. Also for text response did you do this. AGAIN not memorising whole essays but for certain quotes you know what your going to describe and it’s intended effect? Obviously not memorising a why it was used because that depends on the prompt/ contention.

Thanks!
A student struggling to get a 40 

[darkz]

So did you plan essays like REALLY good ones? I want to start memorising a language analysis. Now bear with me. I HATE HATE HATE the idea of memorising I think it takes the fun out of English and personally (cause I’m annoying like that) think it’s cheating. I mean memorising good linking sentences I.e “ author shifts focal point of article from argument x to argument y to evoke xyz in the audience”. So not actual memorising just knowing how to have good expression. Also for text response did you do this. AGAIN not memorising whole essays but for certain quotes you know what your going to describe and it’s intended effect? Obviously not memorising a why it was used because that depends on the prompt/ contention.

Thanks!
A student struggling to get a 40

Well, inherently, everyone will be drawing from their memory in some capacity - that is something which is unavoidable e.g. memorising quotes, recalling nice vocab to use - what differs is the degree of memorisation used. Memorisation is by no means cheating - it's simply putting in the hard work before the actual exam - and it could be a useful way of measuring how prepared you are for your exam e.g. can you remember quotes to use? can you remember how to analyse them? do you remember your teacher's feedback? Also, memorisation doesn't work if you don't actually understand the content you're memorising i.e. you need to have a sufficient depth of the content your memorising in order to adapt it to different prompts if necessary, or if you have memorised content that fits with the prompt.

Now, against popular opinion, I do believe that memorisation is a very powerful tool. For example, memorisation can definitely boost a B+ student to an A+ level provided that they are willing to put in the time and effort. However, when using memorisation as an exam strategy, the input vs. output is very skewed i.e. you will need to put in an enormous amount of time for it to be effective. Yes, this will take out all the fun, but it means that you will do relatively decently. (But, you could probably make the argument that if you spent the same amount of time memorising learning your texts you'd do equally well.)

[Coolgalbornin03Lo]

Well, inherently, everyone will be drawing from their memory in some capacity - that is something which is unavoidable e.g. memorising quotes, recalling nice vocab to use - what differs is the degree of memorisation used. Memorisation is by no means cheating - it's simply putting in the hard work before the actual exam - and it could be a useful way of measuring how prepared you are for your exam e.g. can you remember quotes to use? can you remember how to analyse them? do you remember your teacher's feedback? Also, memorisation doesn't work if you don't actually understand the content you're memorising i.e. you need to have a sufficient depth of the content your memorising in order to adapt it to different prompts if necessary, or if you have memorised content that fits with the prompt.

Now, against popular opinion, I do believe that memorisation is a very powerful tool. For example, memorisation can definitely boost a B+ student to an A+ level provided that they are willing to put in the time and effort. However, when using memorisation as an exam strategy, the input vs. output is very skewed i.e. you will need to put in an enormous amount of time for it to be effective. Yes, this will take out all the fun, but it means that you will do relatively decently. (But, you could probably make the argument that if you spent the same amount of time memorising learning your texts you'd do equally well.)

But how exactly do I do this? And I didn’t say memorising is bad I meant regurgitating whole essays.

[jborn007]

Never regurgitate the whole essay.

Initially, put it into the simplest terms and take it into heart.

After grasping the structure (I'm assuming it's English we're talking about not Literature cause that's a different approach), add some spice into it.

Voila!

[K888]

Definitely agree that whilst its good to memorise quotes you shouldn't memorise whole essays. I got in the 40s for English and how I prepared was by becoming really familiar with the themes of the texts I was studying and planning lots of essays - I didn't do lots of practice of writing whole ones, instead I'd get a topic and break it down and figure out what I'd do for my 3-4 body paras. There's only a certain amount of central themes in the texts you study, so if you get good at planning essays quickly and do lots of them, you'll be able to figure out how to respond to an unseen topic much more quickly, and you won't be super surprised by the topic either, because you'll probably have planned for similar stuff in the past and you can just adapt your past plans to suit the topic.

For language analysis I practiced annotating articles so I could pick out key things to analyse quickly. I tried to look for themes in the article and went from there. It's not about memorising a sentence and just inserting a few words into the blanks - you'll know the basic structure of a sentence but you need to adapt it to fit what you're analysing. I think that last point is where a lot of people come undone, and just filling in words like a formula vs adapting your sentence is what separates average and higher scoring students.