1. Feed your English-baby with time!
English is the forgotten
child. It’s always crouched next to the dinner table starving whilst its greedy
brothers and sisters Maths, History, Physics, Chemistry, Physical Education etc.
stuff themselves with turkey and pie. English picks up a few scraps here and
there but soon…it dies. L
Increasing your
English-study time is one of the most obvious and easiest yet most effective
ways to improve your English marks. As an English tutor, however, I can tell you
that very few students will give English the time it deserves.
Here’s a simple rule
to remember:
Study-time = marks.
Again:
STUDY-TIME = MARKS!
It’s that simple.
Of course this is true
for all subjects; but it’s especially true in English because it’s often such a
forgotten subject that even a slight increase in its study time will lead to a
significant increase in marks. For
instance, if you add an extra 2 hours a week outside of class time to your
English studies, you’re like to score yourself an extra two or three marks in
the exam.
So what can you do?
Practically speaking, commit to a half-hour a day, for four days a week, of
English study at home. Your English baby will grow into a strong healthy….whatever.
2. Know the
purpose of each module!
I often ask my
students if they know what the marking criteria are for the Area of Study are?
What about module A, B, C?
Almost every time
their response is some variation of:
K
To understand why this
point is important: imagine you go to a café and when the waiter comes over you
order a strawberry milkshake. A few minutes later, the waiter comes back and
places a bowl of fried prawn rice in front of you. You’re like, “What?!” Then you
eat it anyway nom nom nom…What’s the point though? You DIDN’T ORDER FRIED RICE!
It’s the same in English-studies.
The teachers and the curriculum ask for one thing. The students then deliver
something completely different. Even if the essay you write is awesome and yummy
like prawn fried rice; it’s not that strawberry milkshake the teachers wanted.
And the teachers have an allergy to prawns so THEY WILL MARK YOU DOWN.
Each module in English
has a specific task that you need to do. These tasks are not the same for each
module. For example, in the Area of Study, you have to show the marker that you
understand the concept of belonging and the way (the techniques) these concepts
are expressed. In Module A, on the other hand, you have to compare contexts and
show the markers that you know how the time, place, literary period that a text
was written in can influence how a text is written/understood. These are
completely different tasks! But students often don’t know what they need to do
in order to get the marks in a specific module. To be fair, I’ve found this is
often because many English teachers don’t emphasise/explain this point to students.
Ultimately, however, students can make big improvements in their marks if they
seek out the purpose of each module and match their response to it.
In short, if you don’t
know what these tasks are, you can write an excellent essay…and still get a
poor/average mark L
Here’s what you can
do:
A.
Read the
curriculum points (they’re always given out on assessment handouts or you can find
them on the BoS website or by google searching)
B.
Ask your
teacher: they HOPEFULLY should know what you need to do
3. Use past
papers/practice exams
Imagine if you want to
learn to play tennis. You organise a
lesson and when you arrive the coach tells you to sit down on the court. Then
she brings out a whiteboard and spends an hour talking about how to play to
tennis. She draws diagrams of proper tennis technique: how to position your
feet, position the racquet and so on. She does this every week for ten weeks
and by the end you’ve never even felt a racquet. Would you be an awesome tennis
player now?
Of course you would….NOTTTTT!
You get better at
tennis by, funnily enough, practicing playing tennis! Similarly, you get better
at English exams by doing practice papers! It’s that simple!
You can have all the
head-knowledge but if you haven’t written a practice essay before you go into
your exams you’re unlikely to do as well than you could have if you’d at least
attempted a practice paper.
Here’s a simple strategy
to cover this point:
A.
Pick a
practice question that seems broad and not too specific (past-papers are on BoS
site)
B.
Spend
two-three hours writing up a reasonably refined essay (use your notes)
C.
Go through
other practice papers and write up a PLAN on how you would answer the question
(what are your three points, what quotes would you use etc).
D.
If you
have time, write up a couple of practice essays under exam conditions (45
minutes)
Total time: ~ 5 hours
for awesome mark potential!
You don’t have to do
all of the A-D: but at least do B – it will help your tennis exam performance
immensely!
To summarise, English
isn’t rocket science. It’s not the mysterious black box students sometimes
think it is. If you follow the above three suggestions you’re going to put
yourself in the best position to do well in English.
HAVE A STRAWBERRY
MILKSHAKE AND REMEMBER….YOU CAN DO IT!
Tldr: To do well in
English:
1.
Devote
more study time to it (at least 2.5 hours per week out of class time)
2.
Know the
specific requirements of each module (check the curriculum, ask your teacher)
3.
Do
practice papers before the exam
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