Hey everyone, it’s Monday and you know that after school I release videos and today I'm
going to give you ten English hacks, which hopefully will help you with your English
studies.The other thing is that my competition for the upcoming (VCE study guides autumn
workshop) has finished. So the winner will be announced right at the end of the video,
so stay tuned.
One: Do Mind Maps. Mind Maps, one of the best way for you to visually collect the information
in one spot. When you read an entire book, especially if it is a long book and it is
around 300 pages- Wuthering Heights, anybody? - then it becomes quite hard to remember the
events in sequence or even to remember the events at all. Unless you’ve read it about
a hundred times. So reading books over and over again is fine but potentially it’s
not the most effective way. But if you just start writing things down, putting thoughts
to paper, it really is one of the most active ways that you can learn. When you first start
studying a text, my recommendation is to have an A4 page, then start creating a Mind Map
with everything that you know. That will help you understand where your missing gaps are
in knowledge and that will help you note - . Ok, I need to work on this particular thing, or
this particular character.
Number two: Teach your parents the text? So one of the best ways of learning, and I won’t
repeatedly say one of the best ways, but seriously one of the best ways of learning is to teach
your parents. It is much different learning a text than teaching a text. It is a way of
testing you to see how much you know about the text. And when your parents ask you - Oh,
why did that character do that? ; or I'm not too sure about this part, why did this happen?
With those types of questions, that might actually help you think- Oh, you know what?
I hadn’t really thought of that before. So that also helps you to then realise again
where your gaps in knowledge are and you can work on it.
Number three: Highlight your texts in different colors. I’ve mentioned this before in my
previous video. However, if you’re not doing this already, please start doing this ASAP.
There is no point highlighting a whole book in yellow because when you flip through your
book trying to find that one specific quote, how are you going to find it? Only when you
separate your pages into different colors, will you then think to yourself - Oh, the
theme of Love is in pink, so I'm just going to flip through the pages that have pink on
them because it’s going to make it ten time quicker and also just easier for me as well.
Number four: One of the best ways of learning vocabulary is to learn the vocabulary from
the book itself. I think one of the biggest angst for all students is to learn vocabulary.
And while you can go out and start reading articles and start reading different books
- because anything to do with reading will absolutely help you - if you are unsure where
to start off, then start from your book itself, because generally the book will give you a
lot of nice vocabulary that will fit perfectly into your essays.
Number five: Rather than reading your book a hundred times and think - Oh my gosh, the
more I read, the better I'll get - once you’ve read it or you’ve read it for a couple of
times, start reading different sources about your text. So whether that’s going online
or having a look at articles that review your particular text, have a look at different
study guides that talk about your text - just read as much as you can about that text, because
that’s how you’re going to open up your interpretation and your understanding of the
book itself.
Number six: Studying a film. If you are, again, don’t watch like a hundred times over and
just think - Oh, each time I watch it, it’s just about an hour and a half, that’s pretty
easy. I'll fit in an hour and a half now and just watch it casually. One of the best things
that you can do is to dedicate yourself to one really intense viewing of your text. So
what that means, is rather than just watching it through which can lead you to passive learning,
be active about it. Every single new scene - pause. Once you’ve paused, have a look.
Have a look at the camera angles. Have a look at the mise-en-scene. Have a look at the costumes.
Have a look at the lighting. Done that? Next Scene. Pause. Go again. Next scene. Pause.
Go again. This may seems really draining, and a really tremendous task - in which it
is - because if you’re pausing every time, it’s not going to take you an hour and a
half. It will probably take you a full day. So with something like this, treat it as a
project and do it over many different days or even weeks leading up to your sac or exam.
Number Seven: When you’re correcting an essay, read it out loud. It’s very hard
to mark on your own essay because you obviously wrote it and so when it comes to editing,
a lot of times you can’t pick up your own errors. And that’s absolutely okay. But
you know what can help you with the errors? Your ear. So when you’re thinking and you’re
writing on paper, have you ever accidentally skipped a word, and then just realise - Oh
my god, I don’t know why I wrote that? Or I can’t believe I skipped that word.It’s
because in your mind you’ve done it, but not necessarily connected with your hand.
But when you force yourself to read out loud, it’s really, really surprising how well
your ear works as a replacement teacher in a way. Guys, just try it, I know that sounds
so silly, and trust me, when I got taught this I was like - Oookay - but honestly it
is one of the things that helped me improve drastically and I even do it today. When I
mark my students’ essays, I'm always reading it out loud. Because when you read out loud,
your ears pick up a lot more than your head does.
Number Eight: When you’re memorizing quotes, don’t just write quotes on a full A4 piece
of paper and just go tell yourself - OK, I'm going to sit down and I'm going to memorize
all of these 30 quotes now. One, two, three, four, five, six…. How are you going to memorize
that? It’s going to be so boring and it’s going to be so draining. What you should do
instead is apply those quotes. So when you start practicing writing or even if you’re
doing plans, write those quotes down that you think work in really well. It’s only
when you start applying those quotes into the context of the situation. So writing an
essay, or writing a plan, do you actually absorb it much more than just staring at a
piece of paper or your laptop and just go - “Funny Business in a Women’s Career
The Things You Dropped Along Your Way the things you drop on your way Up the Ladder
so you can move faster, the things you drop on your way up the ladder so you can move
faster”
Number Nine: I can’t push down this pinkie - but number nine. If you’re struggling
to understand the context of a particular text that you’re studying - so if it’s
set in the 1950s or if it’s set in The American Dream- so if you’re really struggling to
get the hang of it or you just want to know more, go ahead and learn it. And one of the
best things that I used, was crash course on YouTube. It’s just a really cute and
simple way of accessing that information. In a way it’s engaging for you as well.
Number ten: Fetch ideas from your friends, so with your friends go through prompts together,
and it’ll will surprise you that you might respond to a prompt in a certain way but your
friend might have responded in a completely different way, and whilst it might not be
the way that you want to go about it, it’s still nice to know what the different ideas
are out there and how people can just look at a prompt and just have completely different
perspectives or understanding of that prompt. English is a subject where the more ideas
you have the better and healthier it is for you.
So I hope you guys enjoyed those ten tips, they are a combination of some of the techniques
that I personally adopted along with some other techniques that i’ve seen other students
adopt which have turned out really well for them.
Competition time! Firstly, I just want to say a massive thankyou to everybody who joined
in on the competition, there were so many of you and I'm absolutely so flattered that
you guys are wanting to join the workshop though only one of you did win. So.. the winner,
I'll pop down right here.Congratulation, and if you are the winner please shoot me a message
on the VCE study guides facebook page. For those of you who weren’t able to secure
that free spot, don’t worry, each of you have been sent a link to a special vip access,
so hopefully even if you didn’t win, I will still get the opportunity to meet you and
teach you. If you guys enjoyed this type of hack video, please give it a thumbs up, and
I'll create some more hack style videos in the future, subscribe if you haven't already
and comment below if there is anything you would like me to touch base on in the future.
Other than that, I just wanted to let you guys know at the start of the year I was doing
weekly videos, released on monday, however, workload has really increased since school
has started, and I'm tutoring a lot again, unfortunately it’s just a lot of work load,
so I am only going to be releasing a new video every fortnightly monday. So don't worry I'm
not disappearing, but I just wanted to let you guys know that, okay? By doing this, it
will also give me more time to create better videos for you guys, rather than just rushing
through and just trying to churn out videos on time every monday. So yes, fortnightly
mondays, I will see you guys in a fortnight. See you, bye!