Posts tagged ‘HSC english’

August 21st, 2010

HSC English: Tips on how to improve

HSC English is one of the most problematic subjects students face – partly because at least 2 units is compulsory under the HSC system, leaving many, many students stuck doing a subject they don’t particularly enjoy. This is especially true for students who are accustomed to subjects that require a systematic approach, such as maths, or sciences – to these students, HSC English seems mysterious, random, lacking any recognisable pattern in terms of what’s required for high marks.

While success in HSC English requires a different way of thinking compared to other subjects, it can be broken down into a systematic approach, just like maths or science. Although prescribed texts may vary depending on school, or change over time (AOS: Belonging won’t be around forever!) the factors to success remain the same.

We’ve included some useful tips to improve your chances at the subject, but the best way is to seek out a high quality HSC English Tutoring programme to assist. The right support and guidance can make a world of difference in this subject.

Get your hands on model responses

The rule here is: the more you see, the better you get. Try to get your hands on annotated model answers that break down the key elements to a good response. Pay particular attention to what markers assign marks to. Often a response cannot be completely broken down into where each mark is awarded and only makes sense when considered as a whole. Of course, you’ll also need to have a go at your fair share – homework that gives you practice at actual HSC-exam style questions will be useful here. This leads onto the next point:

Prepare early

Use your limited time wisely. Every HSC student has the same amount of time leading up to the HSC – yet some do well and some don’t. A lot of this comes down to effective time management. Take advantage of year 11 as a dry-run for year 12. Your school may prescribe irrelevant texts for the year 11 modules, but you’ll have freedom to select HSC-relevant texts to use as your additional texts. Do this and you’ll get to familiarise yourself early with HSC texts while satisfying year 11 requirements – hitting 2 birds with one stone.

Avoid verbosity

In an exam response, you won’t be impressing anyone with awkward phrasing and big words that can be condensed into a more succinct version. HSC markers are more impressed by your ability to be succinct and articulate clear thought-out arguments in an efficient manner (i.e. avoiding unnecessarily long phrasing).

Using big words

A good test for the suitable use of ‘big words’ is – if there’s a shorter way to say the same thing with simpler words, choose that way. Only use ‘big words’ for their specific meaning, if that meaning is what you specifically intend.

Essay intros – keep them short

Avoid essay intros that go on for 50% to 75% of the page (depending on how big your writing is). Write your thesis (the point your essay argues), and introduce the texts you will be using to illustrate your thesis. Then move onto the body of the essay. More often than not, you’ll find you have a lot to talk about / write down in your allocated time, so it’s best to spend this time writing the meaty parts of your essay, rather than on a long-winded introduction. But be careful to always link your body paragraphs back to your central argument. Always revisit your thesis – everything you write must support your thesis you introduced in your introduction.

Submit your practice essays to teachers for marking

Take advantage of the resources available to you! Your English teachers at school would be (read: should be) happy to help you maximise your HSC English mark. Whenever you complete a practice essay, submit it to them for marking and feedback. Ask for detailed comments, and ask for feedback. Ask specifically where the lost marks could have been gained. Incorporate what you learn each time into your next attempt – there’s no shortcut here. The more you practice, the more well-structured and polished your final essays will be in the all-important HSC exams.

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August 12th, 2010

Dux College offers English advanced tutoring to years 11 and 12

Our long awaited English Advanced courses are ready to be offered to the public. We are proud to announce that, starting from term 4 2010, Dux College will begin to offer tutoring courses for:

1. Preliminary English Advanced (year 11)

2. HSC English Advanced ( year 12)

Our English Advanced courses are developed by senior HSC markers. Unlike other tutoring centres, our English Advanced course is text specific – that means you learn only what’s directly relevant to your prescribed text. We do not waste time with half-relevant generalised content. Each weekly class will be 2 hours long, and continue throughout the year.

Preliminary English Advanced

The preliminary course will be a ‘dry run’ practice for the HSC, starting in Term 1 of year 11, and ending in term 3. In year 11, students will gain a wide exposure to different HSC-relevant texts. Students will gain early exposure to the requirements of the modules A, B and C, and will be shown how to analyse these texts for relevant issues to each module.

Exam-style homework will be marked according to HSC marking criteria and give students an early insight into how a response can be broken down as per the marking criteria. Students gain a systematic perspective as we demystify the factors of success by showing students countless examples of model answers, and giving them the opportunity to develop their own.

In the second half of term 3, students will get an early start into Area of Study: Belonging, giving them a solid foundation and introduction into the year 12 content, which becomes assessable for the HSC.

HSC English Advanced

The HSC course will start in the following term 4, and end in term 3 of year 12 (4 terms long in total). In addition to this, there will be holiday courses where students get a chance to revise, consolidate knowledge and further develop essential skills, such as essay writing and textual analysis.

The course starts with AOS for 12 weeks (continuing from the Preliminary English Advanced introduction to AOS), then coverage of the modules. Our classes and materials are specific to each student’s prescribed text at school (we don’t mix students doing different texts into the same class). Classes are interactive, fun and personalised – the class teacher will remain closely updated to each of his or her student’s progress, and all homework is marked by the class teacher, not someone else.

Students learn by analysing model answers with a breakdown of where marks are awarded for each type of question. Throughout the year, continue to build on their experience through doing exam-style homework which reflects all possible variations of HSC exam questions.

Now taking enrollments

We are now accepting enrolments for year 11s entering year 12 in Term 4 2010. The first classes will be in early October. To enquire or give an expression of interest, give us a call on (02) 8007 6824. To enrol, we will need to know what prescribed texts you are doing at school for HSC 2011.

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June 20th, 2009

HSC Trials and the HSC Exams – Exam Preparation

With most students having their HSC trials coming within a week or two, and with the actual HSC exams coming within a few weeks, good exam preparation skills are important if you want to ace your exams! Following are some general & important tips on what you can do to help yourself through this stressful period.

HSC Exams

Big tip 1: Don’t let the stress get to you

As students approach the end of year 12, their stress levels approach seemingly unbearable levels (like a limits question in maths!). But as a student in year 12, it’s important not to lose perspective. If you are currently in year 12, we would like to remind you of some bare facts about your current situation:

1. You will survive this, as did all previous year 12 students.

You will get through your exams, regardless of whether you did wonderfully or badly, and your life will continue. Whether you move onto university (which most of you will) or other paths, there’s a whole lifetime of activities, challenges and experiences waiting for you. This leads onto the next point:

2. No matter what you may think, you are overestimating the significance of the HSC.

Think about it this way: after the first 2 weeks of university, no-one would be talking about what UAI or ATAR score you achieved. This probably would end after the first few days! Your ATAR would be so insignificant and inconsequential to your university life and career into the future that when you look back, you would laugh at how stressed and how seriously you took your HSC. Even highly successful students who manage to achieve a 99+ UAI or ATAR would find that their amazing achievement becomes inconsequential when we look at the bigger picture of their entire lives ahead. This leads onto the next fact:

3. Don’t stress if you can’t get the ATAR you need.

Say you need an ATAR of 95+ for your dream course, but from the way things are heading, your chances aren’t too promising. This is no reason to stop trying altogether, or to lose hope either. You should still try your absolute best to maximise your ATAR, but also you should be aware that transferring into your dream course (or your dream university) once you finish your HSC is generally much less competitive than gaining a place outright through getting a high ATAR score.

With all that said, it is important to put in your best efforts in preparing for your exams, because your ATAR will count towards determining whether you get a university transfer.

Big tip 2: Don’t procrastinate This sounds pretty obvious, but procrastination is probably the single biggest problem facing the majority of students. Most students are definitely smart enough to get the high ATAR score they want or need. But the biggest obstacle to most is procrastination. Students need to understand that they need to take things seriously (but not to the point of stressing out: see tip 1) and do the things they need to do. Generally, this means a few things:

1. Start now!

If you know you need to study for a certain exam that is x days away, start now! It is in our human nature to make up excuses like “I will start tomorrow” or “I will start after this weekend” or “Today will definitely be my last day not studying”. Ask yourself this: do you accept the fact that eventually you will need to start? Well if yes, why not now?

2. Plan ahead.

Budgeting for time can be tricky when we have mere weeks or days before a major exam like the trials or the actual HSC. We suggest it is highly important to budget for the time you have left. You should ask yourself: how many days do I have in total? How many days do I NEED for exam A? What about exam B?

Budget your time according to what you think your strengths and weaknesses are. If you are weak in English, spend more time on that, rather than your other subjects. However, never totally neglect any subject. Good time budgeting leads on from the first point of starting now, because once you map out how you can spend the days you have left before your big exam(s), you may realise you need to start right now!

Big tip 3: Study smart! Effective study comes differently for different students: it mainly comes down to personal preference. Some study techniques which work for one student may not work as well for another, but the tip here is to find out what techniques and resources work best for you, and incorporate them in your study.

The obvious way to study is to sit down and read the textbook (for sciences), do many practice exercises and past papers (for maths) and write many practice essays (for English). This works very well on its own, if you can stick to a plan and self-study. However, not all can self-study as effectively as they need to. Below are some suggestions on ways you can improve your self-study:

1. Use your friends to your advantage.

Pick a few friends who are motivated to do well in their exams. Keep in touch with them throughout your study period. Discuss topics in subjects you both do, asking each other questions and making sure your knowledge of each subject is sound and complete.

2. Use the syllabus to your advantage.

Some subjects (like Chemistry, Physics and Biology, as well as some social sciences like Economics) are heavily syllabus-based. A good study technique is to write brief summary notes for each dot-point, going through the entire HSC syllabus yourself before your exams. This is the most complete method of revising those subjects, as exam questions can only be set according to what is contained within the syllabus. 3. Use teachers to your advantage.

Teachers play a bigger role in some subjects more than others. For example, in English, we recommend writing practice essays to cover the broad topics like the main themes in your Area of Study, or module text. Write as many as you can, and have them marked! Ask for feedback from your teachers. Good teachers would be happy to help their students, especially nearing big exams.

Good luck to all students!

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June 9th, 2009

HSC English is Overemphasised

The most important ingredient to a high UAI is to ace all your subjects. While we place a huge emphasis on English these days (being the only compulsory subject in the NSW HSC), the hype over English is slightly overrated by now. Put in a simple way, if you ace your HSC English but ace nothing else, your UAI will be mediocre at best. Instead, do not over-focus on any particular subject. Every student’s goal is to maximise their UAI, so their best ten units count towards their all-important UAI. The obvious thing here is that each unit is equally weighted, and there is no inherent reason why a student should treat HSC English any different to any other HSC subject they are doing as part of their 10 or more units.

HSC Tutoring

In fact, the rational way to allocate study time is to allocate more time to the higher-scaled subjects, as they will be more beneficial to your UAI than lower-scaled subjects. Historically English Advanced has a scaled mean of around 30, which is practically equal to the scaling of HSC Chemistry and Economics in the past several years. These trends are not expected to change significantly year to year, so we can expect the same for at least the near future. If you’re a student who does English Advanced and Maths Extension 2, you should definitely focus more of your time on your mathematics subjects, given that both Maths Extension 1 and Extension 2 counts for 2 units each. Keeping in mind that the scaled mean for Extension 1 is around 39-40 in recent years, and that of Extension 2 is around 43-44, this makes these subjects unparalleled in terms of scaling power, and definitely deserves more attention than English.

That is not to say you should neglect English either. Treat it as you would any other subject. There is nothing special about English, except for the fact that it is the only compulsory subject in the NSW HSC, because of the way scaling works and UAI is calculated, which requires a common denominator for comparison. However this mere fact does not affect the individual student. There are rumours and misinformation floating around over student forums and by word of mouth, but the simple fact of the matter is that English is just like any other subject and is given no preferential treatment when it comes to UAI calculation. Therefore if this is the case, English should not be given any special treatment by students either. What this means is you should split your time equally as you would any other subject that scales similarly (e.g. Chemistry, Economics).

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May 12th, 2009

HSC tutoring: don’t leave it till late!

Many students wait until Term 3 or 4 of year 12 before deciding to find a tutor. While seeking tuition support late in year 12 is better than doing nothing, this is far from ideal. Generally, higher ability students tend to find a good tutor early in their Preliminary course, or even in year 10, and sticking with them until the end of the HSC. There are several advantages to finding a good tutor early in your High School career.

Find a good HSC tutor and stick with them! HSC Tutoring Quality tuition providers often have set structures for their courses. For example, at Dux College, we offer a structured schedule, so we make sure all our students cover all topics well ahead of time. This leaves for revision and discussion on optimal exam technique, reinforcement of skills and perfecting overall knowledge. However we find that students who join mid-way through our schedule may have covered some topics we are yet to cover, but have skipped over topics we have already covered. This mismatch in the new student’s knowledge poses a difficulty for them in that they must spend extra effort in catching up with the class.

Our highest achievers are students who have been with us since year 10 or 11, and have gained the fundamental knowledge throughout those early years. Students from this group are generally more adaptive to new concepts as they are introduced, because they have a strong foundation in conceptual understanding, instilled through following our course structure over a longer period of time. It is less common to see spectacular improvements in school rank from year 12 students who join us in the middle of term 3 or 4, because they have not had the same opportunity as most of our other students who have been with us in the long run. However we do see spectacular improvements on school rank from our students who have joined us in year 10 or 11, as the extra tutoring makes a large difference to the bottom line: exam results.

Seek help early! We get the most phone calls from interested students and parents during the weeks after major assessment marks are released back to students. The biggest example is probably at around late April, when year 12 students start to get their half-yearly results back. Some receive a nasty shock at disappointing marks, and feel the sudden compulsion to seek tutoring. Although we are happy to help these students, and we try our very best to bring in and improve students in these situations, we feel that these students would have gained so much more if they found us EARLIER.

Also for the reasons mentioned above, the earlier students find a good tutoring service, the better. HSC tutoring is definitely not something to be left to the final few weeks of major exams and assessments. The benefits are best realised over a longer timeframe, and solid knowledge is built over several terms of tutoring, not merely several weeks. Rome was not built in a day!

Having said that, we do not mean that all students who join us in the middle of their year 12 are not gaining short-term improvements. Our students in this category are very happy with their improvement in marks and general course understanding, within weeks of tutoring. However, we feel that their potential is so much higher. What separates a UAI 99+ student from a UAI 90-95 student is consistency in everything they do. The first step, getting into a routine habit of tutoring and doing higher volumes of more challenging curricular work has a large benefit in itself. Another factor may be the fact that many students simply do not have access to quality teachers in their school environment, which is supplemented by finding a reliable tutoring service. However, in order to wholly move into a higher level of achievement (say, aiming to Dux your grade, or attain a 99+)

Short-term tutoring Some students feel the need to seek tutoring services for certain topics out of a subject, then leave after those topics are covered. In these situations, we recommend finding a private tutor. Sometimes students and parents do not appreciate the degree of interconnectedness between topics within any one HSC subject. For example, HSC science subjects like Physics or Chemistry are very conceptual in nature.

If a student is having trouble understanding the concepts in a later topic, chances are they have gaps in their fundamental conceptual understanding. For courses like HSC mathematics, particularly the more difficult Extension 1 and Extension 2 courses, an imperfect understanding of one topic is indicative of faults in conceptual understanding in other areas of the course. For example, in Extension 2, almost all of the topics are linked to each other, and to topics in Extension 1 and even 2 unit.

Students who feel they need tutoring specific to certain topics run the risk of being overconfident in their abilities as a whole. We recommend taking a deeper approach in remedying ‘holes’ in understanding, by investigating all related and associated topics and concepts. This can not happen in the short while available in covering just one topic, but rather over a longer period where the class can cover several topics. This allows enough time to fully explore how individual topics are interconnected. A common prerequisite of a band 6 responses (when HSC markers gather to determine the band cutoff criteria) often draws upon the degree to which students display an understanding of how different topics relate to and interact with each other. For these reasons, we do not recommend students seek out tutoring help intermittently.

Ideally, students should identify early on which subjects they feel they need long-term support (outside of the normal school support, which in many cases is quite minimal) and seek a quality tuition service early on in their course, preferably before year 12 begins. Remember, consistency is the key!

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