50 possible? + comparative essay questions

[tinagranger]

Hi there, the course I am dreaming of requires a 99.90 which means I REALLY need 49 or 50 in English, so any help for these questions would be MUCH appreciated!

1. Could you please tell me what exam score I need if I have these unscaled SAC scores to obtain a 50? And also a 49? (no idea about ranking - I am confident I am in the top 20 though. My school had 2 50s last year, the year before it had 5)
Unit 3 92/100
Unit 4 92/100

2. For text response/comparative, are you allowed to end your paragraph with an example and have no analysis, if you have the evidence before? Eg: This is the end of a comparative body paragraph I had - is it okay to end with an example?

By depicting the witch hunts as a violent manifestation of suppressed inner miseries/’repressions’ and a ‘long overdue opportunity’ for long-harboured petty resentments/’repressions’ to be vented ‘under the cover of accusations’, Miller demonstrates the vulgar sin/’black mischief’ of opportunism inherent in human nature just like Brooks. Despite this, he takes this message further than Brooks, by displaying the tendency to hold immoral impulses such as ‘long-held hatred of neighbours’ and ‘suspicions and the envy of the miserable toward the happy’. For instance, the ‘deeply embittered’, wealthy landowner Thomas Putnam greedily seeks to ‘kill his neighbours for their land’ so as to solidify his wealth (‘land-lust’), and Ann Putnam accuses the ‘saintly’ Rebecca Nurse of ‘the marvellous and supernatural murder of [her] babies’ due to having ‘seven dead in childbirth’ and feeling resentful of her fertility. + linking sentence

3. I really need help with the structure for the intro of a comparative essay. For my contention/outline of paragraphs, I always just have something like 'both...., and.... However, both.... so I am wondering whether I have to include differences in my intro as well, and if so, how? Would I have a difference for each point in my intro, or just a main difference? Where would I put this difference?

Could you please give me a sample of an intro that demonstrates how you should outline your points?

4. Can I make my rule of thumb that each of my topic sentences for comparative will be either the main similarity for that paragraph ('Both...') or the main similarity THEN difference (Whilst both texts....., the texts are polarised by the way....)

5. Can my rule of thumb for the end of a comparative conclusion be - 1 main similarity, THEN 1 main difference?

Thank you so much!

Tina

[Quantum44]

1. To get a 49 or 50 study score in English, I'm fairly sure you need at least 56/60. I'm assuming your SAC scores will be moderated quite favourably given your school seems like it would be ranked high.

2. It's generally good to analyse all your examples in terms of how they fit into the themes you are discussing and how they provide evidence for your overall contention, but in that case it doesn't seem too bad. In the exam you'll be pressed for time, so I don't see why they would take off marks when you just have to keep on moving through your paragraphs, without time to elaborate extensively on every example.

3. For the into in comparative I usually have three sentences. The first sentence makes a moral or philosophical statement relevant to the prompt that explores a pertinent aspect of human nature, giving the illusion of sophistication (I hope). Then I just introduce the texts and the authors, explaining how this is explored in both texts. Finally, I just state my contention. Honestly in an exam I don't think there's that much time to have a very detailed introduction, as I said before you have to keep on moving forward to stay on time for 60 mins per section.

4.
I think it lacks depth to always explore one similarity then one difference. I feel like you should start and end your paragraphs with general statements about the theme you are exploring and in the meat of your paragraph, you can analyse the similarities and differences between the texts and in some cases there may be more of one than the other.

5.
I don't think the comparative conclusion is that important. The only thing you really have to do is draw conclusions based on what you have explored in your paragraphs and use that to actually answer the prompt, guided by your contention.