Feeling really demotivated and helpless in english advanced (1 Viewer)

[DoTheFlip123]

I'm not an English person. I'm more of STEM, not one who reads, analyses, etc etc. I picked English advanced for the purpose of it scaling higher but at this point I do not really care as much.

The entire subject just... its not for me. I feel its useless. I'm hesitant to drop it but I do want to keep it. My year 11 ranking was 11th out of 22nd, with preliminary ranking being 8th.

Embarassing thing is that I've never recieved an A in english in my entire life. It's as if no matter what I write, I won't get anything past a mid B.

I write a paragraph and then ask a classmate to review it and they just annihilate the entire thing with "delete this", "redundant sentence", "reword this".

Its just from my previous experiences that I feel so helpless and unmotivated to do any English work. I want to drop down to standard to let the weight off my shoulders. This might also help me focus on my science subjects more. Anyone else like this or just me?

I'd appreciate any advice regarding moving down to standard, how to write better etc.

 

[...xD]

I'm not an English person. I'm more of STEM, not one who reads, analyses, etc etc. I picked English advanced for the purpose of it scaling higher but at this point I do not really care as much.

The entire subject just... its not for me. I feel its useless. I'm hesitant to drop it but I do want to keep it. My year 11 ranking was 11th out of 22nd, with preliminary ranking being 8th.

Embarassing thing is that I've never recieved an A in english in my entire life. It's as if no matter what I write, I won't get anything past a mid B.

I write a paragraph and then ask a classmate to review it and they just annihilate the entire thing with "delete this", "redundant sentence", "reword this".

Its just from my previous experiences that I feel so helpless and unmotivated to do any English work. I want to drop down to standard to let the weight off my shoulders. This might also help me focus on my science subjects more. Anyone else like this or just me?

I'd appreciate any advice regarding moving down to standard, how to write better etc.

I'm by no means good in english myself, but please don't give up! For english just never give up! Don't ever let the 'emotional' side really affect you because it can be structural! What I recommend is to go get some state ranking/ exemplars essays and study them (preferably on the text you are studying ofc), note down juicy phrases to use in your own essays and also how they make they argument succinct, language concise etc.

 

[Masaken]

I'm not an English person. I'm more of STEM, not one who reads, analyses, etc etc. I picked English advanced for the purpose of it scaling higher but at this point I do not really care as much.

The entire subject just... its not for me. I feel its useless. I'm hesitant to drop it but I do want to keep it. My year 11 ranking was 11th out of 22nd, with preliminary ranking being 8th.

Embarassing thing is that I've never recieved an A in english in my entire life. It's as if no matter what I write, I won't get anything past a mid B.

I write a paragraph and then ask a classmate to review it and they just annihilate the entire thing with "delete this", "redundant sentence", "reword this".

Its just from my previous experiences that I feel so helpless and unmotivated to do any English work. I want to drop down to standard to let the weight off my shoulders. This might also help me focus on my science subjects more. Anyone else like this or just me?

I'd appreciate any advice regarding moving down to standard, how to write better etc.

i would recommend not dropping to standard unless you genuinely think you can't handle advanced, but especially if you're aiming to maximise your atar - because the cohort in standard is 'less' academically capable as a whole compared to advanced (because most of the 'good' and 'capable' english students tend to do advanced anyways), standard aligns lower. in most cases it's better to stay in advanced. most of the time the workload is the same in both standard and advanced anyway, so the notion of freeing up time by picking standard isn't really true.

i get it, it sucks so much to get continually shredded again and again for english; throughout the whole year i had teachers and tutors pick apart my work - i had someone once even called my draft essay 'a waste of space' because of all the convolution, the redundant sentences and the waffly expressions that needed to be reworded (stuff you are getting too). but i will also say that if you continuously and consistently put in effort to act on that feedback and genuinely put in care to avoid what you got shredded for before then you'll definitely be able to improve in writing essays, by that, i mean putting in a bunch of effort, say probably dedicating 30 min-40 min to english a day (in the period that isn't leading up to assessments) analysing, practising paragraphs, drafting essays to prep for future exams, etc. try to analyse your texts and write down draft essays outside of class, adapting to various practice hsc and trial questions so you have a better grasp of what you are doing and how much you understand the text. try to supplement that with exemplars from state rankers/high ranking students/hsc nesa workbook, annotate them and see what they're doing and try to emulate that in your own essays.

and most importantly - keep on writing drafts, keep on getting that feedback. yes, it can be disheartening to write an essay only for it to continually be shredded, but it is in my opinion the only effective way that gets you to write a better essay, and even then it's dependent on whether you actually act on improving it. before my assessments i wrote 4-5 drafts for each module's generic essay, one per week leading up to the assessments (of course, that was overboard; 2-3 should suffice but if you want to do more based on the feedback you get then that's up to you), and every week they would get shredded, and i would end up having to polish it and fix it over the next week before it got submitted again for feedback again and again until i got something that the people who gave me feedback were happy with. all of that did pay off - i would go into exams and never get an essay mark below 18/20. get your teachers and your friends to continually give you good feedback, if this isn't possible, maybe hire a private tutor. i genuinely think if you're willing to put in the effort, you can definitely pull your rank up. a friend of mine improved drastically and went from a rank close to 100 to top 40 as her final rank when she started putting way more effort into english after term 4, i'm 100% certain you can, too

 

[carrotsss]

If you stay in advanced English counts for 2 units, if you drop to standard English still counts for 2 units. Either way, you should be putting in an identical amount of effort since it’s an identical number of units, so why bother dropping?

Also speaking as someone who used to absolutely suck at English and make a comeback to topping my yeargroup on assessments, it’s very possible you just need to pretty much follow what Masaken said

 

[contro3ler]

Honestly im ass at english, but here's what took me from bottoming year 10 to rank 2/150 in y11:
Know the rubric- like WORD FOR WORD!
If you can't be fucked to actually do english, like I am most of the time, the bare minimum is to memorise the rubric- you can and need to reuse phrasing and sentences from the rubric holistically throughout any essay that you write.

Find other good essays and copy them lol.
Dont copy them, but deadass ask like any ppl who've graduated a couple years before you for their essays. I'm fortunate that I have a couple state rank essays that i managed to find. THe point is to not copy them, it's to imitate their style of analysis. Usually what sets the plebs like me apart from the big gun eadv state rankers is how they analyse and contextualise each quote that they use- try to imitate this style. yOU said you had trouble with not waffling- this is how you fix that- look at how these nerdy ass mfs write, and just imitate that style- use big words, but big words that decrease your overall word count if that makes sense.

I think someone else said this already, but read scholarly papers- it helps you form the ideas that you can expand on in your body paragraphs. Use sci hub if you cant find the pdfs online.

Don't read the text, you don't need to. It always helps to some degree, but the time invested in reading it is not worth the possible outcomes.

also this is my trump card: most school teachers can mark an essay- what i mean by that is that they are trained to teach english on a low level- they just dont have the scholarly knowledge or acumen to analyse texts by themselves to the degree that, if you use, will get you good marks. I'm talking about the english teachers i've seen, there are obviously some exceptions. The solution: just go above them, and ask university lecturers for ideas/to read your essays. deadass just cold email theml lol. sometimes you'll get responses like this

which makes sense because they are really busy, but sometimes, if you email the right one, they'll actually give crazy feedback on your essay.
It's important to remember that university level english is different from high school- it's way more conceptual and based much more heavily on the creator's context. That being said, these high level ideas that you can get from university level work, if you(chatgpt) can condense it down to something that is not rocket science, you get the marks.

 

[its_ace21]

me who loved humanities coz i liked writing essays but sucks at english

 

[C_master]

English is a pain in the ass ugh. Im so not ready for advanced; yall 2023ers lucky thats its over for yall

 

[liamkk112]

I'm not an English person. I'm more of STEM, not one who reads, analyses, etc etc. I picked English advanced for the purpose of it scaling higher but at this point I do not really care as much.

The entire subject just... its not for me. I feel its useless. I'm hesitant to drop it but I do want to keep it. My year 11 ranking was 11th out of 22nd, with preliminary ranking being 8th.

Embarassing thing is that I've never recieved an A in english in my entire life. It's as if no matter what I write, I won't get anything past a mid B.

I write a paragraph and then ask a classmate to review it and they just annihilate the entire thing with "delete this", "redundant sentence", "reword this".

Its just from my previous experiences that I feel so helpless and unmotivated to do any English work. I want to drop down to standard to let the weight off my shoulders. This might also help me focus on my science subjects more. Anyone else like this or just me?

I'd appreciate any advice regarding moving down to standard, how to write better etc.

I was in a similar situation, couldn’t even crack above a mid B despite efforts. Dropped to standard at start of hsc and I finished rank 1, would highly recommend dropping, the difficulty is just straight up easier. There is fs a stigma that standard will kill ur Atar but it’s not true, I am so happy that I finished with a high rank in standard compared to advanced where I would likely have a rank in the 20s, scaling doesn’t make up for bad marks.

 

[Aeonium]

Know the rubric- like WORD FOR WORD!
If you can't be fucked to actually do english, like I am most of the time, the bare minimum is to memorise the rubric- you can and need to reuse phrasing and sentences from the rubric holistically throughout any essay that you write.

Find other good essays and copy them lol.
Dont copy them, but deadass ask like any ppl who've graduated a couple years before you for their essays. I'm fortunate that I have a couple state rank essays that i managed to find. THe point is to not copy them, it's to imitate their style of analysis. Usually what sets the plebs like me apart from the big gun eadv state rankers is how they analyse and contextualise each quote that they use- try to imitate this style. yOU said you had trouble with not waffling- this is how you fix that- look at how these nerdy ass mfs write, and just imitate that style- use big words, but big words that decrease your overall word count if that makes sense.

wtf this is what i did asw LOL make sure the words aren't too high level otherwise it's obvious that you're just using a thesaurus.

 

[carrotsss]

wtf this is what i did asw LOL make sure the words aren't too high level otherwise it's obvious that you're just using a thesaurus.

woah what happened to all ur posts why

 

[C_master]

I was in a similar situation, couldn’t even crack above a mid B despite efforts. Dropped to standard at start of hsc and I finished rank 1, would highly recommend dropping, the difficulty is just straight up easier. There is fs a stigma that standard will kill ur Atar but it’s not true, I am so happy that I finished with a high rank in standard compared to advanced where I would likely have a rank in the 20s, scaling doesn’t make up for bad marks.

It kinda does...

 

[itsalovehaterelo]

It kinda does...

yeah and a lot of good uni courses demand adv eng

 

[C_master]

yeah and a lot of good uni courses demand adv eng

indeed

 

[carrotsss]

I’ve noticed a lot of unis offer bonus points for a band 5/6 in english advanced, and a band 5 is pretty achievable since the vast majority of advanced students get one

 

[Life'sHard]

Motivation my ass. Just start and roll with the punches (feedback)

 

[DoTheFlip123]

i would recommend not dropping to standard unless you genuinely think you can't handle advanced, but especially if you're aiming to maximise your atar - because the cohort in standard is 'less' academically capable as a whole compared to advanced (because most of the 'good' and 'capable' english students tend to do advanced anyways), standard aligns lower. in most cases it's better to stay in advanced. most of the time the workload is the same in both standard and advanced anyway, so the notion of freeing up time by picking standard isn't really true.

i get it, it sucks so much to get continually shredded again and again for english; throughout the whole year i had teachers and tutors pick apart my work - i had someone once even called my draft essay 'a waste of space' because of all the convolution, the redundant sentences and the waffly expressions that needed to be reworded (stuff you are getting too). but i will also say that if you continuously and consistently put in effort to act on that feedback and genuinely put in care to avoid what you got shredded for before then you'll definitely be able to improve in writing essays, by that, i mean putting in a bunch of effort, say probably dedicating 30 min-40 min to english a day (in the period that isn't leading up to assessments) analysing, practising paragraphs, drafting essays to prep for future exams, etc. try to analyse your texts and write down draft essays outside of class, adapting to various practice hsc and trial questions so you have a better grasp of what you are doing and how much you understand the text. try to supplement that with exemplars from state rankers/high ranking students/hsc nesa workbook, annotate them and see what they're doing and try to emulate that in your own essays.

and most importantly - keep on writing drafts, keep on getting that feedback. yes, it can be disheartening to write an essay only for it to continually be shredded, but it is in my opinion the only effective way that gets you to write a better essay, and even then it's dependent on whether you actually act on improving it. before my assessments i wrote 4-5 drafts for each module's generic essay, one per week leading up to the assessments (of course, that was overboard; 2-3 should suffice but if you want to do more based on the feedback you get then that's up to you), and every week they would get shredded, and i would end up having to polish it and fix it over the next week before it got submitted again for feedback again and again until i got something that the people who gave me feedback were happy with. all of that did pay off - i would go into exams and never get an essay mark below 18/20. get your teachers and your friends to continually give you good feedback, if this isn't possible, maybe hire a private tutor. i genuinely think if you're willing to put in the effort, you can definitely pull your rank up. a friend of mine improved drastically and went from a rank close to 100 to top 40 as her final rank when she started putting way more effort into english after term 4, i'm 100% certain you can, too

thank you for this advice I relate so much with essays being shredded to atoms. It does suck but the harsher the feedback is, the more effective it is. I sent a draft a day ago and it went well (from a big paragraph, only 2 sentences needed rewording and some grammatical mistakes)

I will try to get into the habit of drafting hopefully sooner or later

 

[DoTheFlip123]

I was in a similar situation, couldn’t even crack above a mid B despite efforts. Dropped to standard at start of hsc and I finished rank 1, would highly recommend dropping, the difficulty is just straight up easier. There is fs a stigma that standard will kill ur Atar but it’s not true, I am so happy that I finished with a high rank in standard compared to advanced where I would likely have a rank in the 20s, scaling doesn’t make up for bad marks.

tbh its a whole ass dilemma or whether i should drop or not. Couple of my mates have dropped because of the intense workload. My next assessment result will most likely determine whether im gonna drop or not.

 

[C_master]

that's completely false

there is not a singular course I've seen that requires adv eng

really? Dont think so

 

[itsalovehaterelo]

that's completely false

there is not a singular course I've seen that required adv eng

any good law courses. usyd law does for sure

 

[liamkk112]

any good law courses. usyd law does for sure

if it’s a requirement for a course u wanna do then obv pick advanced. However for me going into more stem oriented courses the lower workload for standard was an obvious choice for me given I needed more time to allocate to subjects like 4u maths. I think the lower workload cannot be debated, texts are smaller and easier to digest. U can argue about scaling but honestly both advanced and standard both have low scaling, and personally I would rather get a low b6 or high b5 in standard as I probably will end up than a high b4 in advanced due to the difficulty, at least for me. I found it much easier to thrive in standard , just kept the advanced work ethic from prelims before I dropped and it was fine. U cannot just be lazy in standard and expect higher marks as many may think coz “so easy” but for me where I couldn’t even get an A in advanced, I received some full marks on assessments and always was comfortably in the A range in standard AND my cohort wasn’t bad. Just so much stigma around standard, it won’t kill ur atar so long as u can receive high marks as with any other subject, and scaling won’t save bad marks in advanced either so don’t think u can just rely on that, I think it’s a poor mindset to think that. (Sorry for rant)