Hacks to improving English that you wish someone told you (HSC edition)

For year 11 and 12s, if your English grades haven’t been great, we got your back. English is a compulsory subject, so regardless of if you’re good or bad, you would need to do an English subject to get into university. To save you some time, we have summarised some useful ways that has helped many students obtain good English marks.

1. Read your prescribed texts early when you are free (i.e. during the holidays) and understand what your texts are trying to convey. Do not just read, make sure you’re picking up the main concepts, themes, and ideas. If you don’t understand the text at all, here are a few options:

• Read the text with online (free or paid) explanations, e.g. Litcharts.
• Ask your teacher for some summaries/resources of the texts.
• Hire an English tutor! You can read the parts you don’t understand with them, and they’ll be able to explain to you what the text is about.

2. Ask your teachers, friends or seniors for any good sample essays related to the texts. Make sure to ask for essays that have previously achieved top marks! If you have got no good quotes or literary devices to discuss about in your essay, you can borrow theirs! Of course, you’ll need some of your own analysis and you’d need to rephrase their analysis in your own words. Also, make sure that their essays are relevant.
3. Like #2, but if you couldn’t obtain any essays from people know you. Look online but be careful. Make sure what’s online is suitable to what you’re writing about and that it is not written in bad quality. If you can check, try research about the author of the piece of writing to see if they’re a credible source.
4. Ask your teacher questions! If you don’t understand anything, simply just clarify with your teachers.
5. Need more help than the 5 minutes of attention that the teacher gives you after class or the generic response you receive on google classroom, email or on Edmodo from your teacher? Hire a tutor! They’d be able to help by:

• Going through anything you don’t understand
• Giving you advice on how to write essays effectively
• Giving you feedback on your writing (or editing your work)
• Explaining concepts in a new but relevant perspective

So, do you think you need an English tutor now? To contact us, please email admin@australiantutoring.com.au or call us at (02) 9247 0835. Or you can also direct message us on Facebook.