Why Memorised Essays Usually Fail

Have you ever spent hours crafting the perfect essay in preparation for an assessment? You identified your arguments, searched long and hard for the finest quotes, formulated your analysis with complex vocabulary and made sure the response was exam-ready. 

Yet, when you used that same essay response in your assessment under exam conditions, you received 14/20.

How can that be?

Chances are, you fell into the trap of relying on memorisation. Somewhere along the line, somebody told you to write a generic essay, memorise it and hope for the best in the exam. As a result, your study for English became mechanised. Your focus was on manufacturing the one essay you would go on to apply to any question that came your way. 

Once your goal becomes memorising an essay rather than understanding a text, your learning stops. 

Instead of responding to ideas, you're searching for ways to force the question to fit what you've already prepared. The English curriculum is increasingly moving away from memorisation. Experienced markers recognise memorised essays almost immediately. They tend to sound rigid, generic and only partially address the question being asked. 

Imagine a question asks: 

To what extent does Orwell suggest hope survives oppression?

You memorised an essay about surveillance. 

Now what?

In this situation, you either ignore hope completely, awkwardly force hope into your surveillance essay or write something only partially relevant. In any of these avenues, you are stuck. This is exactly why memorisation fails. 

The HSC doesn't reward the student who memorised the best essay. It rewards the student who can build the best argument under pressure. Know your text so well that you no longer need a memorised response. 

That's when you'll start writing essays worth remembering.