How many words are your english essays? (1 Viewer)

[OldMathsGuy]

7-9 pages per essay or for the whole paper 2?

Per Essay (Remember this is advanced not standard too).

In the booklets you have 26 lines, most student's seem to do about 6 words per line so you're talking about 150 words per page, therefore between 1000 and 1300 words for model answers. Some responses were over the top (up to 13 pages) where I think the candidate has gone over their 40 minutes but in the main, that's the story. Most essays were quite legible with only a couple being almost unreadable.

Best Regards
OldMathsGuy

 

[slyhunter]

Per Essay (Remember this is advanced not standard too).

In the booklets you have 26 lines, most student's seem to do about 6 pages per line so you're talking about 150 words per page, therefore between 1000 and 1300 words for model answers. Some responses were over the top (up to 13 pages) where I think the candidate has gone over their 40 minutes but in the main, that's the story. Most essays were quite legible with only a couple being almost unreadable.

Best Regards
OldMathsGuy

Pretty intense stuff.

 

[littlemonster24]

Okay well I'm just going to stick to my 950 words for each essay in paper 2 and since i dropped to standard (most stupid decision i've ever made) that should be more than enough... if i write around 1200 words which is how long my essays are im going to run out of time.

 

[littlemonster24]

Our teachers always say to aim for 4, and with 3 and a half you can still get 100%. Any less and you're "selling yourself short" (said our head teacher who's one of the judges for HSC english marking). With that said, he has given full marks to 3.5 page essays (though that person was particularly good at english). In the end I think it's really important to balance the length in paper 2: the people who do best don't usually get the highest mark for every (if any) particular essay, but they are consistent. Heaps of people ace one essay then screw up another and essentially it ruins their mark. In short, don't do 5 pages for 1 and 2 for another... I noticed this with lots of people in my trials. BE CONSISTENT!

Unfortunately I did exactly that in my trials, aced two essays and screwed up my last and it ruined my mark

 

[krnofdrg]

Page length isn't the best way to measure quantity, because i've seen some people write very very big.

But yes, in general, although it may be possible, a 700 word essay is not going to have anywhere near as much scope or depth as a 1200 word one, basically it means other students are providing nearly twice as much analysis, twice as many examples etc, which will reflect how much they know about their texts. (But this only applies to well written essays, 1200 words of rambling crap will not get you any good marks)

eg. like me where i write 3-4 words a line , ending up with 15-20 pages per module lol.......... Although i have some quality also... (but yes i agree with you page length is a bad way to calculate quantity)

 

[bellagirl_008]

Basically the way I understand it is that 1100-1300 is the average range for a band 6 essay. Obviously an amazing 700 word essay will do better than a terrible 1200 word but it's easier to tick all the little boxes for the teacher when your writing more.

 

[bellagirl_008]

Writing 700 words in standard is considered alot and you'll easilt do well with anything above that.

 

[littlemonster24]

Writing 700 words in standard is considered alot and you'll easilt do well with anything above that.

Really?! Oh, well that's good to know!

 

[mark H]

eg. like me where i write 3-4 words a line , ending up with 15-20 pages per module lol.......... Although i have some quality also... (but yes i agree with you page length is a bad way to calculate quantity)

Lol i'm the opposite, I write like 10-15 words per line and get around 4 pages per module.

 

[Aindan]

Our teachers expect at least 5 pages per essay

 

[krnofdrg]

700 words per essay seems too less. How many points/ arguments do you write per essay?

If you did do 700 words per essay in ur trials... what marks did you get?



PS: I see it's not you who did 700 words, but did anyone you know actually wrote 700 words per essay?

(I wrote around 700-750 words per essay and crammed as much detail as i could with less words, and...... I failed my english trials - 49.5%....... no i'm not trolling!)


PPS: I would suggest against 700 words..... go for 800 words MINIMUM...... My mistake was that when I cut some of my essays to 600-700 words, my topic sentences and explanations became too substantial...... ie. TOO GENERALISED.

800 minimum agreed.

100-150 intro, 200 bodies, conclusion 100.

 

[acehscwebsite]

I finished my HSC in 2009 and from what I remember most in my school were writing 1200 + for all essays and about 800 for creative (it is very important that your creative stays at that length). However, like mentioned by someone in this thread, never sacrifice quality for quantity.

I wrote about 1500 words for each essay!

All the Best

 

[krnofdrg]

I finished my HSC in 2009 and from what I remember most in my school were writing 1200 + for all essays and about 800 for creative (it is very important that your creative stays at that length). However, like mentioned by someone in this thread, never sacrifice quality for quantity.

I wrote about 1500 words for each essay!

All the Best

eekk.. 1500 is too much... But im pretty you were a top student right????...

I wrote 1600, 1400, 1000ish for trials XD... but it's too much

 

[acehscwebsite]

eekk.. 1500 is too much... But im pretty you were a top student right????...

I wrote 1600, 1400, 1000ish for trials XD... but it's too much

I was a pretty Ok student. I got an external mark of 97 and an internal of 94! My comparatively low internal mark --> I wrote a 600 word belonging essay, and I was told it was too brief (9/15), and that weighed 20%.... bur 1500 is definitely possible, but you need to know your stuff pretty well.

but the amount you write seems pretty fine - would be better if you wrote equal amounts for the three modules though

 

[krnofdrg]

I was a pretty Ok student. I got an external mark of 97 and an internal of 94! My comparatively low internal mark --> I wrote a 600 word belonging essay, and I was told it was too brief (9/15), and that weighed 20%.... bur 1500 is definitely possible, but you need to know your stuff pretty well.

but the amount you write seems pretty fine - would be better if you wrote equal amounts for the three modules though

1000 word is for my module b (which only requires one text XDDD) however yes I agree. I didn't allocate 40mins to each my essay equally which was bad for the trials.. However got a good mark.. however for HSC i shall follow the 40/40/40 allocation..

wow that is a crazy mark dude.... =.=..,.. considering getting mid-high band 6 in english is for a very few percentage of people in comparison to other subjects..

but yeah im never told that i wrote too much ...

 

[Omnipotence]

800-1200 words.

 

[acehscwebsite]

1000 word is for my module b (which only requires one text XDDD) however yes I agree. I didn't allocate 40mins to each my essay equally which was bad for the trials.. However got a good mark.. however for HSC i shall follow the 40/40/40 allocation..

wow that is a crazy mark dude.... =.=..,.. considering getting mid-high band 6 in english is for a very few percentage of people in comparison to other subjects..

but yeah im never told that i wrote too much ...

Well, if you are getting good marks doing what you do, just stick to it. Good Luck with the HSC.

 

[zhiying]

My prepared ones are all approximately 950 words, I'm a pretty fast writer but I wanna make sure I have enough time to think about how to answer the question and playing around with my arguments. I wrote about 4 booklets per essay in the trials and got 18/17/17

I don't get how people can write any more than 1200 in 40minutes T_T

 

[brent012]

My prepared ones are all approximately 950 words, I'm a pretty fast writer but I wanna make sure I have enough time to think about how to answer the question and playing around with my arguments. I wrote about 4 booklets per essay in the trials and got 18/17/17

I don't get how people can write any more than 1200 in 40minutes T_T

4 booklets per essay yet you dont know how people can write 1200 words!? WTF, how many pages and lines were in those booklets? Im going to say the essays you wrote in trials were 1200 words despite you saying they were 950 preprepared. The booklets for my trials were 3 pages with 27 lines on each page. I'd say you are using atleast 23 of those lines right? 1200/(23*12) = ~4.3. How are you writing 4-5 words each line 0.o, unless my school uses weird booklets lol?

 

[dannnys]

mine are round 1100-1200..not sure if i can write that fast though lol