Trial Discussion Thread. (4 Viewers)

[Spiritual Being]

So is 1000 words the optimum amount for an Adv English essay?

Also for AOS, what section do you start with?
I know some people start with essay and move backwards.

half yearly I did essay, creative, short answer

I might do

Creative, essay, short answer

 

[Sy123]

half yearly I did essay, creative, short answer

I might do

Creative, essay, short answer

If I can write a good story today I think I might go with that order as well

 

[iBibah]

Yeah, I think I should shorten mine to about 110ish.

I remember in the HY, I got slammed for having an intro that went halfway through the page. It wasn't that many words, but my writing is quite big that it appears more than it is. Sigh.

I write really big, and have lost marks for paragraphs going for 1.5 pages (even though its not that many words). I fit 4-6 words per line.

 

[Spiritual Being]

I write really big, and have long marks for paragraphs going for 1.5 pages (even though its not that many words). I fit 4-6 words per line.

see if I did this, the freaken pedantic marker will slam me for it

 

[iBibah]

see if I did this, the freaken pedantic marker will slam me for it

Well that's happened to me lol

It's stupid I reckon, just because our writing is big we have to start a new paragraph every 3 sentences.

 

[Spiritual Being]

Well that's happened to me lol

It's stupid I reckon, just because our writing is big we have to start a new paragraph every 3 sentences.

lol

the teacher that marks it is actually horrible, ever since she marked my half yearly, I've had severe OCD about English - little things like "paragraph too big" when someone with smaller writing and more words in the paragraph gets "excellent"

 

[Makematics]

so could someone brief me on how exactly this cssa thing works? from what i gather its a paper that all catholic schools do. and i also gather that the aos for cssa is tomoz. so where is this thing done?? does each school do it privately and does each school mark their own papers? also who is doing it? good luck to you all remember to keep calm and try and pace yourself so your time is allocated evenly across the sections.

btw my order was short answer, essay, creative for aos then B,C,A for modules. pretty much the reverse of you spritual haha.

 

[Menomaths]

Hey guys, I read somewhere that for English we can just copy someone else's Creative word for word without getting penalized for it, is that true or just a troll?

 

[Spiritual Being]

Hey guys, I read somewhere that for English we can just copy someone else's Creative word for word without getting penalized for it, is that true or just a troll?

That's definitely trolling imo.

Imagine like half the grade has the same creative LOL.

I spent freaken 3 days writing mine in the holidays.

 

[RealiseNothing]

I go short answer, then essay, then creative.

As if you wouldn't do short answers first, you get 10 minutes reading time to read the extracts, why not do short answers first before you forget the extracts?

 

[Sy123]

so could someone brief me on how exactly this cssa thing works? from what i gather its a paper that all catholic schools do. and i also gather that the aos for cssa is tomoz. so where is this thing done?? does each school do it privately and does each school mark their own papers? also who is doing it? good luck to you all remember to keep calm and try and pace yourself so your time is allocated evenly across the sections.

btw my order was short answer, essay, creative for aos then B,C,A for modules. pretty much the reverse of you spritual haha.

Its a paper any school can do if they buy it off the CSSA company. The school is obliged to not release the paper until the security period is up and there are set examination dates for which the paper is given, for Paper 1 English that time is tomorrow.
Each school marks their own papers to however they wish, all the CSSA does is supply the paper.

And my school is doing CSSA.

 

[Spiritual Being]

I go short answer, then essay, then creative.

As if you wouldn't do short answers first, you get 10 minutes reading time to read the extracts, why not do short answers first before you forget the extracts?

Actually, I sometimes think about my altered thesis and how I'll mould my creative in the reading time. I still read a bit of the short answer, though.

 

[JT145]

see if I did this, the freaken pedantic marker will slam me for it

I fit in 15 words per line. That's far too much. I look at it and think 'oh I haven't written much, better keep going' and I end up running out of time.

However I think that writing large is worse than writing small, particularly if you do subjects like Modern, Business and Geography that have lines. Then you can go a little over.

 

[Makematics]

I go short answer, then essay, then creative.

As if you wouldn't do short answers first, you get 10 minutes reading time to read the extracts, why not do short answers first before you forget the extracts?

exactly... and if you leave short answer till last and you run out of time and either leave a question out or write a short response, you are guaranteed to lose marks, whereas for the creative if you run out of time you can still quickly bullshit out a story. although this wont work if you have a prepared creative i think. i wouldnt know, i just made my creative up on the spot haha

 

[JT145]

Its a paper any school can do if they buy it off the CSSA company. The school is obliged to not release the paper until the security period is up and there are set examination dates for which the paper is given, for Paper 1 English that time is tomorrow.
Each school marks their own papers to however they wish, all the CSSA does is supply the paper.

And my school is doing CSSA.

My school is doing CSSA for most things

My teacher said that she couldn't tell me if my school was doing CSSA, but I know for certain that my Business Studies is doing CSSA and my Maths is doing the Independent rather than the CSSA.

 

[Spiritual Being]

I fit in 15 words per line. That's far too much. I look at it and think 'oh I haven't written much, better keep going' and I end up running out of time.

However I think that writing large is worse than writing small, particularly if you do subjects like Modern, Business and Geography that have lines. Then you can go a little over.

omg yeah...

I'm going to try to write very small so they don't complain

 

[Makematics]

I fit in 15 words per line. That's far too much. I look at it and think 'oh I haven't written much, better keep going' and I end up running out of time.

However I think that writing large is worse than writing small, particularly if you do subjects like Modern, Business and Geography that have lines. Then you can go a little over.

yeah but when markers read responses with small writing, the response can be 3-5 pages shorter than a response from someone with large writing, and the marker will subconsciously or consciously think that you haven't written enough

 

[JT145]

exactly... and if you leave short answer till last and you run out of time and either leave a question out or write a short response, you are guaranteed to lose marks, whereas for the creative if you run out of time you can still quickly bullshit out a story. although this wont work if you have a prepared creative i think. i wouldnt know, i just made my creative up on the spot haha

Mhm. Same here.

I hate doing the short answer, for some reason it takes me 40 minutes to answer tons of small questions. Flipping heck. I practiced stringent time management today and got past it with 45 seconds to go. I always feel like I wrote too little. Also my concept of belonging is warped with techniques now.

I also hate writing creatives in regards to relationships. I always feel I need to provide some context to the relationship (and it can't be romantic or else it's cliche. DAMN YOU KOREAN DRAMAS!!!)

 

[JT145]

yeah but when markers read responses with small writing, the response can be 3-5 pages shorter than a response from someone with large writing, and the marker will subconsciously or consciously think that you haven't written enough

Yeah I know. However I haven't had this issue, I consistently write 3 pages and I still get what I reckon I should be getting.

However I look at this essay guide from BOS

http://community.boredofstudies.org/showthread.php?t=257183

And I look at this quote specifically

Practice Body Paragraph 2 (harder)

Practice question: How does your chosen text communicate the idea of belonging?
Sample text: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Rowling, 2007)

(1) Rowling depicts the most obvious sense of belonging as belonging within the community; in other words, the community recognising and accepting the protagonist. However, she also shows the concept of belonging as being a necessary part of a storyline’s resolution. (2) This is shown in the immediate reaction from others after the resolution of Harry and Voldemort’s climactic duel. (3) The narration of ‘Harry was an indispensable part of the mingled outpouring of jubilation and mourning, of grief and celebration’ is depicted entirely through (4) sustained emphasis on Harry, via the adjective of indispensable, between two wildly juxtaposed states of emotion. (5) The sentence, although dominated by evocative imagery, keeps Harry’s ‘belonging’ as its focus; that is, belonging within the emotion displayed by the secondary characters and therefore ‘belonging’ as a part of the climax of the story. Rowling consequently integrates Harry into two different states of ‘belonging’: the esteem given to him by the story’s other characters despite their emotional state, and his integrated belonging into the story through the emphasis placed on him in its climax. (6) This gives a multi-layered idea of belonging within the narrative as shown by Rowling.


In this case, the significance of the quote is taken from its point in the story, which happened to be the climax. You can take the significance of the quote from anywhere, as long as you fix your linkage to reach that significance.

If you took the linkage out, this paragraph would still appear normal enough in an English essay:

(1) Rowling depicts the most obvious sense of belonging as belonging within the community; in other words, the community recognising and accepting the protagonist. (2) This is shown in the immediate reaction from others after the resolution of Harry and Voldemort’s climactic duel. (3) The narration of ‘Harry was an indispensable part of the mingled outpouring of jubilation and mourning, of grief and celebration’ is depicted entirely through (4) sustained emphasis on Harry, via the adjective of indispensable, between two wildly juxtaposed states of emotion. (6) This gives an idea of belonging within the narrative as shown by Rowling.

….which is fair enough, but the paragraph would get more of a 15/20 instead of 18 or 19, which you should be shooting for.

Why would it get a lesser mark? It leaves questions unanswered.

1. How does the technique help the reader understand the idea of belonging?
2. Just how are the states of emotion juxtaposed? Is it done through Harry's perspective? Is the description of each state of emotion different? Etc. This is a free technique/link gone begging.
3. What specific sense of belonging are we shooting for? Harry belonging among other characters, or Harry belonging within the text? Sure, we put it in the thesis statement but that doesn't mean we proved it.

Notice how these are all answered in the linkage. It’s that important. Linkage closes the deal in terms of reinforcing your thesis statement against any potential attacks. It gives the reasoning behind your interpretation, which (in truth) was all the marker was looking for in the first place.

And I am still like :O at the first example paragraph even though I'm hitting low band 6 atm at school and my analysis looks more like paragraph 2 which would get 15/20

 

[Spiritual Being]

yeah but when markers read responses with small writing, the response can be 3-5 pages shorter than a response from someone with large writing, and the marker will subconsciously or consciously think that you haven't written enough

This is true, but large writing also makes them think "too much unnecessary detail".

In SOR, we had a religion and peace essay I was writing. I had an epiphany where I wrote out my prepared response (1200 words) in 30 minutes, and the exam was 50 minutes....... So I went through my paper and just corrected any illegible hand writing (like 4 words total), and then I just waited. I got scared because I finished early. I ended up losing 1-2 marks over "unnecessary detail" lol. (got 18/20)

I did ask for a new booklet and wrote like 9 pages though, so he may have just thought automatically "too much detail".