One of the problems is that students forget that they’re supposed to be forming a personal response to the texts. And that often begins with

Analysis does NOT mean paraphrase it. You should say how the quote shows your point (so you’ve got to have one of those) not that it does.

It's the weak chink in most people's armour, if they were born after 1975. Can you spot a grammar error - and identify it?

The Pattern of Mistakes (POMs) marking strategy identifies the most common mistakes and prioritizes the order of tackling them.

Good quoting mechanics make the difference between looking like you speak English, and looking like you hurt it.

You need to expand on the (big, impressive, profound) idea you’ve raised in the topic sentence with a few more sentences before moving ele

There are three things you must do in your topic sentence: 1. Make a clear reference to the question 2. Bring up the first idea mentioned

Good essays answer the question and explain their answer. This is an argument. Bad essays repeat the question and say memorized, irrelevant

Bands 3 and 4 are solidly made up of well-meaning kids who think that memorizing ten quotes and telling you where polysyndeton can be found

After you’ve given a straight answer to the question in your thesis statement (if you’re confused about this, read the last blogpost...

Are your essays terrible? It's probably because of one of these problems: 1. You don't understand what an essay actually is - I mean, WTF...

Sadly, most students aren't really receptive to model answers until after the Trials. Most Year 12s will try to use what they already...