How to Rework an English Essay

It can seem really daunting to get a bad mark on your English essay and have to think about scrapping the entire thing and starting from scratch. But more often than not, your essay just needs to be reworked!

The best way to do this is to physically write down all of your quotes and techniques on palm cards and to lay them out on a table. The next thing that I do is try to regroup all of the evidence into new paragraphs or reorder them to make sure that they flow better.

For example, in a comparative essay, sometimes students find that writing out separate paragraphs about each text and then comparing them at the end works best. However, I have noticed that generally this lowers the mark threshold. What I have found works best is pairing up quotes from each of the two texts together and analysing them simultaneously. This can be done much easier when rearranging your essay on palm cards.

Another method for rewriting your essay is to strip it down to the bare bones (evidence and techniques) and fill in the analysis again to make sure that everything flows. This is also probably the best way to go about studying for the HSC: memorising quotes, techniques, and maybe some bare analysis and then applying all of this to unseen questions under timed conditions.

Don't stress if it takes some time to rework your essays, and if reorganising them is too tricky for you, it's also okay to start again from the beggining! This time around, though, I would recommend that you write out an 'alpha' essay - or an essay that doesn't argue for anything too specific and can be molded very easily to any question that you might get.

Good luck with all of yout exams!