One important advice, stop being depressed, you still have three more terms to go, so if you lift up your performance, you can get a band 6-it is almost impossible to tell you the percentage you need to get because it depends on the difficulty of your school's assessments and whether your school moderates internal marks as well as how generous your teacher marks.. English is a subject that anyone with enough determination can improve on-don't say 'never', say I need to improve on and ask how can you improve on it? Below are my top tips for maximising your English potential:
1)write practice essays(but make sure you get a very harsh marker-whether it is your teacher, your tutor, or someone else)-try to write one each week-there is no need to write excessively as quality exceed quantity in English and sometimes you need time to think over your ideas-to refine/extend them-so you don't waste so much time procrastinating when you write your essays
2) never write a second essay without getting comments for your first one, and I don't advise you to prepare a generic essay because unless you know the essay question before hand, generic essay will often leave you restricted in your options and even if it will get you marks in your assessment task, it will definitely not get you far in your trials and HSC...
3)never ever give up, use your holidays effectively to prepare-ask the teacher what text you will be studying in the coming year-and use the holidays to read over these text-to reduce your stress during the year, for any modules requiring a related text, try to find it in the holidays, and try not to use a very popular text-it is much harder to stand out
4)learn to listen in class-whether it is other people's opinions or your teacher's insights, it will help you formulate your own unique understanding-don't rely on study guides too much-because everyone will be doing the same thing-but check with your teacher that your understanding is not super obscure
5) probably the most important is to use all resources available, your teacher, your tutor(if you have one), the internet, library, etc-and develop a personal passion and understanding into the subject-but don't excessively seek other people's opinion on your work-because you might develop a low self-esteem and start to doubt yourself-so always reflect on each piece of advice whether it is valid or not and keep faith-believe in yourself that you have the capacity to develop independent thinking-and just because it is different from other people-does not necessarily mean it is wrong-just be prepared to back it up with textual evidence
6)read all your text 3 times minimum-no skimming over-you really need to develop a comprehensive understanding of the whole text-not just deconstruct a few scenes and forget about the rest of the book 11)make sure you rest well, eat well, stay healthy during these stressful two years(if you are not healthy, you may underperform in exams-and all your efforts gone).
7)For writing excellent creative, such as for the area of belonging-you should decide what areas you want to explore, construct a 'perfect' story after various edit process, than try to adopt that story to as many creative writing question as possible-i.e. write plans and get someone to mark it for you, like your teacher, and when you come across questions that your story is difficult to mould to, then write another one to cover the rest of the questions, but to write good creative stories, you will need to practice and get feedback-and that also involves looking at exemplary short stories-either through purchasing or finding it online. If your short story has two possible endings, one exploring not belonging and the other exploring belonging-you again expand the possibilities of having a few stories-and being able to adapt it very well to every single creative question imaginable
8)Regularly practice answering English essay/comprehension/creative questions under EXAM CONDTIONS, without notes, and get a teacher/experienced English personnel to mark it for you-and learn from the comments.
Basically, to do well in English, it is just practice, feedback, practice, feedback-unfortunately there is no short cuts at all... this, coupled with perseverance, persistent optimism and consistent performance are the key ingredients to succeeding in English. However, my advice and encouragement will just remain words on a screen unless you choose to transform these suggestions into proactive actions. You may not improve radically after writing 5 or 10 essays while adopting feedback, but you will definitely see a drastic improvement when you do your trials and HSC-persevere today, tomorrow, the day after, and the day after that till the conclusion of your HSC English exams and you shall succeed. Don't let grades categorise your potential, compete with yourself and excel by achieving your PERSONAL BEST THROUGHOUT THE YEAR
Stop wondering, stop doubting, stop thinking too far ahead and start studying
(You can control the present, but you can't control the future and the past-never give up!),
Hope this advice helped and all my best wishes for you putting into 100% effort into English and having no regrets at the end of the year-may you maximise your potential
