How do you start writing practice essays? (1 Viewer)

[Scryne]

I've seen and heard everywhere that to get better at essays, you need to write essays. However, anytime I start, I find myself lost on what to write. How do I actually go about on writing practice essays?

 

[sarbear.h]

start off with paragraphs on themes or motifs that are significant within a text, and then start putting them together into an essay, like a puzzle. essentially write many peels (or whatever ur school calls em) and then put them into an essay, edit it to make it cohesive and match the content with the question if that makes sense. with practice you'll get faster

 

[samantha8]

I start by picking a topic, making a quick outline, then writing a draft without overthinking. After that, I read it over and try to improve it.

 

[anonymousmonkey1010101010]

For me, I had this problem with modern history - here is how I got over it and got my grades from a 60% in Term 1 - (and all 50/60s in Y11) - to a 92% Y12 Term 3 and a 90% on my trial.

I know its not what you want to hear but write MASSES. For modern I wrote an essay PLAN for each and every syllabus dot point for each topic - which equated to 10-20 for each topic.

The good news is, for english theres no content filled syllabus dot point list. I would reccomend, and what I've done for english standard this year, is prepare 1-2 essays for each topic and perfect them. Write them, hand them to your teacher for feedback, implement the feedback, HAND IT BACK TO YOUR TEACHER, and then get a second opinion (e.g. another teacher, tutor or you can even pay teachers/top students/tutors online to do it or some will do for free).

Here is how to make the essay writing process easier:
1. Annotate the question thinking about the syllabus/rubric - e.g. If a Mod A question is: Anaylse how the text represents identity -- I would be thinking about the other aspects of the rubric in relation to my text, and drawing in how my texts represents identity THROUGH culture and language - that is just one way
2. Come up with complex thesis statements for your intro and paragraphs - prepare these because it will be difficult to come up with on the spot in an exam - if we're using my above concept - you don't want to be writing "the text represents identity through culture and language" - flesh it out and make it sound more sophisticated - you can use chatgpt
3. If writing an entire essay seems too daunting at first - mind map it or write a plan - for example, a lot of my essays started out as a document with headings for each of my paragraphs/themes - which underneath had a complex thesis statement from step 2, the rough points i wanted to make and concepts i wanted to hit, and a list of quotes related to the paragraph - although at first it will seem like writing one essay is taking way too long because you've spent 15 minutes annotating the question, 30 coming up with thesis statements, 1 hour creating a doc or mindmap full of notes of a rough plan/brainstorm, then to go on to spend - 1 to 1.5 hrs writing the actual essay - this process allows you to train your brain so that after a few of weeks you can quickly and easily digest the question and understand what you are being asked, instantly think of thesis statement 'buzz words' or sophisticated language/statements to uplift your essay, and determine your rough plan / quotes quickly. Also, you don't have to do it all at once! In the first stages this would take me 2.5 - 3.5 hours but you can break it down - i would do the question annotation, thesis statements and mindmap/doc notes in one session and then a week or two later tackle the essay.


I know this sounds torturous, and you can't even think about writing all these essays, but at the start of this year it would've taken me 1.5 weeks to right a really bad essay and I wouldn't understand the question, how to structure my response or how to answer the question. Now i've done it so much I've developing the habit of being able to quickly write them and address/understand the question.

If you are only going to do 1 per topic, make sure you have at least one spare paragraph. For example, for me I only have 1 essay for my Module B as it is a relatively simple text that I understand and all my paragraphs are extremely broad so I have 5 paragraphs, and in an exam I would try to use 4, minimum 3. This means if the question is oddly niche and specific I have wiggle room of 2 paragraphs.

For standard english I would recommend:

Common module - 1/2 essays with 4-5 paragraphs - the broader your paragraphs and the better your understanding the less essays you need.

Mod A - 1/2 essays with 4-5 paragraphs - my mod A is a collection of poems, so for me I have more than 5 paragraphs as I have just done one for each poem. With that being said I've written 1 essay focusing on the 4 poems I know the best which I focus on.

Mod B - 1/2 essays with 4-5 paragraphs

Mod C - this is where it gets tricky. it depends on how easy this is for you. mod c is most peoples worst topic, including myself. For me personally, I have 3 discursives, 4 imaginatives, and 1 persuasive. They are all on relatively broad concepts so that when I get in an exam and read the question I can map out my 8 general ideas, and usually a few or at least one are relevant to the question, and i can mesh together my prepared essays to create 1 that will properly address the question. Additonally, the broadness allows me to use concepts from one style, such as my persuasive writing, to form an imaginative if necessary.

I would generally say for novels/films and other long-form texts do 1-2 essays, but if it is a collection of texts or something, you need to have enough to address all of the text you've studied - thats why for my Mod A I have more because it is a collection of poems.

Always make sure that in your essay plans you have an extra paragraph and extra quotes so you can adapt it.

Anyway this is just what worked for me, and using this strategy I've achieved good grades in english and improved my essay writing skills.