Struggling to write essays (1 Viewer)

[swagmeister]

So, I am currently doing EBB and GGB for Mod A but the generic problem that I am having is with writing my essays. I see the question, work on the my thesis statements and introduction, but 4 hours later on the same essay I still haven't really delved into my first paragraph. Instead, I keep worrying about my arguments and whether they are valid, and then I go to read exemplar response's to get some ideas but this ends up making it worse because I feel down and that I need to be able to write at that level originally so I keep changing my original argument, then spend like another hour researching the philosophical context of the texts but still get no where...

Any thoughts on how I can overcome this? I am putting the time into writing essays but I am just not ending up with an essay rather I end up thinking that it is going to be impossible to get a band 6 and that my arguments aren't good enough and that there aren't any good quotes to support and points and so on and so forth... I guess what I am almost trying to do is make a perfect essay when I don't have the skills and it is going to take time.

Any help would be much much appreciated

 

[teridax]

Tbh, I think you're just stressing out. Rarely will you find someone who can create the "perfect" essay in their first draft (unless you're a gun English student [only accounts for 5% of the state imo]). So quit fretting and take your time, you will slowly write top quality essays through practice. What I would do though, is read your essay outloud and ask yourself these Q's. Does this make sense? Does it answer the question? Does every point I make in my response, contribute to my thesis or is it just extra wording? If any of your analysis is not good, then discard it.

(and I think you meant Mod A haha )

 

[bigdawstv]

Keep practicing and making drafts, you'll eventually get there.

 

[dinomyte]

Wow, this was exactly me for Mod A last year.

It's perfectionism. This is making you stress out about writing the perfect essay. Remember that it's still earlyish in the HSC right now and everyone sucks at writing essays (at least not to the quality that you'll end up in by the actual HSC) so don't worry about trying to write the perfect essay. Unless your essay is due very soon, I think you should take 1-2 days off and just not think about the essay at all. Let your mind take a break from worrying. Try it again with a clearer mind and less stress. You'll gain more motivation and confidence to start.

Something else I tried was spontaneous writing. After reading so much about context, exemplar responses, studying the content etc I always felt like I had all this knowledge in my head, but I just couldn't get it down into coherent sentences. So I started a new word document, and literally typed all I knew about a certain theme (e.g pride from Frankenstein/Blade Runner) without stopping, and in informal language. I would then take bits and pieces out of the word dump to start my essay, or I would reword it into formal language and make it an actual essay paragraph. This helped organise my conceptual argument.

Another thing I did was making a table for technique, analysis, effect, and link. So instead of writing the essay, I collected all my techniques into a table. Then I literally formed sentences systemically from the info in my table into essay format.

Remember that all arguments are valid if you can support them with evidence, so don't go looking for the most "valid" one because chances are, what you believe is the most "valid" argument is probably overused and unoriginal. I believe that the best essays are written when you can communicate your own personal thoughts.