8/16/2019 5 Common Mistakes - HSC English Advanced

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ADVANCED ENGLISH – 5 COMMON MISTAKES

Every year, Advanced English students make the same mistakes as their peers gone years before.

They are simple, totally fixable, and mainly just require a mindset tweaking!

1.Thinking that all essays use the same structure and the same observational frame.

You have to write four different types of essays in Advanced English. Area of Study wants you to

writeconcept based, not text based. Module A requires you to becomparative. The Module B

essay requests yourpersonal response. Module C needs you to makeconnections between

people and another factor (people or landscapes). The criteria for each essay is screaming “treat

me differently to the others!”

The biggest mistake inArea of Study is that students do not write conceptually and instead let their

essays be dominated by their prescribed text and ORT. InModule A, you have to deal with both

texts adequately, giving the “parent” text due credit, even if it is the older text (and probablyappears to be more removed from your preferred leisurely reading on the surface).Module

B wants your personal response! You are being asked for your response to the text(s).

Lastly,Module C wants you to explore the way that people interact with either politics or

landscapes. Yes, all have an introduction, a body and a conclusion! The difference is within that

standard scaffold, and the actual structure and content of each paragraph. When you study

Advanced English, you are expected to recognise these differences and use them to your

advantage. If you click the hyperlinks embedded in this paragraph – you’ll be taken to a guide

written by a Band 6 student that helps you write an essay for that module!

2.Restricting your textual evidence.

So it is your second internal assessment of the year for Advanced English, you have been asked

to respond to the “pursuit of power” in Module A. Naturally, you do what you need to do for this

assignment. That means, you are searching for quotes relating to power, you are analysing power

as a major theme, you are building up a really cool bank of textual references that strongly relate to

the pursuit of power.

Now fast forward and you’re at your trial exam time. You look back on everything you have forModule A, ready to realise that you’ve prepared yourself well and you have an awesome bank of

quotes up your sleeve and their relevant techniques and analysis sitting in the essay.

Your teacher proposes that the question could in fact be about emotions. Then you look at past

questions, and realise they have previously asked students to respond to the landscape. What.

The. Flip. But the pursuit of power?!

You may have aced that internal assessment, but you didn’t set yourself up well for the trial or the

external exam. Of course, some of the quotes will overlap and be really universal. Perfect!

However, many won’t. When you study a text for the first time, you need to be broad in theevidence you study, keep past questions in mind, and have a go at predicting future questions.

This optimises your time and study notes!

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3.Not reading the texts thoroughly AND on time.

I’m sure you’ve heard fluked stories of people never reading past the first Chapter and still getting

a Band 6 in Advanced English. This doesn’t make you cool. It is demanding to have to read a novel

on top of other HSC burdens. It is! But, you need to make time. The Advanced English course has

variation between modules because they genuinely want you to find interest and enjoyment in theEnglish language and the texts associated. How can you walk into an exam with any confidence of

achieving your best when you haven’t read the conclusive paragraph of your prescribed text? The

feeling of being prepared trumps the guilty weight in your chest any day. Furthermore, if you

consider your class on a tandem bike, the ones who have read the text are wanting to cycle to the

highest mark possible. When you sit on the back without reading the text, you are a dead weight

for the class community. Strength through unity!

4.Providing more context than analysis in the essays.

It’s really cool that this text is a bildungsroman novel from the Industrial Revolution where the

protagonist explores the bearing of the class system on individuals (Great Expectations – Charles

Dickens). It’s really cool because you are exploring a text that explores moral growth, because it’s

from a different time period, because it explores the class system, because it informs the reader as

an introduction to the text and it is EVEN COOLER if you are interested in the context.

It isn’t cool, when a marker is looking to give you marks on textual analysis and it is lost in your

contextual details and story retell. A little background detailing – absolutely. Each module has a

different quota for this. In each essay, you need to find the perfect balance. What I can guaranteeyou, across Module A, B and C? Your textual analysis should take up more space in your body

paragraphs than the context.

5.Inadequately dealing with language features AND textual form.

Examples of language features: Onomatopoeia, personification, idiom, hyperbole.

Examples of textual form’s features: Sonnet form, enjambment, linear narrative structure.

In other words, the textual form’s features are the actual structural basis of the text, and thetechniques at play there. The language features are the techniques happening within the

sentences. You need to effectively deal with both of these features in the Advanced English

course!

It is easy to fall distracted from the form when you are focusing on the exact quotes you wish to

discuss. Why did the composer choose a sonnet over a ballad? Why did the author choose a novel

without chapters? Textual form is so heavily neglected that when you write about it in an essay,

your marker’s eyes will pop and you’ll have their interest confirmed.