read, understand, practise and apply
INTRODUCTION
Hey, I was a Form 5 student in a boarding school (Sekolah Menengah Sains Seremban in 2010) and being around with intelligent friends sometimes can be very stressful to keep up with. I admit that I also was struggling with my essay writing in Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia (SPM) bahasa Inggeris paper 1 in section B for a long time. Although I got an A for my Penilaian Menengah Rendah (PMR) bahasa Inggeris, it was different from the SPM bahasa Inggeris because most of the questions are subjective questions and in paper 1 we have to write two essays; one Directed Writing essay and one Continuous Writing essay which carry maximum 85 marks out of 160 marks in total. In this blog I will be discussing on Continuous Writing and giving emphasis on narrative essay. Continue your reading to find out why I am giving such emphasis on narrative essay.
GETTING TO KNOW YOUR QUESTION PAPER
SPM bahasa Inggeris paper 1 consists of two sections; Section A and Section B.
Section A is where you are applying your knowledge on writing a talk, a speech, a report, a dialogue, an article, a letter and so on. You are given 45 minutes to answer this section. This section is compulsory for you to answer because only one question is given that brings a total of 35 marks. How the examiner marks the directed writing: from 35 marks; 3 marks awarded for format; 12 marks for content points and 20 marks for language (grammar).
Section B is where you are applying all your knowledge in writing skills. This section is where the rules of grammar take their roles. Therefore, prepare yourself with adequate amount of grammar and how it works. Now, lets take a bird's view on this section.
· You are given five questions and only to answer one.
· You are given an hour to read through all questions, to choose the question you feel most comfortable with, to plan for the points, to write and to check for any grammatical error. That’s seriously a lot of tasks to do within 1 hour. So my suggestion is that you must determine your chosen or most comfortable type of written essay (either narrative, reflective, descriptive, argumentative/persuasive or factual/expository). For me, I rather avoid choosing reflective, descriptive, argumentative/persuasive or factual/expository essay because these types of essay require a lot of knowledge on current issues. Thus, I choose narrative essay.
· This section carries 50 marks.
How the examiner marks the continuous writing: they mark the essay based on impression which means there is no fixed formula to mark your essay, but they will judge your essay based on your tenses, vocabulary, sentence structures and so on. From there they will determine your marks. Later in this blog I will be discussing on ways to earn high marks for your Continuous Writing.
WHY NARRATIVE ESSAY?
Firstly, let us explore the pattern of continuous writing essay questions from 2002 to 2010.
Year|Questions|
2002|- (Descriptive) a teacher who has great influence on you - (Factual/Expository) good result at school do not guarantee success in the future - (Descriptive) how I can help to make the world a better place to live in - (Open essay) colours - (Narrative) completing a story |
2003|- (Descriptive) a day wished never happened - (Factual/Expository) country to choose and why - (Descriptive) an invitation that cannot live without - (Open essay) friends - (Narrative) completing a story|
2004|- (Descriptive) a festival celebrated - (Factual/Expository) ways to promote tourism in Malaysia - (Descriptive) my ideal school - (Open essay) clothes - (Narrative) completing a story|
2005|- (Descriptive) biggest challenge in life - (Factual/Expository) ways to keep oneself healthy - (Descriptive) who would you be if you were given a chance to be anybody - (Open essay) music - (Narrative) unexpected visitor|
2006|- (Descriptive) an enjoyable weekend you had - (Factual/Expository) ways television help students in studies - (Descriptive) your life in the next ten years - (Open essay) food - (Narrative) completing a story|
2007|- (Descriptive) an embarrassing experience - (Factual/Expository) giving opinions whether teenagers today are only interested in entertainment - (Descriptive) my early years - (Open essay) tomorrow - (Narrative) completing a story|
2008|- (Descriptive) a hard-working person who succeeded in life - (Argumentative) examination - good or bad - (Descriptive) perfect future husband or wife - (Open essay) stars - (Narrative) completing a story|
2009|- (Descriptive) unforgettable incident seen on way home - (Argumentative) school children should not have long holidays - (Descriptive) favourite day of the week - (Open essay) beauty - (Narrative) completing a story|
2010|- (Descriptive) most popular student in school - (Argumentative) internet mostly a good thing - do you agree? - (Factual/Expository) ways to save the environment - (Open essay) home - (Narrative) completing a story|
We can see that every year narrative essay question is asked and it is about completing a story either given the beginning or the ending of the essay except in 2005 where the question stated clearly on what is the main event of the story. The rest of it, you can determine your own plot of story. Easy hah?
Now I will explain why I am so excited about narrative essay.
· you are only write the essay in past tense; therefore no confusion on tenses
· it lets you to imagine a situation; allowing to express creative ideas
· if you lucky enough, the question given is plot-free (its you who create the plot fitting to the question given)
· you can use wide vocabulary
· easier compared to open essay, factual essay and argumentative essay
· need not to remember current issues around you
These are lists of benefits that I can think of when writing a narrative essay. Continue reading my blog as I will bring you on how to produce a good narrative essay.
PRIOR TO THE EXAMINATION: WRITING PRACTISES
To produce a good narrative essay, first you need to brush up your grammar. It does not work if your grammar is not that good. Get help from your friends and english teacher especially because they know what they are doing; plus that is what they do - teach you!
Buy if you can afford to, if not borrow grammar books, example of english essays, and anything that is related from friends or library of your school because by reading it will improve your english skills.
There is always a friends that 'master' a certain subject and for this identify your friends who have the highest marks in Continuous Writing among you. Read his/her essay and try to relate his/her writing to yours. It is not a bad thing to copy the way they write the essay as long as it involve study and education.
Try to find time to write an additional essay (which is your own personal essay; not homework) for two or a week times and asked for your teacher's comments. As for me, I started to write additional essays after finishing my trial examination because my bahasa Inggeris grade was the lowest among the 10 subjects that I took. I started a bit late, but you should start NOW while you have the time. Believe me it helps a lot because for my trial I got a B but for the SPM examination I got an A+ for bahasa Inggeris and English GCE-O an 1A. English GCE-O is the marking standard of British English and it only takes the marks of your Continuous Writing. See how important it is for you to excel in Continuous Writing.
MY TIPS ON HOW TO WRITE A BETTER NARRATIVE ESSAY
1. BRUSH UP YOUR GRAMMAR
There is nothing more important than having a good grammar skills. So, language must be taken into consideration when writing an essay. Refer to the above writing practises.
2. ESSAY SHOULD DEPICT WIDE USE OF VOCABULARY AND INTERESTING PHRASES
Unlike the other types of essays, a narrative essay requires you to have a wide repertoire of vocabulary in the story you wrote. This is to avoid a dull story to be presented to the reader; in this case the examiner. From my previous writing, I wrote that the marking system for continuous writing is based on impression. Thus, to give good impression to the examiner on the essay you wrote, you must include a wide range of vocabulary and some interesting phrases. Study the examples given below:
Example 1
"It was a boring weekend. We were lazy to read books and study, so we planned for a camping trip. After gaining permission from our parents, we brought necessary camping things and food for the camping trip. Then, we went to Mount Tahan."
Example 2
"It was a mundane and lacklustre period after the school final examination. Danny, Erik and I had had enough of reading books and studying, so we all set on going a camping trip. After getting the green light from our parents, we equipped ourselves with the necessary camping gear and enough food to last us for the two-day camping trip. Then, we embarked on our journey to Mount Tahan with high spirits."
Between both examples, Example 1 depicts a dull story but Example 2 depicts a colourful story although both are mainly telling the same idea. Why? Here are the answers:
Example 1 lacks of vocabulary.
Reading Example 1 does not portray sense of maturity in writing unlike Example 2.
Example 1 lacks of details but Example 2 has an adequate details in the writing that added the value of interest.
The use of word/phrase like mundane and lacklustre, green light, camping gear, embarked and high spirits added more sophistication to Example 2.
So, how to make your essay more interesting to read?
Find words or phrases that can replace a common word that you think can be used for every essay you want to write. For example happy can be replaced by cheerful, cheery, merry, joyful, light-hearted, jovial, gleeful, buoyant, carefree, blithe, glad, elated, ecstatic, euphoric, overjoyed, exuberant, in seventh heaven, propitious, auspicious and fortuitous. Actually these replaceable words for happy just only a portion of it. A thesaurus may come handy for this job. Try searching for sad, shocked, scared and so on.
Insert at least two idiomatic expressions in your essay like Example 2 that uses the idiom green light which means giving permission and high spirits which means happy. From Example 2 which is a complete paragraph there are already two idiomatic expressions. So, imagine if there are five similar paragraphs! word? Most of us do not understand the word "propitious", some may guessed that it means sad, surprise and so on where the real meaning is happy. Avoid to write something that you do not sure.
2. AVOID MEMORISING THE ESSAY WORD BY WORD
Continuous Writing is very related to Directed Writing in terms of language. The quality of language you portray in Directed Writing reflects the grammar knowledge that you have because in Directed Writing the is no specific question to be asked. It can be anything of any format. Unlike Continuous Writing, students tend to memorising an essay.
How do the examiner even know that a student was memorising an essay or not? It depends on the language on Directed Writing. Let say R got 6 marks for language in Directed Writing but in the Continuous Writing R's language band stands for A. By that time the examiner know that R was memorising an essay. Thus, R's Continuous Writing essay will fall to the lower band. Directed Writing does play a major role here.
Therefore, it is crucial for you
[->0] - http://englishspmessay4u.blogspot.com/2011/05/read-understand-practise-and-apply.html
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