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In this article, we share the tips from the English Team that will help you ace your HSC Trial exams!
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Your English Trial Exams are around the corner! Are you ready for them? Are you desperate to improve your internal ranking? In this post, I’m going to share with you the 7 Trial HSC Habits Band 6 English students have that others don’t.
While we teach our students how to succeed and come first, we also learn from them.
As a Matrix teacher, I’ve taught the English Advanced Trial and HSC Prep Courses for hundreds of students over the last 7 years. In that time, I’ve really been able to see what exceptional students English students do, that their peers don’t. Many English students think that the top English students have an innate talent or are just “better at English.” This isn’t the case, the top English students are more organised and effective in their study.
Obviously, it’s essential that you do well in your English HSC Trials as they make up a significant chunk of your internal assessment mark. the HSC trials are pretty much the last opportunity to cement or save your internal ranking. So, you really need to nail each section to get the ATAR that you want.
But this urgency and immediacy doesn’t mean it’s too late to make a significant impact on your marks. Quite the opposite. To help you make the biggest difference that you can to your Trial HSC marks (and ultimately, your HSC), I’m going to share the 7 study habits that set the Band 6 students apart from the rest!
Many students don’t know how to study effectively. Don’t worry, though, the Matrix English Team has got your back. Here are the 7 ultimate study tips we’ve put together to help you maximise your marks!
Boost your marks in your exams with our expert teaching at Matrix, and with detailed feedback you need to ace the HSC!
If you want to ace any exam, let alone exams as important as the Trials or the HSC, you need to be organised. You won’t be organised without an effective study plan and timetable.
What’s a study plan?
A study plan is where you break down the areas of the subject you need to revise into smaller chunks. You need to be tactical when you think about how to do this. For example, if your’re pressed for time and can’t take an on-campus study course for English, take an online one.
So, how do you design an effective study plan?
Band 6 students have surgical precision in targeting their weaknesses. To emulate them, think about where your weaknesses lie.
Do you kick arse in Module B, but struggle with Craft of Writing (don’t worry, you’re not alone)? If so, you should focus on Paper 1 revision over Mod B. Go over each Module and think about where your strengths and weaknesses lie and list them in order of weakness (1 is the weakest and biggest priority and 10 is the strongest and lowest priority).
Your list may end up looking a little bit like this:
This student would need to spend more time prepping for Paper 2 than Paper 1. They would need to produce a plan where they sit a few mock short answer sections (if you’re unsure of how to answer a short answer section, read this guide!), practice analysing unseen texts, and rewatch Bright Star documentary. Of less importance is writing multiple practice essays for Hamlet (but they should try to do a couple to be safe).
You may want to use a Priority Matrix to decide what things are most urgent when organising yourself.
Once you’ve split up your English study into bite-sized chunks, you need to plot out a timetable so you can get through everything.
For example, our student’s English study timetable may look like this:
Once you have your priorities and timetable, you’re ready to start working on acing English.
If you need more help setting up your study plan and timetable read our blog post, How to Create a Study Plan That Works!
The best students know that acing the HSC is a long game. The old adage that “the HSC is a marathon, not a race” is repeated in our success secret articles again and again because it’s true.
Top students study consistently. They start on day 1 of the year.
This doesn’t mean it is too late to start. it just means you have to start today and study consistently here on in.
Study habits can be developed at any time, you just need to be consistent with your practice to make the habit permanent. You need good study practice to improve your English marks during Trials. Taking an online study prep course over a week or two will help you develop that consistent study practice.
English is a subject that requires you to develop skills. You can’t cram for English, there’s simply too much content to cover. The last thing you want to do is try to memorise essays that won’t answer the questions you’ll be set.
Instead, you need to work consistently over weeks or a month, or ideally a couple of months. You need to develop your analytical skills, your confidence and talent as a writer, and your knowledge of the texts you are studying.
Writing is very much a craft, rather than an innate skill. By that, we mean that writing is something learned through constant practice and revision. It’s not something you can develop overnight!
If you want to see gains in English, you need to invest the time into your study. As English is a compulsory subject, it is very important that you don’t skimp on it.
If you stick to a consistent study plan you will:
If you study consistently in the months leading into your HSC Trials, your English marks will definitely improve. In addition, you’ll have developed a good study practice that will live with you through the HSC and beyond.
How many times have you read the texts that you are writing about, really? Reading a text once or twice isn’t going to give you the insight and understanding you need to write a deep and powerful essay response. It’s never too late to pick up your text and reread it.
The top students know that,
It’s important to read slowly. Don’t read to tick a box. You must aim for understanding when you read!
Reading slowly and taking the time to reflect on your text will ensure that you have a comprehensive understanding of the text and how it connects to the Module. Rereading a text after you’ve been studying the Module for a while will give you better insights into how the text reflects the Module rubric.
They always take notes while they’re reading. If you have an insight, WRITE IT DOWN! NOW! Don’t risk forgetting it. Take the time to summarise your understanding after you’ve finished. You can then compare your new ideas to your old ones and see how your interpretation of the text has developed.
Looking back at how your ideas have developed is called “reflective practice.” It is a proven way to help you deepen your understanding of texts. Reflecting on your learning allows you to compare old ideas and new ones and learn from any mistakes or misreadings you may have had. Top students are always reflecting and iterating and improving.
Don’t just read on your own, read with your mates. Reading with friends and forming a reading group will give you the chance to discuss the things that you have read and argue about the insights you have developed. You want to be able to debate ideas. This means discussing your interpretation of the text with your peers.
Ultimately, reading is the most time-consuming aspect of English study. But it is essential to doing well. Your best approach is to be organised and begin rereading your texts well in advance of your Trial Exams. If you need more help with this, read Part 2 of Beginner’s Guide to Acing HSC English: How to Analyse Your Texts.
High range students never have static notes. they’re always adding to them, refining them, condensing them.
How can you be like them? Take your key points and quotations and make them into tables; this will help you organise your study notes.
Transcribing your ideas into table form means that you can break down lengthy pieces of information into quickly accessible chunks. This is particularly useful when you’re writing practice essays. You can stick your tables above your desk and refer to them as you write. This process will aid with the rote learning of quotations and techniques.
Remember, hand-writing your notes rather than typing them.
• Writing things out by hand is a proven method to increase information retention. Our brains are malleable (this is called plasticity) we can reshape their neural pathways by doing things repetitively.
For example, this is how violinists can improve their skills by playing over and over again. When you write your notes out by hand, the manual action helps to embed the information you’re transcribing. You’re not just reorganising your notes you’re remembering and analysing information. Pretty neat, huh?!
• Nowadays, many students don’t spend a great deal of time writing things out by hand, but then they arrive at Year 12 and the Trials and HSC exams require you to write volumes of information down in short periods.
Handwriting your notes will help you develop the hand muscles and endurance you need for a two-hour exam where you need to produce three lengthy pieces of work. Hand-written notes are like cross-fit for your hands.
• Handwritten notes give you the opportunity to be creative.
Don’t forget, detailed and accessible notes are essential for effective study. It is very important to invest the time in them if you want to ace your English Trials.
Band 6 students are always writing. They’re writing notes or their writing practice essays.
In drama, you have dress rehearsals before a performance. In sport, you’ll often finish training by having a mock match or race.
Doing a dry-run or rehearsal of something is an excellent way to develop your skills and confidence.
When you are studying, you should definitely take the time to write practice essays and creatives. Witing practice responses allows you to test out your ideas and selected examples on questions. You will gain confidence as a writer by seeing what works in your essays. You’ll avoid the pitfalls of writing unsubstantiated responses or poorly structured essays in an exam, because you’ll make those mistakes in practice responses and understand how to avoid them in future.
Think about it, why do you think those Band 6 English students don’t make any fatal mistakes in their exam responses? They’ve made them in their practice so they don’t make them on game day!
In fact, not only should you do practice essays, but you should also do them under exam conditions.
Let’s have a look at a couple of different reasons:
Good question, here are some links:
Don’t just write them and forget them, though. It’s imperative that you go back and mark them.
Why?
Firstly, it forces you to understand a marking criterium and what’s required to fulfil one. This will teach you how to write for your marker rather than for yourself. The better you know the expectations of the Module and how the questions relate to the Marking Criteria, the better you can respond to potential questions.
Secondly, when you reread your essays you can see their strengths and weaknesses. You want to make sure you mark them against a rubric or marking criteria so you have an objective measure (use the ones that NESA provides or one from one of your school assessments). Marking your work forces you to take a critical and objective perspective on your work. After all, you need to learn to assess the strength and logical coherence of your ideas.
Questions top students ask themselves, and that YOU should ask yourself when marking your essays are:
Remember, asking yourself questions like these will help you pinpoint the strengths and weakness of what you have written. For this reason, this is a really important part of developing as a writer: as you can clearly see where you need to improve!
Go do a practice essay question! No excuses. Write! Write now!
The best students are confident writing their own questions? Why? because it demonstrates to them that they know the syllabus, Modules, and texts. They’ve seen enough past papers to ensure that they’re aware of what’s likely to be asked. This gives them exam confidence as well as testing their knowledge!
While there are plenty of past papers out there, the questions asked in trials and the HSC tend to adhere to particular structures and conventions. These are laid out in the Sample HSC Paper and Paper 2 papers on the NESA website. students who write their own questions and put together responses to them have realised that it’s better to prepare for unknown or unexpected questions rather than the ones that have been asked before. This way they’re not surprised and can remain calm and ensure they answer the questions that are asked.
Additionally, writing your own questions builds on your experience of other questions you’ve encountered AND it requires you to think about your knowledge of the text. Past HSC and Trial exam papers aren’t the only way to practise unpacking an essay question. In fact, you can turn this process on its head by writing your own questions (wait..what?!?!).
Once you’ve composed your question, answer it. Remember, writing responses to a broad array of questions will ensure you’re ready to ace your English Trial exams.
There’s an old saying: Birds of a feather flock together. It means that like-minded creatures tend to coalesce and do things together. top English students are the same. They’re not solitary creatures perched alone on high rocky outcrops. No, they’re socially engaged and willing to study with others and share ideas or challenge their beliefs. They do this by studying together.
Okay, so maybe studying isn’t cool (although it should be!). But it doesn’t mean you need to do it alone, far from it. Think about it, all of your high school friends are in the same boat, especially those in Year 12: you all have to study!
Working together as a group has many advantages and is a very effective way to study. If you haven’t already, you should organise a few of your friends to get together a couple of times a week and put your heads together. One of the advantages of the Matrix+ online Trial English Prep course is the discussion boards where people can share and debate their ideas with guidance from a subject matter expert.
Ideas and interpretations don’t develop in a vacuum. Discussions and group work have provided the basis for most human achievements. There’s a reason why the myth of the solitary genius is a myth. Sharing ideas and discussing them allows you to develop your thinking.
An important part of learning is thinking about how to support your positions and to argue for your points.
Band 6 English students have understood that working on their English texts with mates gives them an excellent opportunity to test their interpretation of a text and see how sound their arguments are. They understand that that’s the time to rethink things, not in the Trial Exams, pen in hand realising your approach to the question doesn’t work because you haven’t tested it.
Above all, study groups are excellent ways to get feedback on your work. Over the past years teaching the Matrix Trial and HSC Prep Courses I’ve seen many students who were strangers at the start of the week form study groups in person and online and start arguing over texts and sharing ideas and reviewing each other’s work. It always helps them improve. Study groups are the best way to let your peers read your assignments, practice essays, and creatives and give you constructive feedback on them. then you broaden your horizons and skills by returning the favour.
Let’s look at the things you should work together on in a study group.
Teach your friends
If you can’t teach a mate what you know, then you don’t know it well enough to share your knowledge. Top students realise this and take turns being the expert on a topic. It’s, without doubt, the best way to prove to yourself that you actually know what you think you know. The good thing about doing it with friends who are also trying to become experts is that you have a brain’s trust to fall back on when you get stuck! If you fumble, make a mistake or run out of steam, everybody learns as the others pitch in and help you out!
Book Club
Use your English study group as a way to discuss your core texts. Set a timeframe to reread your texts and then have meetings to discuss your understanding of them. Be prepared to argue. You want to test your ideas and arguments out, so make sure you think about how to support your arguments with logic and evidence.
Discuss critical perspectives and readings
Trying to find supplementary material for Module B and English extension can be hard. So, where do you start? Well, asking your friends about their supplementary texts and what other texts they think will work well with your core text is a good place to start. It’s even more useful if they’ve already read that article or paper, too. That way you have somebody to discuss and debate the ideas with!
A good exercise I’ve seen top students pick up is playing devil’s advocate with critic’s interpretations for Module B texts. The students take turns arguing for or against the perspective held by that particular writer.
Mark Each Others’ Work
Getting feedback on your work is hard. Matrix students get regular feedback on their writing in the one-to-one tutorial sessions that supplement their classes, but not everyone comes to Matrix. Having somebody mark your work is the best way to get feedback on what you’re doing well or doing poorly. In addition, returning the favour and marking your friends’ writing will help you see how others construct and support arguments. This is invaluable and can be a good confidence booster as it will show you where you stand amongst your peers.
Practise Your Speeches And Presentations
Alright, this isn’t something for your Trials. But it is an excellent way to improve your public speaking skills. Whenever you have a presentation assessment coming up you should get together and rehearse your speeches together. Present your speech to your mates and get feedback from them on what works and what doesn’t. This will develop your public speaking skills, give you confidence in your material, and be a useful opportunity to test your arguments and ideas before you have to craft them into essays!
Peer Support
Let’s face it, the HSC year is incredibly stressful. It can also be quite lonely as you spend long hours studying alone. Having a study group you can talk to is an excellent way of maintaining good mental health. You should make sure that you set aside time each weak when you meet to talk about the things stressing you all out and come up with ways to help and support each other. Sometimes it is useful just to listen or have others listen to you.
In addition, an English study group is a great way to develop friendships or make new friends that will extend beyond High School. After all, there’s nothing quite like the bonds forged in the fire during an HSC year.
Acing your Trials is important, but not getting the marks you wanted isn’t the end of the world. You must try your best, but you should also remember that you aren’t your marks. Many schools mark Trials against a very strict rubric, with many students getting lower results than they expected or hoped for.
If this happens to you, don’t beat yourself up over it. Use it as a learning experience!
Instead of mourning your marks, go through your responses and see where you went wrong. Then, discuss your responses and marks constructively with your teacher. With this in mind, don’t seek extra marks or a remark, but ask, “How could I do better? and, also, “What do I need to work on for the HSC?”
After all, you want to take this information as a starting block for getting things right for the HSC. At the end of the day, kicking arse in the HSC can help correct a weak trial result.
Written by Matrix English Team
The Matrix English Team are tutors and teachers with a passion for English and a dedication to seeing Matrix Students achieving their academic goals.
© Matrix Education and www.matrix.edu.au, 2023. Unauthorised use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Matrix Education and www.matrix.edu.au with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
