English typically isn’t students’ favourite subject. And when you find out you have to write a 1000-word essay in two hours on an unseen prompt on the exam, you’re probably even less inclined to enjoy studying to prepare for such a daunting task. But what if I told you there was an easy way to approach this exam? In fact, this might even be the easiest assessment task you complete all year! Yes, you’ll need to do a bit of work to prepare yourself for the challenge of unseen material. But I promise that if you’re able to follow this guide, you’ll be able to walk in and out of that exam room with confidence!
1. First impressions
Let’s start with the basics: what should you expect when you open up that exam paper?
If you haven’t already gone to the QCAA website to look at the sample exams, DO THAT NOW! The English practice paper can be found here, and you can also look at a sample response booklet here.
It’s a two hour exam, meaning you have two hours of writing time and an additional 15 minutes of planning time. There’s only one section, and one task: write an analytical essay in response to one of the prompts. Your essay will receive a mark out of 55, and the exam will constitute 25% of your overall subject score for English.
It will be a relatively short booklet, and there isn’t much you’ll need to read. You just need to find your prescribed text from the eight available options (which will be listed alphabetically) and then read the two possible prompts you’re given to write on.
The QCAA External assessment texts are:
→ Burial Rites by Hannah Kent
→ Cat’s Eye by Margaret Atwood
→ Hamlet by William Shakespeare
→ Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
→ Macbeth by William Shakespeare
→ Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
→ The White Earth by Andrew McGahan
→ We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler
Your teacher should have already assigned one or more of these texts for you to study this year. If possible, you should pick your exam text early so that you can start preparing now.
2. Choosing questions
From here, you have an important (and hopefully easy) choice to make. Which of the two essay topics will give you the best opportunity to write a great essay? Maybe one of them is very similar to a practice piece you’ve written, or perhaps one focuses on a character that you know you’ve memorised a tonne of evidence about.
Depending on how well you’ve prepared (and how lucky you get!) there are three possible scenarios here:
You read both prompts and can easily select your preferred option. Job done!
You read both prompts and believe both would be good options for you. This is a good problem to have, as it means you’re likely incredibly well-prepared for the exam overall. But the worst thing you can do now is be indecisive, so take a few minutes to think through the ideas you would discuss for each prompt, and choose whichever seems the most interesting or accessible. Failing that, if you can’t decide within two or three minutes, just flip a coin! (Though make sure it’s an imaginary one – don’t bring coins into your exam room or the invigilator might think you’re trying to bribe them!)
You read both prompts and… uh oh… neither are what you were hoping for. Maybe it’s a truly worst-case scenario and they’re using words you don’t know, or referring to themes you’ve never considered before. But keep calm: there’s an easy way to get through this. You have 15 minutes to make connections between this essay topic and your knowledge of the text, but if the topic seems too difficult to use as a starting point, begin with your own knowledge instead. Jot down a quick list of thematic concerns and how they link to key characters. Think about potential synonyms or related words for these themes. (This is actually a great exercise to do NOW before you get into the exam room, as it will expand your understanding of the text!) For example, let’s say you’re studying Macbeth, but the only themes you’ve focused on were power, revenge, and witchcraft.
Suddenly, a prompt about ‘influence’ or ‘self-determination’ won’t seem so intimidating, as you’ll be able to make bridges between the core of the prompt and the parts of the text most familiar to you.
Once you’ve made your selection, stick with it! Don’t do what a friend of mine (Jack) did in Year 12 and start writing one essay only to get 20 minutes in and think “I bet I could write a way better essay on the other prompt” and change your mind. He crossed out two whole paragraphs and then got a few lines into his ‘new’ essay before realising he actually liked the first prompt better, then wasted precious time trying to un-cross-out his original work. Don’t be like Jack. Be smart! Trust your gut instinct, then dedicate the remaining planning time to scaffolding a phenomenal essay, and don’t look back!
3. Planning time
The examiners have given you 15 minutes to plan. How nice of them! But what do they expect you to actually do with this time? Should you map out all of your arguments and sub-arguments? Should you make a list of all the evidence you intend to use so you don’t forget it? Should you make a crazy red-yarn-conspiracy-board mind-map?
Well, that’s entirely up to you. The teachers marking your essay won’t look at your plan – it is for your eyes only. As such, it should be completely tailored to your needs. So ask yourself, what do you need before you can confidently start writing your amazing essay? If you need a strong thesis statement and an interpretation of the text you can build your ideas around, start there, and spend a few minutes crafting that. If you want to split a page into three or four sections and determine what you will talk about in each body paragraph, do that.
If you need to do LOTS of planning in order to feel prepared, then go for it. Just be prepared to scribble fast to get everything down on your planning paper within 15 minutes, as you’d ideally want to dedicate the whole 2 hours of writing time to the essay itself. And if you don’t need to plan as much, don’t feel obliged to do so. Maybe just list a few memory triggers and key ideas, or brainstorm other arguments in case you think of interesting alternative angles.
But don’t then feel that you have to stick to this plan no matter what. If, while writing, you think of an awesome idea that didn’t come to you an hour ago when you were making your initial plan, work it in! These ideas are often the strongest as they will have come about via your exploration of the text and the essay topic – that’s exactly what the assessors want to see!
The plan might be something you diligently reflect on every few minutes while writing, or it might just be a cathartic experience for the first few minutes before you focus on writing the essay. Either way, planning time is an opportunity – use it to your advantage.
4. Planning options and strategies
If you’ve never written an essay in timed conditions before and don’t know how to plan, don’t worry! (I didn’t work on this until a few weeks before my exam, so trust me when I say you have HEAPS of time to sort this out!)
Below is a list of possible exercises and things to focus on when planning. I’d recommend trying at least a few of these throughout the year; incorporate different strategies until you find a combined plan of attack that best suits your strengths. These are roughly in order from the quickest and most straightforward to the hardest and most complex, but you should mix-and-match as you see fit.
→ Underline the key words in the prompt and make a list of related concepts. This expands the scope of discussion and may let you talk about unique ideas other students won’t have considered.
→ Paraphrase the prompt. Re-write the topic in your own words, as this ensures you fully understand its core message, and may make the question easier to approach.
→ Turn the prompt into a thesis statement you can argue. This is one of the most important things you can do, as it will aid you in constructing an interpretation that will be the backbone of your essay. For instance:
→ Construct a series of ‘views and values’ statements based on the prompt. These are sentences that focus on the author’s intention – what are their views, and what do they value, judging from the set text? A good template for these statements is as follows:
→ Write some ‘Although… ultimately…’ statements. These allow you to create more complex interpretations by first considering an alternate point of view and then solidifying your own. For example, ‘Although Burial Rites presents readers with a distressing portrait of suffering and oppression in 19th century Iceland, ultimately the novel is an optimistic work about the transcendent power of stories and voices.’ The way this sentence is constructed shows the assessor that we can acknowledge the other side of the argument, but that we still firmly believe in our ‘ultimate’ opinion.
→ List one sub-argument for each body paragraph to support your contention. Importantly, these arguments should be based on ideas, not characters! Don’t start with a great argument like ‘the novel reveals the enduring legacy of family bonds’ and then undermine that by having body paragraphs like:
Paragraph 1: the legacy of Rosemary’s family bonds
Paragraph 2: the legacy of Rosemary’s father and mother’s family bonds
Paragraph 3: the legacy of Fern’s family bonds
These aren’t arguments – they’re pieces of evidence that you SHOULD use in your paragraphs, but that you SHOULD NOT use in lieu of strong supporting arguments. Instead, consider something like:
Paragraph 1: family bonds stem from mutual values within families.
Paragraph 2: the legacy of family bonds can have detrimental effects on vulnerable family members.
Paragraph 3: it takes a great deal of courage and time to overcome the vestiges of family bonds and memories.
5. Writing time
Finally, it’s time to write your essay. There are 120 minutes on the clock. How on earth do you convey everything you know about the text in the time limit, and in 1000 words? Easy – you don’t.
The assessors don’t want to know everything you know. They want you to respond to the prompt. If a Biology exam question asked you to define chloroplasts, you wouldn’t get any marks for rambling about fossils and evolution or biochemical pathways. When the exam asks a question, you’re expected to answer it, and English is no different. Your job is to construct an argument in response to the prompt, and then back that up with evidence from your text. This may be more open-ended than a typical 3-mark Biology question, but the underlying principle is the same.
So don’t get caught up in circles trying to write ALL of your ideas down. Be selective! Only choose the best points, and only use them when it is sensible to do so. Otherwise, your essay might feel ‘top-heavy’ with an avalanche of impressive ideas at the start that lighter away by the second paragraph. It’s important to pace yourself, and think about how and why you are presenting information to the assessor as you go. (If like me you’re inclined to forget ideas if you don’t write them down instantly, just make a note on your planning pages or in the margins so you can revisit ideas later when they are relevant.)
There are two key questions you can use to help you do this.
How do I know? This is what you should ask yourself after you’ve just made an interpretive judgement about something in the text. For instance, if you’ve just said Hamlet descends into madness, how do you know? Asking this question forces you to substantiate your reading and provide evidence in the form of quotes and textual features. Try to ask this early on in your body paragraphs when you need to dive into examples.
So what? This is what you ask when you’ve offered some evidence or said something about a character. For instance, Winston claims that he “love[s] Big Brother.” So what? What does this prove? What are the implications? This question forces you to zoom out and explain the bigger picture. Why have you told us this? How does this support your argument? And what does this tell us about the author’s views and values?
If you’re ever stuck or suffering from writer’s block, bouncing between these two questions is an easy way to overcome this and ensure you make the most of your writing time.
This might seem like a lot of work, but once you practise this process in untimed conditions, doing this in the exam itself will be much easier, and will hopefully help you write faster, and come up with more sophisticated ideas for your final essay!
If you have any other concerns about English or the exam, you can ask questions or request article topics in the comments below.
Good luck, and happy studying!
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