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Procrastination

I have AH English on Friday.

I have stopped being ill thank god.

I have also stopped doing usual procrastinatory activities such as tidying my room/desk/bag/pencil case/English notes/kitchen/fridge/CD collection/book case and have taken to lying fully awake and dressed under my duvet going "Oh my god, Oh my god" because frankly, whenever I open the freaking Glass Menagerie or look at a poem or a yoghurt pot with an expiry date of "12th May" I start feeling like crying (and occasionally do).

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Reply 1

Dhesi

Im not looking forward to my higher english at all, its the only one i feel kinda nervous about. Since you've been through the higher before, got any words of wisdom for me?

Mike

Reply 2

celticfcz

Dhesi

Im not looking forward to my higher english at all, its the only one i feel kinda nervous about. Since you've been through the higher before, got any words of wisdom for me?

Mike

i totally agree, i am so scared for higher english, i actually liked english before christmas and now i feel if i somehow manage to get a B i literally will cry!(but its not very likely!)

Reply 3

tiggerish

Higher...seems such a long time ago. I can't offer much help...I just spent the three days before English writing out screeds of notes on my two main texts from every angle (theme, character, scene by scene, setting, dramatic devices and symbols), quizzing friends to see what quotes they could remember and generally panicking. For close reading we'd done the five papers in the book, and some old Higher papers, and that was that.

Tips off the top of my head for Critical Essay paper...mostly common general sense:

1. Eat between Close Reading and Critical Essay. I rammed a banana down my throat in the library as I frantically skimmed notes.

2. Always, always make the response personal, put in how the writer makes you feel, the way the words and language work their magic on you...don't make it a dry Quote-Then-Explain analysis. I think school study of texts means we forget to enjoy the book: when I first read Streetcar I was like "wow this is so good". After dissecting it and cross examining it, everything you read looks like a symbol, and you forget the basic emotive pleasure that the writer evokes.

3. Discipline when timing. 5 minutes planning and calming down time, 30 minutes writing, 5 minutes concluding. You must give yourself adequate time to write a conclusion that is related to the question and sums up your "argument". You need to split time 45:45 to give yourself a fair chance for the second essay.

4. Write out notes from every possible angle: I found it good preparation because you have to hunt out some good quotes, you test your memory and you get to practise writing about the text.

Um. Thats it really.

*Returns to procrastinating*

Reply 4

Dhesi

How much should you be aiming to write per essay?

Reply 5

Euan_hmfc

Dhesi

How much should you be aiming to write per essay?

She said it above:

5 minutes planning, 30 minutes revising, 5 minutes to write an appropriate conclusion.

How many words do you have to write at higher level? 30 minutes seems impossible!

Reply 6

Dhesi

I mean in terms of words.

Honestly its not impossible you get used to it and the adrenaline helps.

Reply 7

Euan_hmfc

Dhesi

I mean in terms of words.

Honestly its not impossible you get used to it and the adrenaline helps.

Is higher really that much different from standard grade in terms of the language you use? Is it less to do with how well you write and how well you answer the questions?

Let's gather up a hypothetical example: tomorrow I wake up and my parents tell me that it is the day of the English higher exam. Somehow I have learned the quotes from my texts but have not improved in my general english skills since I sat my standard grade on Wednesday. Would I pass?

Reply 8

Dhesi

No you would not pass, or well its highly unlikely.

Reply 9

latentcorpse

for my higher i wrote 38 sheets A4 in total for close reading (about 10) and then about 14 per essay

they only give u 1 booklet of papaer so after i finished that i had to keep putting my hand up

ur wondering how i can write so much ? - i don't think - i have a photographic memory which is handy when u don't understand a subject (i.e. english) - my solution was to remember 60 2000 word long essays covering every possible permutation and then just recite whichever was most apt to the questions

Yeah right

latentcorpse

It was that easy then? :rolleyes:

Even if you did do that, your essays would be very rehersed. The best essays flow well because they are written to fit the question. Never learn essays. Contrary to the above quotation- English is not a memory test :wink:

Reply 12

ImperceptibleNinja

they only give u 1 booklet of papaer so after i finished that i had to keep putting my hand up

Ohh, I did that squillions of times in my maths prelim, and it'll probably happen in the final exam as well. They must have hated me... It's awful when you have something you need to write down - NOW - and your hand's flailing up in the air and the person with the paper is alternating clock-watching and fingernail-picking in a most absorbed and attentive manner. Aaargh.

Trying to remember essays and just regurgitating them isn't a particularly wise idea in general, unless you can literally remember 60 essays. Try to keep handwriting on the almost legible side of things, and read the questions carefully. With the close reading, we were encouraged to rip off the question sheet from the texts, so that we didn't have to flick back and forth between them. Tick off questions you're happy with, and write all over the paper, being careful not to obliterate any vital bits of punctuation which may be handy for talking about. I think with some questions, you can literally just put your answer as bullet points. Don't do that for the evaluation questions (marked 'E'), though, because your style of writing gains marks in those ones. But for analysis and understanding, you can save a lot of time and make your answers a lot clearer by bullet-pointing. Sadly, last year, I was freaking out too much and ended up writing huge chunks of gibberish as a paniced my way through the exam. If that happens in the close reading, by the way, try not to let it get to you and affect your essays.
Feel free to PM me if there's anything I might be able to help out with.

Reply 13

tiggerish

Hi,

1. I'm a boy (I nearly typed girl there).

2. WOW on the photographic memory. I thought I had one for a bit but then I realised I was just remembering a bit of paper with words on it but I couldn't actually see the words. I have a Voice Memory. I say quotes out loud when I'm revising, then in the exam I hear a voice in my head that recites the quotes in a silly voice, and then I write them down. Bit worrying I suppose.

3. I used one booklet for each exam but I have reasonably small writing. I got 47 for Critical and 46 for Close Reading. You only need to write about four or five booklet pages per essay, and remember those lines are super spaced out.

Reply 14

ImperceptibleNinja

47 for Critical and 46 for Close Reading

Gordon bennet.... that's.... how on earth?!
I scraped an A. At least I wasn't on the verge of tears in the final exam. The irony was I loved sitting down for 4 hours and writing really good essays (and reading all of the stuff), but when it came to the 'Sit down. Write an essay. 45 minutes. Go.' situation, I just wrote a whole load of rubbish. And I hated close readings with some sick kind of passion.

Anyway, procrastination... I'm still in the middle of the 'clean and sort entire bedroom' phase, accompanied by frequent Polo mints. I have also aquired a large book with many Roald Dahl short stories in, which are tremendously good for distracting myself with. At some point, I will almost certainly sort through my wardrobe, trying everything on to make sure I'm making the right decision on keeping it (or getting rid of it). The 'lie on the bed, look at the ceiling, and make great observations on its slight irregularities' tactic is also kicking in.

Reply 15

J'en ai marre

tiggerish

I feel eaxctly the same. I just don't have the motivation that I had last year, even though I know I'm easily capable of getting an A. I just hope that my dissertation and creative writing will keep me floating.

For Higher English, I just kept on reading my quotations and essays I had done in class and it seemed to really pay off when it cam to the exam, since I did really well in the critical essay paper, even none of the questions I had been anticipating appeared. If you have a good turn of phrase, I believe it's possible to sail through regardless.

Must go and force myself to learn about Hardy and Chekhov.

Reply 16

Time To Dance...

Why don't I care? Why don't I care? Why don't I care?!

I just can't bring myself to sit down and revise properly for AH English. I know I'll probably just scrape a pass (if I'm lucky) and it'll look awful going from a band 1 A last year to a bare pass this year... But I just don't have the motivation this time round. The weather is gorgeous, it was the last day of school today - do you really think I'm gonng revise among all that? Plus, the teaching of AH at my school left a lot to be desired... Yes, I will regret it in the near future when I think "damn, I could have gotten an A... if only I had revised more; drank less...." :frown:

Higher English seems like so far away. I seem to remember totally cramming in the last couple of days before the exam (as per usual!) I work by writing notes about everything - I remember being so irritated that I had bothered to learn everything there was to know about Romeo and Juliet... Only for the critical essay paper to fail me and there to be no question I could really answer on it! Our close reading paper was amazing though!

Reply 17

friendlyneutron

Scots_Law

It was that easy then? :rolleyes:

I wouldn't say *never* - I memorised a few on the off chance, and lo and behold, two questions almost exactly the same to the ones I'd memorised (and got 25 for) came up. For English you can bank on a few question types coming up each year, particularly for drama - poetry can be shockingly unpredictable though.

Reply 18

ImperceptibleNinja

Our close reading paper was amazing though!

You've GOT to be kidding! I hated it... to the point of having to stop myself from writing pages and pages about how horrible I thought it was.
There was a paper a few years ago about over-protective parents. That was the only close reading I didn't hate. Maybe I am bitter about English exams because I was really good at English (and very modest about it too...) but totally hopeless at timed essays and stupid pointless boring horrible evil disgusting pointless close readings (yes, they are doubly pointless).
Actually... the essay questions really annoyed me as well. It got to me that they would say 'write about a novel', when the question could work tremendously well for a short story. That's just mean.
Maybe that's why I chose Physics over English this year. I miss the learning and studying parts of English a lot. I probably wouldn't be saying that if I was sitting it though.

Reply 19

Time To Dance...

It was about an incredibly boring subject, but the majority of questions were understanding ones, so I thought it was really easy... The only close reading paper I actually thought was enjoyable was the one from a few years ago about Muhammed Ali. I don't miss the lack of close reading this year though...