JP English Student Successes: How Sanbo got 99.90 ATAR and 96/100 in the HSC English exam

Sanbo P has been attending lessons at JP English since year 7 and has since completed her HSC, scoring a 99.90 ATAR and 96/100 for her English Advanced final exams, as well as coming 2^nd at James Ruse for English Extension 1 and scoring 48/50. She is now studying medicine at UNSW. This is what she has to say:

At first glance, completing 3 units of English can seem like a daunting task. 4 essays? Critical responses to unseen texts? Extreme time pressure? It’s no wonder that I felt overwhelmed at the start of year 12! However, with the right preparation, focus on exam technique, & growth mindset, improving in English Advanced & English Extension became a whole lot easier! 

Understanding the Module 

By SIMPLIFYING the requirements for each essay or task, English became much more approachable. 

Essays 

For ALL essays, I realised there was a CHECKLIST FOR SUCCESS:

• Composer’s historical/social/personal context 

LEADS TO 

• Representation (Form, Concepts & Themes) 
• Composer purpose 
• Effect on audience 

Composer’s context → Representation + Purpose + Effect on Audience. 

For each module, there is a specific focus: 

Top Tips for Responses to Unseen Texts 

For “Short Answer” in English Advanced & “Critical Response” in English Extension, you will be required to write on the spot under strict time conditions. Luckily, JP English’s weekly quizzes and term tests helped me refine my exam technique and timing early on since junior years, which definitely came as an advantage for me in the HSC. I also found that creating a “phrase bank” helped me whenever I was stuck in the exam. 

Top Tips for Creative Writing (MODULE C & Literary Worlds) 

• Experiment with FORM: you will be competing with the entire NSW cohort, so why not make yourself stand out by having a unique form e.g. circular, non-linear, interweave myth, song or storytelling throughout? 
• While it’s impossible to predict the question or stimulus, by writing creatives and discursives that centred around the themes of storytelling, representation, reading, writing, language or human connection, I found that I was able to adapt my prepared pieces to every question I did 
• When you’re looking at a stimulus, don’t write on the first idea that comes to mind. Chances are, most of the state will be thinking and writing about the exact same idea! Instead, focus on finding the deeper, metaphorical message of the stimulus to distinguish yourself from everyone else

Discursive Writing

• Start off with a big, interesting question e.g. In today’s modern, technology-driven world, does literature hold any power or relevance? 
• Then, explore different perspectives on this question and draw from real life examples and personal anecdotes 

Approach to Preparation 

• Draft Cycles: I started drafting roughly 5 weeks before the exam date. Each week, I would hand in a draft to JP markers who helped me brainstorm different ideas and refine my expression!
• Practice: Because year 12 is very time-pressured, rather than focusing on doing as many questions as possible, focus on doing as many DIFFERENT TYPES of questions so that you best prepare yourself for the unexpected. 
• Efficiency: In the refining/editing stages, I often found that I could spend an entire day fixating on a particular paragraph, which meant that I made minimal progress in improving my English piece, and also wasted valuable time which could have been spent on other subjects. Therefore, I resorted to time blocking. 

E.g. Each editing session can only last for 1 hour. For each editing session, I would have “target areas” which I needed to address in that time block. 

Exam Technique 

Preparation is certainly very important, but the unfortunate reality is that the only thing you’ll be graded on is what you put on paper that exam day. Facing this truth is painful but necessary.

CHECKLIST FOR SUCCESS (Exam-Day) 

• Concise & precise 
• Clearly defines the key words of the question, & answers the question in every single sentence 

Common Pitfalls 

• Handwriting: As JP English tutors would say, “No matter how amazing your essay is, if your marker can’t read it, then they can’t mark it.”
  • In my breaks, I went online and completed handwriting exercises that increased my writing speed but also made my writing more legible. Not only does this improve your handwriting, it’s also highly therapeutic!
• Spending too long memorising essays or creatives: You’re much better off spending this time painfully editing each sentence of your essay to make it more precise. By doing this, you have essentially memorised it because you think so carefully about each example, each technique, and sentence construction. 
• Overestimating how much you can write: It’s important to keep in mind that on the exam day, you will need time to think about how to adapt your essay to the question. Therefore, refine and cut down your essay such that you have roughly 5 minutes to think and adapt. For me, this was 950 words for a 40 minute essay (NOTE: this will be different for everyone!).

Performance Tips 

• Damage Control: During at least one English exam in your high school career, it is almost inevitable that you may get writer’s block, have a freeze response or run out of time. Therefore, it is important for you to mentally prepare yourself for when things don’t go as planned.
  • Freezing: In the case that you find yourself freezing or having a mental block, take a few breaths. The worst thing you can do is panic! Underline the key words again, then mentally go through the progression of your paragraphs to see where you can adapt your analysis to the question. 
  • Timing issues: when drafting, make a mental note of which quote/s or phrase/s you can take out during the exam in the case where you find yourself running behind time. This ensures that you still have the crux of your essay, and oftentimes, markers won’t know that you’ve taken out a piece of analysis from your pre prepared essay. 
• Simulate exam conditions: To reduce the anxiety of going into an English exam, I made sure to do practice exam papers with my friends in a room at the library. I also used tape to mark out the typical size of an exam table, and organised all the paper as I would in an exam such that all the ‘small things’ became muscle memory.
• Visualisation: To increase my efficiency during the exam, I would visualise the timing of the exam (e.g. in the 15 minute mark, I must finish the introduction and first body paragraph) the week before the exam day. I would also visualise which parts of my essay I would change to adapt to the question, and which parts I wouldn’t change. 

Growth Mindset 

Throughout year 12, it is very natural to feel demotivated at times. One instance was when I received a below average mark for my Task 1 English Advanced assessment. However, by talking to the incredibly supportive JP tutors, they helped me gain a growth mindset and encouraged me to view each upcoming assessment as a new opportunity to show the markers how much I had improved since the previous task. Their individualised written and verbal feedback on my work also helped me write with more concise expression and enhanced the progression of my arguments within my essays. With their guidance, I was able to bounce back and achieved full scores in short answer, MOD A, B & C tasks! 

Looking back, while year 12 English can be challenging, it can also help you build character, resilience and discipline. High school will go by faster than you expect, so cherish it and remember to ask for help from the amazing resources and mentors around you!