Mark Student Trip Planning Made Easy

Mark student trip planning

what's up guys it's rowan here from art of smart tv and hsc english particularly with the new syllabus at play has perhaps been more challenging than ever and it's probably inevitable that at some point during the hsc year you get an assessment back that looks pretty horrible and the question then is what do you do about it and how on earth do you bounce back and so today i'm going to be chatting with sophie who had an experience of scoring 55 in a hsc english assessment a little scary but by the end of the journey ended up achieving 92 percent externally and 88 overall so had a 35 mark improvement um and you know sophie's story is proof that one assessment being screwed up or even a couple maybe is certainly not the funeral for your hsc that you can actually bounce back turn things around and still get into your goal university course so welcome sophie thank you welcome i guess an initial question just to kick things off right like um what happened in that first assessment that went all wrong so it was the first multi-modal assessment and i had a really difficult term for i was really unmotivated i wasn't doing as much work i should have i didn't really step up to that year 12 level so i got to this multimodal for us it was due at the start of term one i had a really really breezy summer holidays a couple weeks before i was like oh my goodness i have this multimodal due and i didn't really do too much research into my related text i didn't put as much effort as i should have i didn't really understand the concepts that were behind the common module and i thought i did pretty decent job handed it in yeah i got 11 out of 20. so that was a bit of a shocker especially because i'm not as i was not as confident in english at the start so that really really set my confidence back a bit yeah wow so context here you've done term four it's really your first english assessment confidence is already not as you said amazing what was your confidence like when you got the result back i was bowling i was like kid in the class you just started crying when i got the assessment back and i went up to my teacher and i'm like what am i gonna do i was going okay in year 11 and now i feel like i'm gonna i was one of those people who thought i've stuffed up one assessment i've stopped everything i'm not going to go where longer are you about it's just i was really thinking of the worst case scenario and yeah i was really really stressed out about it and i knew the pressure was on to go even go really well for the rest of the year which was really scary it is right because with one down it's like well if i'm going to dig myself out of this hole i need to try to do even better and you know english is compulsory so it's not like you can sort of fob it off to the two spare units that you might have um so what was step number one then right in trying to come back from this so probably for me i just i sat down maybe a week later i had a really good rate of the feedback i was given i at the time i read through it just didn't make too much sense i guess when you're emotional right you just can't process it the emotions kind of take over so i just i sat down a week or so later i read through when i read what do i actually need to do here because teachers give feedback for a reason so i thought if i can try to take this on it will be worth it so i had a little read of it i i was still very lost when you're 55 there's not a little good in there so i was quite confused on where to go actually it was after the 55 that i actually got started getting out of smart so that was probably a step for me because i was someone who's it's english has always been that subject which i really really struggled with so i needed a plan and i didn't know how to have a plan so that was a big set for me just to have some more guidance and all of that but the first most important thing for me was to get my confidence back and try as hard as i can to do the small things because i've never been the type to oh yes i'm going to write a 45 minute essay right now i'm highly motivated i know exactly what i'm saying i really had no idea so i would just try and do the small things and my tutor trisha also told me as well just if you can write an introduction if you can write one quote and a little bit of analysis and just try and put anything together that you can it's better than doing nothing and i just thought i'd make small goals for myself because at this point i had no idea what to do there was nothing really in my essays which were anything that i wanted to be by the hsc so i thought if i just work on small sections i can try and increase my confidence in maybe my introductions maybe they will go amazing and then work on topic sentences sophisticated analysis and that was throughout the year i just did small little things and over time that really helped me build my confidence up with so it's just building momentum by the sounds of it right so that your confidence grows so what i'm hearing from this is process the feedback and you might need some time to just settle then it's ask for help right recognize that you know based on the feedback maybe i can't do this on my own and then the third thing is start small right don't go you know what i'm going to do all this stuff and try to change it overnight it's not going to happen for most people definitely won't happen that way i just thought for me i was already struggling i just need to do small steps and in the end the small steps paid off so that's it which is fantastic because in the end how did you end up going so i got a 92 external in an 88 overall so it was my trip yeah my trials and hsa were the ones which really pulled me up so again i think this is a really important point to highlight is that because they're worth so much you can you know screw up your earlier assessments and still do really well overall yeah so it was really only my trial exam which actually went okay i got 55 the first one and then i got 60 of my creative writing and i think it was like a 70 or something in the um one of the other assessments so it wasn't i wasn't going amazing but i just knew by my trials my trials went well and then i knew that hsc was worth 50 so even if i did screw up an assessment school it's when you divide it down and by your subjects it's really worth nothing and you can definitely work from there that's it so with the hsc worth 50 you knock out a band fix which is fantastic yeah you can really change your mark and it did yeah which is so great and i think students need to hear that because i think it is easy to get into the trenches and the pit of you know anxiety that hits and not see that bigger picture um one of the things i guess i wanted to ask you is you know you had that second assessment so you got the 55 you said the next one was maybe 60 you know there's some small growth um but how did you feel when you got that were you still like kicking the guts it was my creative writing it was a creative writing one for craft of writing and it was meant to be my strongest point so again it wasn't actually that was my third assessment and it was a real kick in the guts because i thought i was going well i was doing the small things and i got that 60 and i was really crushed because i thought it was the best piece of writing i put so much time into it and i was really crushed because i thought it was good it was another little step down for me how did you stay motivated through that then oh goodness that was hard but i think for me i just yeah tried to do the small things i was trying all throughout english not even in creative writing to play to my strengths a bit um i'm a real humanities student and i did legal and modern and they were my best subjects so i thought if i have some of the thinking of those subjects and think like what i do in them although english is not the same like for instance i did a lot of research in my legal and modern and research assets in my strongest suit so i thought english in the end is not the most like it's not it's not too dissimilar so i thought if i do some research if i research my tech survive research like academic articles or i just do my research i can really get a whole bunch of other perspectives especially for someone who i struggle with sophisticated analysis like people would say sophisticated analysis i had no idea what they were talking about until i figured it out for myself so i really just tried i looked up other subjects and i looked what what's working for me that i can transfer to english and that that was probably something i just tried to do i just tried to read a lot and for creative writing i just read lots of examples and i saw what they were trying to do and how it succeeded and maybe not in some cases but i just really really researched quite widely and i just before i even was writing i was looking and seeing what are these people doing what's their aim how did they go and how can i emulate some of that in my own stuff which gave me a bit of confidence to say i can do this there's not 10 million words i have no idea what they mean i can speak i can write sorry in a way that i can that's authentic to me and still hopefully go well at that stage that's awesome so what's happening here is one you know that the hsc is worth 50 so you know got to keep going and then two you're sort of finding the strengths and going well let's leverage these this is a challenging subject it's not working for me yet yes but if i can build these other strengths from my other subjects and pull it into english maybe i can get it going in time for that 50 hsc in the end i knew that that day in october was the most important so every little thing that i did would add up in some way contribute in some way even if it wasn't contributing right now or the next assessment in the end everything that you do adds up and english it takes a lot of effort it was my hardest subject i struggled with it so much i cried so many tears but again either the little things and the constant improvement just it works out in the end if you put the time in it will 100 work out now i understand along this journey you were getting some some sort of support with trisha i'm an art of smart tutor um what prompted you to reach out for help and then what did what was it like working with trisha so i reached out after getting that really low mark because yeah i sat down with my mum and dad and they're like you need to pull this up if you want to get into law so i just i was looking at different tutoring companies and artist smart had a really good reputation so yeah i um yeah contacted data smart and got in contact with trisha and trisha was the fairy godmother of english for me she absolutely saved my mark so even obviously helping me a lot with my essays and especially answering the question i didn't know how to answer the question until i i started working with trisha and more so than that just motivation and so on i could always just type on the google doc like trisha can you please read this i'm really lost and trisha was always there to have a read on my stuff or help me figure out some more analysis and if we say every thursday we would just go through she would help me a lot with my assessment tasks as well she'd help me go through feedback and understand where i can improve and she was one of the people who gave me all those um like example pieces to have a read of and basically prompted me to start doing a lot more research and yeah trisha honestly saved my english mug yeah wow well i mean you did a lot of work as well i don't want to you know you shouldn't take away from the fact that clearly you know you stayed committed throughout the journey but it's great to hear that trisha had such an impact a question what were you doing week to week right so we've got some of these bigger picture themes that you were sort of trying to work on um you know week to week throughout the terms after that first assessment what did that look like so obviously i was to be doing any work set by school so my teacher would often set um a paragraph or some some bit of work for school and trisha would always set me something as well just a creative piece or a paragraph or so i would be doing those quite consistently yeah as much as i was yeah i was working on doing all of that and just keeping up with research so i'd go on jstor and i'd read a couple of articles about i did 1984 or i would yeah look at a study guide for richard i did that as well so i'll be doing probably my schoolwork an extra piece of work and then just some more wide reading and so what i'm hearing is writing and reading yeah like writing is in practicing so that you can further enhance your ability to sort of communicate sophisticatedly um and then reading so that you could actually have something to say yes basically and you know and sort of craft your thesis and arguments and you know what was the best thing about working with trisha and arthur smart honestly i think it was probably she has a major contribution gave my confidence back obviously i was doing the small things but it was trisha who really she was the one who was looking at all my work and showing me that this is actually like over you've got this to work on this is really good this is something that would get you this introduction would get you a band six or this is a really really sophistic sophisticated piece of analysis so apart from all the time she's spent working with me working with analysis working with questions working with that it was just knowing that things were going to be okay she would always be telling me okay this is really good and would help me enhance upon what i was already going well that would be like okay this isn't working as well but you can do this to improve on it so one one of the things she'd always give me to do was 20 minute um mini essays so it would be helping me with answering the questions so i think it was one p one essay and i didn't ask the question so she was like okay here's the thing you could do you just write um a introduction three topic sentences ten sentences and a conclusion and just just in just trying to answer it don't think about sophistication just try and answer it in your own way and i did a lot of those over time and they were very bad at the start but that was probably one of the exercises which helped me most with actually looking at the question and being like okay here's here's what i can say about it which is actually related so that was an activity that i did a lot throughout my top throughout my different topics and it worked out because i started answering the question which is great and it's so critical right you don't answer the question it doesn't matter how brilliant everything else you have exactly you won't get the mark so um leading up to let's say hsc exams um what were you doing to prepare for those hsc exams so obviously there's been a new syllabus there isn't a whole lot of um tests like past papers around and um there was only the nessa given ones for us so i worked through those i tried answering those some of them in time conditions some of them with a 20 minute quick mini essay but a lot of it was looking at the syllabus and they can't ask you something that's not in the syllabus they might have it worded weirdly it might not be it might not present exactly as it is in the syllabus but they can't ask you anything outside it so i spent a lot of time looking at my text in relation to the syllabus so it sounds quite obvious but a lot of like i didn't do that a lot until um charles and hsc sitting down and thinking okay here are the key words how do these words relate to my text how they relate to my quotes how do they relate to my analysis and making sure that they were embedded in what i was going to be writing about so because they can only ask from us so looking at the syllabus was probably the best thing i could have done and then that's the sort of like core of helping you sort of get a sense of what you could what you could expect to see what sort of writing were you doing lots of practice responses like what was happening on that front so there obviously wasn't a lot of papers around we had trial papers or we all got together and got a lot of trial papers so i would work through at the end i was working on maybe the week before at least okay so maybe a week before i'd do like an essay or a mini essay a day and then a few days before that i'd look at two three questions and just even do a five minute planning session just brainstorm what i would say just getting as much exposure as i possibly could without like obviously there's not a lot of resources but getting as much resources as you can because the thing of the new syllabus is everyone's in the same boat it's not like someone has the key to the syllabus and everyone's in the same boat so even if you don't completely understand chances are most other people don't either so it's comforting it was comforting to know that no one else knew what to expect especially with that paper one which was a little bit of a curveball sorry so then you didn't memorize an essay by the sounds of it you just did loads of practice questions i did i wrote line up my quotes and some like base analysis but i didn't write learnt essays because they said not to wrote learn them so i thought there's obvious they're not gonna and they're not gonna say don't vote loan if there's not a reason for it but i would vote learn your quotes and base analysis and based on your experience with the exam papers was that true that rote learning just would have been challenging in terms of an essay itself yes for some of the questions yes for some of them you probably could have gotten away with it um for example the common module question there was a lot of controversy about it because a lot of the people who had wrote learn were really upset because it didn't fit love deception loneliness or whatever the human experience was so that was that paper was like it's always been like my best one so i was quite confident going into it but knowing the fact that i hadn't got one essay and i'd done i'd practice so many different questions and a lot of curveball questions from different schools and looked at the syllabus and yes they can specify an experience because that's within the syllabus even though most of us weren't aware of it at the time um so for that one definitely not definitely not craft of writing i tried i had ideas and i pulled from probably three or four creators i've run in the past to you to create the one that i do on the day so that was so rather than memorize it you're writing enough that you've got a bank that you can pull from and you're remixing and reshaping based on what you have in front of you yes that's what yeah i think that's really key to it because if you have one essay going in then what if it's got nothing to do with it so also another thing i would do before like before the exam was just practice i have my what i call my base analysis what i'll probably write in most um most exams but i always do a practice the extra couple of sentences and i'm linking to the question that was something i had to work on because my introductions were good my topic sentences were good but my paragraphs were not answering it so that was another thing i did in preparation for the hsc was just to write my base analysis down but also write okay here's what is the link to the question here building your muscle if we call it that to actually respond to the question which i know you said was your core problem day one right so it's continuing to do that so a question then given that you've successfully navigated the new hsc syllabus um you know would you have any sort of top tip for students that are facing you know facing it in future years english isn't as scary as many people make it out to be a lot of people say it's the hardest um hardest subject in the hsc a lot of people say it's really complicated and scary but i the way i think i succeeded from all of this was just breaking it down to the basics just yeah breaking it down so english isn't some big scary monster once you put the time and the effort in and you can understand and then it's going to become a whole lot easier so it will be it'll be different for everyone these are things that work for me but once you either you take this advice or do whatever works for you it won't be as scary so i think that was a massive part of my loss of confidence was everyone being this is the scariest subject you know you have to work doubly as hard for english but um but really demystifying english and just being like okay this is just like any other subject this is what you've got to do for it and taking away that massive sort of yeah mystery about the subject really helped with my mindset which was the biggest struggle through everything well and second question then and so thanks for sharing that i think that's so true like mindset is such a big factor uh and maybe it's the same answer but what would you say to a student who's doing english and screws up an assessment you know what should they do i would say if you screw up an assessment first that's not the end of the world secondly just there's there's obviously really there's probably good air there is good areas what you've done but i don't just by sitting down with your feedback with your teacher with your tutor with someone just reading it through getting a second eye having a read through of what you've said and looking and making practical steps to being able to improve saying okay maybe your analysis isn't sophisticated enough work on that you can do that by just the way that i did analysis was i would just continually ask why so that i would write something and i'd be like well why is this important and then i'd write an answer then i'd be like why is this important i just kept asking why and questions of my own thing and for me that like really helped and by sitting down and thinking okay what can i do here here's here's my area of improvement what i need to improve in and sitting down and just thinking okay i can do i can do more practices of this i can get a tutor i can um i can do this or that having i would just sit down and write a list of steps that i can do and small things even because obviously it's a massive loss of confidence when you don't go as well especially when you think you're going well so if you're just doing yes small just writing down even like a list if you're that kind of person of what should i do now what are my steps it really just brings things back to perspective because obviously there's going to be a lot of noise around you because it's year 12 everyone's stressed everyone's got their own thing and even even sometimes talk with your friends like not even your close friends but talking to people at school and if study groups are a thing that work for you or just don't and i think the biggest thing is don't internalize it there are so many people out there who want to help you who want you to go well and who have the ability to help you so just yeah i think that's what i would say that's what worked awesome so there you've heard it guys we've just heard some really incredibly practical tips from sophie on how to bounce back if you don't do so well in english and then how to you know navigate this new hsc syllabus and i think ultimately sophie's advice of if you get the results sit down deconstruct the feedback and write a list you know really practical list of what should i do differently is very good advice and you know fortunately sophie's just shared the list that she really implemented in her own life to turn things around which my hope is will help you if you're in the same position if you have any comments about how to turn things around for english leave it in the comments below one of our team will get back to you to support you if you need more help you know we've got incredible team of teachers tutors and mentors that can support you and work with you for hsc english and finally if you haven't already hit the subscribe button hit the bell to get notified because we bring videos to you every single week so we will see you next week