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Good luck ESL students! (1 Viewer)

Survivor39

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Good luck everyone in the upcoming HSC exams, espcially your ESL exams. The best last-minute advice I can give you is to
- read the questions carefully!
- write neatly (you are likely to attract a higher mark if you write neatly),
- write fast!
- do the essay questions first because they are worth more,
- don't take too long on the short-answer questions

Good luck!

Survivor39
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Miroku

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Essay questions worth 20 marks, and short answers worth 25 marks.
I think doing the short answer first is better because you can read the texts in the reading time.
 

Survivor39

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Yes, but the essay question is a single question and you need to give a lengthy response and write the best you can.

Short answer questions (SAQ) are composed of many small questions and generally students tend to write longer answers than what is required. So if you are short on time because you wrote too much for the SAQ, then your essay mark will suffer severely. On the other hand, if you are short on time for SAQ, then you can just write very brief, most of the time that will be enough to score you good marksm without compromising your essay mark.

But do what's best for you. I'm only here to give advice.
 

ne plus ultra

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omg i just get really confused about which part i should start from.........|||||||= = i always start from the normal order that from SAQ then the essay><

S39 just gave me a bit shock coz i usually thought the one who dosent follow the normal question order is stu*id (forgive me man!! orz) but anyway it sounds rational this time.........................

can we have a vote about which section do you think is better to start with????
(i know there must be people REPEAT to me 'to do what you feel good'..come on i need something not emotional but physical writting suggestion........)
 

Miroku

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I don't think it really matters if you start from Shot Answer or essay.
I think it is the best if you spend 50 min for short answer and 40 for essay as stated in the front cover of the exam.

I figured out that you can spend double the mark time. That is for 2 mark question you spend 4 min. For 6 mark question you spend 12 min and so on.
Because section 1 worth 25 marks. And time that should be allocated is 50 min. Hence double of 25. Section 2 is 20 marks, hence double of 20 is 40 min.
But for 1 mark question you usually only need less than 1 min and you can save time there.
(This is what I think is the best way:) .)

Also my ESL teacher who marks HSC ESL papers told me that you for your essay you must have intro, body and conclusion.
If you run out of time then you must stop writing your body and write the conclusion. Because in the band 6 marking criteria it sais
"Use language forms, features, structures effectively and skillfully"

And another thing my teacher said was that to remember that your audience is the HSC markers. Always answer the question and never write irrerevant things. Even if you have steep knowlege about something and you want to show off to the markers,don't write them. Markerswill not give you any marks.
Markers want to give you marks for answering the question so make it easy for them. (Eg The essay question sais "Describe why journey is challenging" then don't write about how the charactors in the text learnt new things and extended themselves physically, emotionally, intelectually and so on. You need to explain why the journey is challenging by using relevant quotes.)
Remember that your main purpose is maximizing the mark you receive.

Don't try to save time in either section 1 or 2 unless you can write perfect answer in short time. On the other hand stick to the time limits. Don't waist time tring to answer 1 question. Just write the answer you think is the best and move on to the next question. (Eg, if the question sais Identify 2 language features and describe its effect. Then even if you don't know how to describe the effect at least write the name of the technique such as metaphor or rhetorical question then quote from the text.)

I hope only few people read these tips. These are my secret strategies.
More pple is going to get higher mark by reading this and my UAI will
go down. Ahhhhh.....:bomb:

I hope bad luck for everyone. So my ranking will go up.
 

ne plus ultra

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first of all thank you Miroku san, but unfortunnatly i read your tip but fortunatly i dont think i m good at english enough to use your suggestions porperly in the exam so anyway dont worry....btw you are honest you perhaps speak out the thing that most people too scared to say....

okay bad luck to you too although my ranking still may not increase......
 

Realize

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just stick to the time limit doesnt matter which one you're doing first and it's harder to get mark from the essay question, thanks for the tips guys wish me luck tomorow :D
 

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