I cannot do English. (1 Viewer)

[ronny thamer]

Hello BOS users, I just want to come here and vent.

Now I have traditionally been a stem student (as u can see by my signature) and have never been great at english (only exception is in junior years). I thought this year was the year I was going to change and adopt better habits for English, but i just seem paralysed by it. For the longest time from the start of year 11 i have had an internal doubt that I am never gonna do well in English, and I fear I may have been right.

Every time i sit down and actually try to do English, i literally cannot do it, no matter what, and I end up just procrastinating it, doing a very last minute essay and not getting any feedback, then getting a very bad mark in the exam/assessment. I have tried tutoring, but I believe that will not help because i think my paralysis and hatred towards english has come from me not developing my essay writing/deep analysis skills in my junior years, as i just copied other people's essay and made no effort to make my own.

The bad thing is I know I have to do it in the hsc (I HATE NESA), which may pull my atar down.

To give you some reference, we just sat a practice timed writing a week ago (we're doing a whole paper 1 for the assessment task), and yeah... we don't talk about that mark (worst I have ever gotten in all my years in school).

If anyone has gone through anything similiar to this or just hates English and has learned to overcome it, can you PLEASE give me some tips, because I am struggling to maintain my sanity.

 

[C2H6O]

Every time i sit down and actually try to do English, i literally cannot do it, no matter what, and I end up just procrastinating it, doing a very last minute essay and not getting any feedback

Mate this exactly describes me rn. Trying to get an essay draft done which I have just stared at for a whole week and only done the intro, and it's due tmr for feedback and I always end up leaving it too late and gettting no feedback english is like the subject I actually feel like I need to try hard for.

I'm not really in the place to give advice, but I usually gaslight myself into thinking I like english the week before the exam and idk it seems to work for me (idk man most useless advice ever)

 

[Hehehe22]

This is literally me right at this moment because my English exam is next Mon and I CANNOT motivate myself to do it. I think it's just how the course is designed, you have to really know how to write random nonsense on the spot and convince the marker that it makes sense.

It seems like your school's giving you good support because your teacher actually marked your practice paper? We only get feedback. Maybe you can practice analysing unseen texts untimed, to minimise the stress but gain some confidence? It's still annoying but maybe it'll help

Also, I see that you do modern. There's also a lot of essay writing in that, but what motivates you to do it (assuming you enjoy the subject)? Personally, I like eco and so I practice eco essay writing more and it's actually helped me a bit with English.

 

[ronny thamer]

This is literally me right at this moment because my English exam is next Mon and I CANNOT motivate myself to do it. I think it's just how the course is designed, you have to really know how to write random nonsense on the spot and convince the marker that it makes sense.

It seems like your school's giving you good support because your teacher actually marked your practice paper? We only get feedback. Maybe you can practice analysing unseen texts untimed, to minimise the stress but gain some confidence? It's still annoying but maybe it'll help

Also, I see that you do modern. There's also a lot of essay writing in that, but what motivates you to do it (assuming you enjoy the subject)? Personally, I like eco and so I practice eco essay writing more and it's actually helped me a bit with English.

rn, modern is source analysis, but in terms of essay writing, because the subject doesn't require a set structure for essay writing, and the steps for the paragraphs can be malleable, in essence, I can just talk about an event in history more in depth (i love history). Also, i did really well in the prelims, which kinda motivates me to do even better.

 

[wollongong warrior]

If your teacher is competent, they would've given you a structure to follow when writing english essays
Just sit down, do your analysis on the prescribed text, format it into the structure and memorise it. There's nothing more to english

i literally cannot do it

And you literally can do it. There will be things in your life that are incredibly annoying to do and english is just one of those things. You need to build the discipline to push through because there'll always be something that'll fill the spot of "advanced english"

 

[thelitNerd]

Hey guys, having achieved 39/40 in my common mod for trial 2024, I can say that it's all about practise NOW. To get to the marks in the shorts, the focus is on finding the authors purpose in relation to the question. WHAT do they do, HOW do they do it (Analyse) and WHY do they do it (evaluate). Work your STEEL formula into every response and pay close attention to the key words. English is definitely the subject where with proper guidance you can improve your marks drastically. DM me if you need tutoring I believe I can help with this

 

[liamkk112]

english isn't fun for almost anyone, all you can really do is:

- for internals, follow your teachers advice. maybe some teachers will tell you not to memorise essays, then don't do that, even if a tutoring center tells you otherwise (if it makes you more comfortable then memorise for externals, but that's a different story). schools all run english in their own ways, you need to figure out what they want you to do, and good chance if you don't follow their advice they will penalise. for example at my school for our essays, we were told that it was best to write 2 body paragraphs, but with heavier detail for our first few assessments (advanced was 4 from memory). if they tell you that, don't write 3, you need to understand what your teachers are looking for and try to write specifically for that (unless if you're a really good english student and you can write an essay outside of the ideas taught in class, that are really really good and detailed; there were some tutoring centers near my school that gave really vague and tbh bad ideas to some people and they got subpar marks because of it)

- ask your teachers for feedback before assessments. most teachers are more than happy to read over your work if you ask them to (at least mine was), take the opportunity as it not only forces you to write practice essays, but also will give you a hint as to what you need to work on. it also allows you to refine ideas and analysis, that you can then proceed to use in future assessments. additionally, this lets you practice writing a lot, which as painful as it is, is the only way to improve (i just forced myself to write a paragraph every day, then by the end of the week i'd have written a full essay, and it wasn't too bad as long as you're consistent)

- have a good bank of ideas; i had an analysis/quote table for 5-7 ideas for each text, that i updated as we went through things in class, and tried to slowly memorise by looking at it everyday (and then closer to the assessments, writing down all the major quotes until i remembered them well). then when it came to writing practice essays and preparing for assessments, you don't have to crawl through your text looking for ideas/quotes. try to make these as wide, but as detailed as possible, so you can use them for a lot of different questions. essentially - stay organised, it will help you out a lot

besides that, you just have to force yourself to do it. i didn't like english at all, but i at least found it somewhat useful as a skill. it's very easy to put off studying for english if you don't enjoy it, but all you can really do is consistently write (even if it's 30 minutes every day and ramping up near exams), ask for help from your teachers, and power through, because there's no two ways around it

 

[iloveeggs]

i used to be like you guys in years 7-9 probably because i was also very stem focused but i think the differentiating factor for me between neglecting english study and actually trying a little bit is that i always loved to read/watch movies/explore art etc. so i was naturally interested in the content despite how annoying the actual set up of the subject is and the essays and what not. english is random nonsense but when you actually ccare about the texts it makes it much more enjoyable (eng adv texts are really hard to enjoy ngl). btw eng adv sucks SO hard i love eng ext but eng adv is not it

as for getting good at english it has to do with practise. if youre not motivated to write practise essays you can try doing it the lazy way, which is what a teacher ik has called a "skeleton essay". this basically means you write an intro with all your points, write only 1 body paragraph and write dotpoints for the rest of it. and then give it in to be marked so they can check your body paragraph structure or whatever. 1 body paragraph plus intro should be like 300 words or whatever which is much more achievable than writing a full 1000 word prac essay

 

[ronny thamer]

english isn't fun for almost anyone, all you can really do is:

- for internals, follow your teachers advice. maybe some teachers will tell you not to memorise essays, then don't do that, even if a tutoring center tells you otherwise (if it makes you more comfortable then memorise for externals, but that's a different story). schools all run english in their own ways, you need to figure out what they want you to do, and good chance if you don't follow their advice they will penalise. for example at my school for our essays, we were told that it was best to write 2 body paragraphs, but with heavier detail for our first few assessments (advanced was 4 from memory). if they tell you that, don't write 3, you need to understand what your teachers are looking for and try to write specifically for that (unless if you're a really good english student and you can write an essay outside of the ideas taught in class, that are really really good and detailed; there were some tutoring centers near my school that gave really vague and tbh bad ideas to some people and they got subpar marks because of it)

- ask your teachers for feedback before assessments. most teachers are more than happy to read over your work if you ask them to (at least mine was), take the opportunity as it not only forces you to write practice essays, but also will give you a hint as to what you need to work on. it also allows you to refine ideas and analysis, that you can then proceed to use in future assessments. additionally, this lets you practice writing a lot, which as painful as it is, is the only way to improve (i just forced myself to write a paragraph every day, then by the end of the week i'd have written a full essay, and it wasn't too bad as long as you're consistent)

- have a good bank of ideas; i had an analysis/quote table for 5-7 ideas for each text, that i updated as we went through things in class, and tried to slowly memorise by looking at it everyday (and then closer to the assessments, writing down all the major quotes until i remembered them well). then when it came to writing practice essays and preparing for assessments, you don't have to crawl through your text looking for ideas/quotes. try to make these as wide, but as detailed as possible, so you can use them for a lot of different questions. essentially - stay organised, it will help you out a lot

besides that, you just have to force yourself to do it. i didn't like english at all, but i at least found it somewhat useful as a skill. it's very easy to put off studying for english if you don't enjoy it, but all you can really do is consistently write (even if it's 30 minutes every day and ramping up near exams), ask for help from your teachers, and power through, because there's no two ways around it

Thank you so much! I feel this has given me the much needed clarity in terms of approaching english!

 

[nonya2000]

Hello BOS users, I just want to come here and vent.

Now I have traditionally been a stem student (as u can see by my signature) and have never been great at english (only exception is in junior years). I thought this year was the year I was going to change and adopt better habits for English, but i just seem paralysed by it. For the longest time from the start of year 11 i have had an internal doubt that I am never gonna do well in English, and I fear I may have been right.

Every time i sit down and actually try to do English, i literally cannot do it, no matter what, and I end up just procrastinating it, doing a very last minute essay and not getting any feedback, then getting a very bad mark in the exam/assessment. I have tried tutoring, but I believe that will not help because i think my paralysis and hatred towards english has come from me not developing my essay writing/deep analysis skills in my junior years, as i just copied other people's essay and made no effort to make my own.

The bad thing is I know I have to do it in the hsc (I HATE NESA), which may pull my atar down.

To give you some reference, we just sat a practice timed writing a week ago (we're doing a whole paper 1 for the assessment task), and yeah... we don't talk about that mark (worst I have ever gotten in all my years in school).

If anyone has gone through anything similiar to this or just hates English and has learned to overcome it, can you PLEASE give me some tips, because I am struggling to maintain my sanity.

dw its a grabge subject, you will defintely get atleast a band 4

 

[ronny thamer]

i used to be like you guys in years 7-9 probably because i was also very stem focused but i think the differentiating factor for me between neglecting english study and actually trying a little bit is that i always loved to read/watch movies/explore art etc. so i was naturally interested in the content despite how annoying the actual set up of the subject is and the essays and what not. english is random nonsense but when you actually ccare about the texts it makes it much more enjoyable (eng adv texts are really hard to enjoy ngl). btw eng adv sucks SO hard i love eng ext but eng adv is not it

as for getting good at english it has to do with practise. if youre not motivated to write practise essays you can try doing it the lazy way, which is what a teacher ik has called a "skeleton essay". this basically means you write an intro with all your points, write only 1 body paragraph and write dotpoints for the rest of it. and then give it in to be marked so they can check your body paragraph structure or whatever. 1 body paragraph plus intro should be like 300 words or whatever which is much more achievable than writing a full 1000 word prac essay

I'm in a similiar boat to you in the sense that I love reading and understanding the content of a text, but I just don't know how to articulate precise arguments into my responses without it sounding too clunky, which i just have to work on through practice.

 

[gammahydroxybutyrate]

Hello BOS users, I just want to come here and vent.

Now I have traditionally been a stem student (as u can see by my signature) and have never been great at english (only exception is in junior years). I thought this year was the year I was going to change and adopt better habits for English, but i just seem paralysed by it. For the longest time from the start of year 11 i have had an internal doubt that I am never gonna do well in English, and I fear I may have been right.

Every time i sit down and actually try to do English, i literally cannot do it, no matter what, and I end up just procrastinating it, doing a very last minute essay and not getting any feedback, then getting a very bad mark in the exam/assessment. I have tried tutoring, but I believe that will not help because i think my paralysis and hatred towards english has come from me not developing my essay writing/deep analysis skills in my junior years, as i just copied other people's essay and made no effort to make my own.

The bad thing is I know I have to do it in the hsc (I HATE NESA), which may pull my atar down.

To give you some reference, we just sat a practice timed writing a week ago (we're doing a whole paper 1 for the assessment task), and yeah... we don't talk about that mark (worst I have ever gotten in all my years in school).

If anyone has gone through anything similiar to this or just hates English and has learned to overcome it, can you PLEASE give me some tips, because I am struggling to maintain my sanity.

hot take, if you can't do textual analysis, with obvious caveats of vocabulary deficiencies and english as a second language etc., you're not very bright, to put it nicely. the good news is, you probably can do textual analysis just fine despite what you think, especially if you put aside all of the literary technique nonsense for a bit.

if you can write a half coherent post on a forum, you can write an essay. if you can read a comment on a forum and take some semblance of meaning out of it, if you can listen to people speak and take meaning away, you can analyse a text. literary techniques are a means to an end, as a way of describing with specificity the way we take meaning from words, in the same way that in a lot of cases, a chemical equation is just a more specific way of describing something pretty obvious. everyone knows wood burns in a fire, and maybe even that people blow on a small fire to make a big one, but not everyone is going to rattle off the chemical equation and molar ratio of hydrocarbon combustion.

a lot of english students try to bullshit meaning when there really isn't any, through brute forcing techniques they think is the checkbox for marks. a single instance of alliteration isn't evidence of anything at all, nor is a single use of anthropomorphism or asyndeton. the starting point is what the text actually communicates. if you read something, you have thoughts about it, you have an opinion of it, so where does it come from? if you don't like a character in a book or a film, what part of it rubs you the wrong way? what did they do, or say that gave you that impression?

you read the three little pigs, and you think the first pig is a bit of a dumbass because he built a house out of straw. what was problematic about that? it might be the fact that he chose the easiest route to his objective, in the shortest amount of time for instantaneous gratification, and the fact that he almost ends up wolf food can be extrapolated as authority for the proposition that sometimes in life, a bit of patience, foresight and effort leads to a better result, if you make a comparison to the third pig, who was smart enough to build a house out of bricks. you draw a juxtaposition between pig 1 and pig 3, the results that came about, and might go so far as to explore the metaphor of the human inclination to laziness and instant gratification, and go further to make comparison to your related text, peppa pig, in which george eats his breakfast too fast like the greedy bastard he is and gets a tummy ache. the characters did effectively the same thing in both texts, and suffered for it, so the obvious conclusion is, that thing was bad, you shouldn't do it.

the essay is the means you communicate your analysis in a structured format. you don't NEED big words or fancy techniques, it just so happens that different words exist for a reason and are often better suited to illustrating the point that you want to make. my introduction for the above purpose is that children's media gives early indoctrination into the pitfalls of instantaneous gratification and a lack of foresight, wherein the authors use the caricatures of pigs to metaphorically explore the damning consequences of lazy and impatient behaviour. in other words, pig teach kids that do thing too fast sometimes bad. my body paragraphs talk about which part of the texts tell us this, and how they do that. my conclusion is a summary of how my analysis proves my point, and a reiteration that the moral of the story is equally applicable to life itself. in other words, pig build house too fast and house go boom. human also build house. human and pig same. human no build house too fast or go boom. but not just house, also eat. human no do too fast or sometimes bad. faster not always more gooder.

its all just words and writing at the end of the day, taught in a formulaic fashion that takes away from the fact that you already know how to read and communicate, you just need to learn to do it with a bit more specificity and structure.

 

[svad]

Omg I have the same problem. I'd be able to spend hours studying or smth for any other subject without a problem but I physically want to tweak out whenever I have to spend more than 10 minutes for english. Im so tired of spending hours studying for English just to get a barely passing grade. If it wasn't a compulsory subject, I would've dropped it in a blink of an eye.

 

[Lumimi]

English in general is all about developing your critical and conceptual idea skills and communicating them in an effective way. The best thing you can do is analyse your texts thoroughly, from simple techniques to broader contexts behind the author's experience and society, as well as having a clear idea on how to structure an essay. PEETAL paragraphs are always a good, simple introduction to essay writing!
Big, flowery language and words aren't always necessary either, the most important thing is to question the text and communicate the ideas that you can extract from your reading, and LINKING those broader applications to the english module you're studying. Examining the marking criteria and the NESA definition/purpose of the module could you also help you get an understanding of what the markers are always looking for in an essay

(example: Common module is all about human experience -> so by analysing your assigned text, you search for and question the way individual and collective experiences affect humanity in different ways and how it's conveyed through the characters, writing, form or context of your assigned text. This way, you gain a clear understanding on the type of main point/argument you're meant to convey in your essay and appeal to the marker's criteria.)

Of course, referencing other people's essays is also a good way to get a general idea on the concepts and structure you can convey in your own, probably the most simplest way of learning how to format your analysis without it feeling overly clunky

Confidence is always key buddy, don't give up