This is probably one of the biggest problems people have when preparing for English, and it can seem like an impossible one to overcome.
Fortunately, it is actually very easy to solve this if you just change up your study strategy a bit! Most people think you have to be able to think quickly in English. The secret actually is to do lots of slow thinking before the exam, so you have ideas ready to go when you get in.
What you have to do is plan out the arguments you can use to back up certain points, and then remember what evidence you will use to support these. It’s easier than it sounds!
The following is a foolproof plan to do this…
1. Get a giant list of essay topics. Scour every past SAC, exam, study guide, internet resource etc that you can. Make sure it’s a good 30-50 topics or so.
2. Break this list down by theme. Say your book has the themes ‘power’, ‘love and marriage’, ‘gender’, and ‘survival’. Make each of these into a heading. Then, divide the essay topics you have under each of these headings. If you come across a topic that doesn’t seem to fit any of the categories you already have, put it under ‘misc’, or create a new theme header (esp if there are more topics that match that theme).
3. You might also need headers for ‘characters’ and ‘genre’ if you are doing this for a single text response. Otherwise, you won’t have a suitable category for topics such as ‘How does Shakespeare use comedy in XYZ?’ or ‘John Smith is the most repugnant character in the play. To what extent do you agree?’
4. Now, go through each of the categories you have, and write down an essay plan for EVERY. SINGLE. TOPIC. All of them. How frustrated would you be if the essay topic you decided not to write on was the one you opened up the exam paper to find?
This can be really hard at first. You might not have many ideas, or you might find it hard to gather evidence. The first few plans you write will have to be very detailed. However, as you go, you will start seeing that the essay topics begin to repeat a bit, and you are able to reuse arguments and evidence from your earlier plans. Each subsequent plan can be a little shorter and less detailed, as you are more comfortable with the themes and arguments.
By the end of the category, you should be feeling much more confident. You should be able to look at any essay topic about the theme you just finished, and mentally prepare a comprehensive plan in just a minute or two. Sounds fake, but TRUST ME, it works.
5. I’d recommend doing one category every 1-2 days so you can think through the theme clearly without getting muddled. Probably don’t do more than one category a day. If you do, separate them a bit (e.g. ‘survival’ in the morning and ‘love’ in the afternoon or evening). Obviously, you can compress this a little if you are only a short time out from your exam.
From our years of experience tutoring, we can very confidently say: literally no one does this or knows how to study at all, thus you will be SO far ahead of everyone else if you use this strategy. If you have no current study strategies for English, or if the ones you do have aren’t changing your grades and confidence, you have nothing to lose by giving this a go.
Add a comment if you need any clarification!
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