How to best prepare for your QCAA English External Exam
Breaking down the Assessment
The exam is an analytical response to a certain literary text from a prescribed list, one is chosen by your school and is explored in class. Your response is in the form of an analytical essay for an audience with a deep understanding of the text. The purpose of your essay is to communicate a well-informed perspective in response to an unseen question/task about the studied text.
You are given 2 hours of working time and 15 minutes of planning time. Your essay length is between 800 to 1000 words. For the exam, you are not allowed to bring in any notes, quotes or extra materials outside of your pens.
Where do I start?
Understanding the text
It might sound self-explanatory, but it’s important to understand the text inside-out and back-to-front. During the term, your teacher will go through the text section at a time and it’s important to listen to and take some notes so when it comes to your preparation you’ve got adequate equipment.
There’s a variety of ways you can go through the text to understand the context and deeper meanings. This could include:
- Character-by-character analysis of their role in the story and what they represent.
- How they may (or may not) have changed or evolved.
- Their connection to the main plot.
- The ideology they represent and/or their purpose.
- List of “important” quotes (this will be very helpful when writing your essay too).
- Potential exam questions that can be asked surrounding a character.
- Section-by-section analysis of the storyline (scene-by-scene or chapter-by-chapter).
- How a section adds to the entire story (its purpose to the plot).
- The section’s main arc (character occurrences – basically what happens).
- Where in the story it is (orientation, complication, resolution, etc)?
- Theme-by-theme analysis.
- Where specific themes are highlighted (loyalty, guilt, etc)?
- What steps were taken to showcase these to the reader (what characters were involved and what actions did they take)?
- Potential exam questions that can be asked surrounding a theme.
- How does the audience react/feel to these themes being shown?
I recommend a list of quotes categorized by your method of revising (could be one of the three above) is extremely helpful for your final essay.
Above are just three examples of a method to break down your text and help you fully understand what has happened, ensuring you don’t miss anything important. Notes you may find online are likely to miss small but key details that would be useful for specific questions, so it’s important to rely on your brain (yes believe in it) for understanding and going through the text.
Writing an Essay
In your younger years, you learnt a strict structure to write an essay. However, this time round your structure can be a bit more “flimsy” and creative whilst maintaining a strong base. I’ll break down the essay into the Introduction, Body Paragraphs and Conclusion.
Introduction (125-175 words)
- General Statements (2-3 sentences) about the background surrounding your text (author, title, historical context, brief description/overview of the text).
- Thesis statement (maximum 2 sentences) that answers the essay question and includes a very short preview of your arguments.
- Specific moments in the play.
- Evidence, impact on the audience and the author’s purpose
The introduction can be generally memorized as a format, leaving blanks for you to fill in with. However, I do recommend memorizing your general statements as they shouldn’t change no matter the essay question and provide you with an easy “lean/rhythm” into the essay instead of being overwhelmed with a blank sheet of paper. “The first step is always the hardest” 😊.
Body Paragraphs (600 – 700 words)
- Topic Sentence
- Includes your argument, characters and/or events involved.
- This can be further explored in an elaboration if extra context is needed.
- Evidence
- If it’s a quote, set it up and explain it. Try integrating it naturally instead of dumping it in. Should flow well in the paragraph.
- If it’s a situation, explain what has happened, build on the previously stated context and be specific for the audience.
- Analysis
- Analyse what this means and its connection to your argument.
- Connect back to your thesis too (this may include characters and their purpose).
- Impact on the audience (how does the reader feel because of this?)
- Repeat 2) and 3) accordingly, most likely 2 or 3 times in a single paragraph.
- Link between each section, making the transition as smooth as possible
- Concluding statements
- How does all the evidence relate to the argument and overall thesis?
In your essay, I recommend having 2 or 3 body paragraphs. One body paragraph does not portray a wide range of knowledge and would be too long of a constant text for the marker to read. Four or more paragraphs would be hard to follow back to the thesis, making it very tough to have a deep analysis for each argument and is not viable in the time and words allowed.
This section is where most of your marks for your exam will be allocated. The paragraphs’ flow and ease of writing increase when utilizing direct quotes and integrating them into the text well. This allows a deeper analysis of the utilised language and it is especially easy for the reader to follow.
When practising for your essay, I recommend writing “practice” body paragraphs on unique topics using a wide range of quotes for different purposes. This practices your writing skills for when it comes to a pressured environment you will have an almost “muscle memory” to writing a body paragraph. Writing body paragraphs is viable to do regularly instead of an entire essay, practice integrating and flowing your writing and the more you write, the more likely you may use a similar one for your final exam.
Conclusion (75 – 125 words)
- Summarise your 2 or 3 arguments including events and/or characters that were involved.
- This normally 1 or 2 sentences depending on your arguments.
- Reinforce your thesis.
- Try not to repeat it word for word, instead try paraphrasing it to an extent.
- The “So What” – Make connections to bigger ideas.
- The relevance of the texts and their themes/messages in daily life
- OR relevance to humanity (has it changed or stayed the same and how)
- OR specific situations or people to the theme/text may be relevant.
The conclusion should be very short and summarise your essay. It’s more of a writing convention and by that stage, your marker would have already decided most of your mark. But it is important to have essay writing conventions, so if you are running out of time even a one-sentence conclusion can give you some bonus marks.
Breaking down your mock exam results
This section assumes that you’ve received your mock exam results and looking to best use that experience to enhance your results for the external exam.
The actual mark you receive doesn’t matter and comparing to others won’t help either. In most cases, you had little to no time to prepare for them and it’s just seeing your current essay writing style and preparation technique. Further, the mock exam is also an example of what your teachers think of what kind of questions may be on your external exam and more so for you to try to see how a marker would look at your work.
Your mock exam will also personally help you with:
- The format of the exam (choosing your text, writing in the lines, etc).
- Timing
- The pressure of sitting in the hall.
- Getting comfortable with seeing a question you may not know how to formulate arguments for straight away.
After receiving your mock exam papers, it’s important to try identifying what specific writing skills you may have had trouble with and then work on them. This could include practice integrating quotes into a sentence, stepping through different evidence and/or explaining the impact on the audience.
It’s almost guaranteed that you will do better in your external exams than your mocks if you do targeted writing practice and take on feedback given by your teachers.
Final Tips and Tricks
Plan out your essay (use the 15 minutes)
This provides you with a clear vision of what your essay looks like and allows you to ensure that it all links back to a thesis. During this time write a thesis statement, and take a good chunk of time preparing this to be clear and concise. Then dot point out your 2 or 3 arguments and write out the appropriate quotes and or situations they are tailored for each argument. Having done this and you still have a reasonable amount of time, work on your topic sentences for your body paragraphs.
I also like to take a few deep breaths as the count goes down for planning time and just before writing time commences. This helps keep me calm and my heart rate, allowing me to think clearly.
Edit your work
My teacher always told me “Great writing starts with great editing” which involves “choosing the best word for the best place” in your essay. This will greatly assist in increasing your writing in every criterion of the ISMG.
Memorise quotes to a specific system
Allocate your quotes into specific categories. This could range from characters, events or themes. This best allows you to memorise your quotes (most importantly), enables you to use them to the best of your ability and you will be able to cover a range of arguments and topics giving you a good variety of tools to be prepared for whatever the exam throws at you.
FAQs
How much is the external exam worth?
The English external is worth 25% of your overall score for English.
How do I make sure to write between 800-1000 words?
There are a couple of different methods because the word limit is relatively strict, and you can be marked down for going over or under the word count.
During the exam, you can count how many words you have in a line then multiply it by the number of lines (pick a line that looks about your average amount). This gives you a rough estimate of your word count in the exam.
Before the exam, when preparing for the assessment it’s just practice. This can be broken into paragraphs. Plan how much you roughly plan to write for your introduction, body paragraphs and conclusion (and practice paragraphs with different practice questions).
How important is spelling, grammar and punctuation to our mark in the exam?
Spelling, grammar and punctuation have their place in the marking criteria however it is relatively small compared to other categories. You don’t have access to the marking guide, and it slightly differs from year to year but overall, it’s a small percentage of your mark. So, if you would like to add sophisticated word(s) but can’t exactly remember the spelling it's worth adding the misspelled word (if you can’t find an equally “good” synonym).
Want more personalized study guidance to help drastically improve your marks? A private tutor can make the biggest difference!
Written by KIS Academics Tutor for QCE Specialist Mathematics and Mathematical Methods, Ragulan Gnanavel. He also assists with Physics, English and Modern History assignments. Ragulan is currently pursuing a Bachelor of Actuarial Studies and a Bachelor of Commerce at UNSW. He has outstanding credentials as a tutor, and you can view Ragulan’s profile here and request him as a tutor.