sydengineer
New Member
- Joined
- Jan 20, 2025
- Messages
- 7
- Gender
- Undisclosed
- HSC
- 2023
My guide to getting a high mark in Standard English
So as you know Standard English is a terribly scaling subject, if you want a high ATAR it is widely recommended to not do it. However I did not listen to this advice. My advice is the same, if you want 95+, it's better to do decent in advanced english than to to really well in standard.
Remember This:
The way the HSC markers mark English is more lenient compared to how your teachers will
Your teachers have plenty of time and will spend more time going through your responses/essays so they can catch out more mistakes and things they don't like
In the HSC, markers get paid per paper and they are on a limited set of time, think about it, they want to mark as many papers as they can
My English teacher was pretty strict with marking, I was getting around in the 60s in all my school exams for english
This is how I got an 87 in Standard English, as seen in the UAC report (2023) above, only the top 13.2% of English standard students will get above an 80/100
An 87 would put me in the top 2-5% I would estimate
This is my advice, I am not gifted in English in any way, shape or form. Throughout highschool I disliked English and never did well in it, I only did it for my HSC because like you we are all forced to
For school assessments and exams, quality and quantity both matter, but quality matters more since your teachers have plenty of time to analyse however they want, in exams focus on cooking rather than writing a lot.
When it comes to the actual final HSC exam, you NEED to write a lot. My English teacher was a senior HSC marker, she told us that the responses that used extra paper generally have the first 2 pages read properly whilst the rest is skimmed over. Once a marker reads your introduction and first page, they have a box in their mind selected about what kind of band response this is (Band 1-6). Once they decide on a rough band level, they will skim over the rest to make sure it fits in with the band.
I can't stress this enough you need to write so so much for those top marks, towards the end of each essay, your handwriting is gonna look something like this نعم نعم نعم but that's ok, make sure it is somewhat legible and keep going. Paper 2 is absolutely brutal, you likely won't have time to proofread or spellcheck at all, most people don't finish or finish right on the dot.
Spelling and grammer does matter but it shouldn't be your top priority, as long as you don't write anything obviously wrong markers probably won't even notice after the 2nd page if you write alot.
All in all HSC English can rote-learned, my friends got 99+ atars getting 95s in advanced English and they didn't come to class much, instead, they spent weeks practicing and memorising band 6 essays which they crafted over time and just wrote them and modified them in the actual HSC.
After years of studying how to analyse texts and respond to unseen questions throughout highschool, what you will find is that most people that band 6 English std/adv memorise essays. You don't even need to be good at english to do this. My buddies hated english but they just grinded and memorised essays, regurgitated and modified them in the actual day.
This is how much I wrote for my HSC
Altogether I had like 30ish quotes and techniques memorised for both papers, the way I remembered it was to spam write them over and over again the week before the exam, follow the PEEL structure, have a very deep analysis, write some bs about complex human experiences and emotions (they love this stuff) and smart yap
Paper 1
For the 20 mark short response section I went over every single line and I even used extra paper for one of the responses, I pretty much doubled all the space given because I wrote so much. Remember the marks of the question minus 1 is how much example/evidence and explanation to give.
For the 20 mark essay I wrote 11 pages, the adrenaline inside me was kicking, It was 3 writing booklets in total
Paper 2
This one is brutal, the only way to actually prepare yourself is to practice by writing 3 20 mark essays in 2 hours, but who is gonna do that? I did not practice at all for this. I walked into the exam room caffeined up after a redbull.
Section 1- 10 pages
Section 2 - 12 pages
Section 3 - 7 pages
And I still had 10 minutes left. If you told me I could have done this during trials I would have laughed, but something inside me just went crazy, the adrenaline pushed me HARD.
For 1 hour and 50 minutes I was writing NONSTOP, my hand did not rest for more than a couple seconds for a couple periods during this time. Yes it hurt after, but I did not care, I still remember the entire class walking out of that last English exam, the last ever English exam we would ever do in our lives, everybody was happy and rejoicing.
My rank was 3rd in a crappy public school and I managed to get 87, you can do it to
So as you know Standard English is a terribly scaling subject, if you want a high ATAR it is widely recommended to not do it. However I did not listen to this advice. My advice is the same, if you want 95+, it's better to do decent in advanced english than to to really well in standard.
Remember This:
The way the HSC markers mark English is more lenient compared to how your teachers will
Your teachers have plenty of time and will spend more time going through your responses/essays so they can catch out more mistakes and things they don't like
In the HSC, markers get paid per paper and they are on a limited set of time, think about it, they want to mark as many papers as they can
My English teacher was pretty strict with marking, I was getting around in the 60s in all my school exams for english
This is how I got an 87 in Standard English, as seen in the UAC report (2023) above, only the top 13.2% of English standard students will get above an 80/100
An 87 would put me in the top 2-5% I would estimate
This is my advice, I am not gifted in English in any way, shape or form. Throughout highschool I disliked English and never did well in it, I only did it for my HSC because like you we are all forced to
For school assessments and exams, quality and quantity both matter, but quality matters more since your teachers have plenty of time to analyse however they want, in exams focus on cooking rather than writing a lot.
When it comes to the actual final HSC exam, you NEED to write a lot. My English teacher was a senior HSC marker, she told us that the responses that used extra paper generally have the first 2 pages read properly whilst the rest is skimmed over. Once a marker reads your introduction and first page, they have a box in their mind selected about what kind of band response this is (Band 1-6). Once they decide on a rough band level, they will skim over the rest to make sure it fits in with the band.
I can't stress this enough you need to write so so much for those top marks, towards the end of each essay, your handwriting is gonna look something like this نعم نعم نعم but that's ok, make sure it is somewhat legible and keep going. Paper 2 is absolutely brutal, you likely won't have time to proofread or spellcheck at all, most people don't finish or finish right on the dot.
Spelling and grammer does matter but it shouldn't be your top priority, as long as you don't write anything obviously wrong markers probably won't even notice after the 2nd page if you write alot.
All in all HSC English can rote-learned, my friends got 99+ atars getting 95s in advanced English and they didn't come to class much, instead, they spent weeks practicing and memorising band 6 essays which they crafted over time and just wrote them and modified them in the actual HSC.
After years of studying how to analyse texts and respond to unseen questions throughout highschool, what you will find is that most people that band 6 English std/adv memorise essays. You don't even need to be good at english to do this. My buddies hated english but they just grinded and memorised essays, regurgitated and modified them in the actual day.
This is how much I wrote for my HSC
Altogether I had like 30ish quotes and techniques memorised for both papers, the way I remembered it was to spam write them over and over again the week before the exam, follow the PEEL structure, have a very deep analysis, write some bs about complex human experiences and emotions (they love this stuff) and smart yap
Paper 1
For the 20 mark short response section I went over every single line and I even used extra paper for one of the responses, I pretty much doubled all the space given because I wrote so much. Remember the marks of the question minus 1 is how much example/evidence and explanation to give.
For the 20 mark essay I wrote 11 pages, the adrenaline inside me was kicking, It was 3 writing booklets in total
Paper 2
This one is brutal, the only way to actually prepare yourself is to practice by writing 3 20 mark essays in 2 hours, but who is gonna do that? I did not practice at all for this. I walked into the exam room caffeined up after a redbull.
Section 1- 10 pages
Section 2 - 12 pages
Section 3 - 7 pages
And I still had 10 minutes left. If you told me I could have done this during trials I would have laughed, but something inside me just went crazy, the adrenaline pushed me HARD.
For 1 hour and 50 minutes I was writing NONSTOP, my hand did not rest for more than a couple seconds for a couple periods during this time. Yes it hurt after, but I did not care, I still remember the entire class walking out of that last English exam, the last ever English exam we would ever do in our lives, everybody was happy and rejoicing.
My rank was 3rd in a crappy public school and I managed to get 87, you can do it to
