Trying to make preparing for your QCAA English assessments easier with study notes?
We’ve got a number of tips to ensure that you’re note-taking and note-making is effective and efficient! With the different texts you’ll be studying throughout the year, you’ll want to keep things organised with a bunch of handy notes.
So what are you waiting for? Let’s get started!
Why should you make study notes for QCAA English?
Tip 1: Start Early
Tip 2: Don’t Forget Your Quotes!
Tip 3: Understand the Format of Your Assessments
Tip 4: Identify the Techniques You Should Remember
Why should you make study notes for QCAA English?
Notes are an incredibly important part of all your learning. You could say that taking good notes can forgo revision in some subjects. While this is true for science and maths, English still requires writing practice in the format you are assessed on.
Nevertheless, you will use your notes to cement the structure and content of your articles or essays, depending on what you need to write for your IAs. In summary, your notes in English are more likely going to be dealing with setup, structure, essay characteristics, and the actual literary devices of the text you are studying.
The syllabus has no ‘content’ to speak of, as the content will come from the literary texts you will study. Despite this, here are a few tips to take notes from both the syllabus and your texts.
Tip 1: Start Early
You should be making notes as soon as you know what text you will be studying. This is because you will most often be asked to analyse texts simultaneously while reading them in full. This can be very time consuming especially when you have many different other subjects to study for.
In this instance, the syllabus is well divided, and allows you to focus on one IA at a time. To begin, find your desired IA in the syllabus, and pay close attention to the marking guide.
Making notes with the marking guide next to the text that you are analysing will allow you to pick out the most important literary techniques, as it would be impossible to talk about everything in an essay or a presentation. Remember, the sooner you start the more time you will have at the end of your study to practise writing the assessment, which is definitely the most important part of your preparation to do well in your assessment.
Focus on the key concepts of the topic, and always write them down in the corner of your page at the beginning of each lesson or note-taking session. Think of the topic as the lens you will use to view every single piece of literature you analyse.
For example, if the unit focus is multicultural perspectives and how they are presented in a particular piece, always keep this in mind. Hence why it is very helpful to jot the topic aims at the beginning of each lesson, so you make sure you pick the right quotes for the right purpose.
Tip 2: Don’t Forget Your Quotes!
Quotes will make up the meat of anything you’ll be writing across your IAs and EA. Therefore, it is imperative you know how to take notes about possible quotes you might use, as well as make these notes useful to your analysis.
This section will give you an example of a quote and how you might go about writing notes about it.
- Aim for the notes to be short and snappy, you can’t write an essay every time you see a good quote. Generally aim to cover these three topics when analysing a quote through notes: Meaning of the quote, Technique used, effect on the reader.
- Set your notes so that they are easy to read. You can cover the above three subtopics as bullet points, or you can even do a mind map, or even try to write them in short paragraph form.
- EXAMPLE: “So foul and fair a day I have not seen…” – MACBETH, Act I
- The quote plays with oxymorons, foul and fair, or good and bad. Shakespeare thus mixes the two moralities purposefully in the occasion of the telling of Macbeth’s prophecy, that brings about good for Macbeth, but tragedy to Scotland.
- This is a dichotomy, or oxymoron
- The reader is brought to view Macbeth in a conflicted manner, both good and bad, just as the prophecy foretells. Macbeth, despite being corrupted by power, has many redeeming qualities that later make him repent.
Aim to annotate each quote you deem worthy with this depth. This will make it easier to write the analysis later. Always remember to reference your quotes, not by page, but by chapter or act, just as you would do in an essay or article.
Use these practice questions for the English external exam to help you memorise your quotes!
Tip 3: Understand the Format of Your Assessments
This part is where most students usually fail to make notes on, and it ultimately ends up costing them a huge portion of their marks. English centres around the type of response you have to provide. Getting this wrong sets you up for failure or a lot of missed marks.
Take as many notes as possible on the structure of the format you’re having the assessment on. This might be an essay, an article or a speech. Feel free to experiment and do your own research, as sometimes these parts are missed in class due to the sheer amount of content you have to analyse.
Jot down the features of each structural component, including word count, style, and must-include parts. An example on how you might set it up on a page is:
Format Type: Essay
INTRO
- 200-300 words max
- Context Statement: a general, all purpose statement about the history and context of the piece to be analysed,
- Thesis: an answer to the assessment question.
- Preview: a sentence or two on the main points, in order, of each body paragraph.
BODY PARAGRAPH
- 200-500 words
- Point statement
- Example from text
- Meaning
- Effect on the reader
- Link to thesis
And so on…
Tip 4: Identify the Techniques You Should Remember
Lastly, you want to make sure you define the literary techniques that will come up for every text you study. Naturally, and thankfully, you will only have to do this once, and you don’t even need to bother with textbooks for it.
You can find a comprehensive list of literary techniques here!
Your aim, at the end of the day, is to create a cheat sheet that you can carry over from one assessment to another, that will help you to identify and analyse literary techniques. Make sure that the sheet is as broad as possible, and contains both aesthetic and stylistic devices, as you will have to cover both to achieve high marks.
To do double the work in less time, you might consider doing the definitions and picking examples from the text you are studying to help you with the cheat sheet.
Examples
- Oxymoron: The proximity of two moral or literary opposites in the same phrase
E.g. “Such foul and fair a day I have not seen…” Macbeth, Act I- Personification: when an inanimate object or idea is given human qualities, either explicitly or implicitly
E.g. “Is this a dagger I see before me?” Macbeth, Act II- Metaphor: An idea, object or context is used to develop further meaning out of another idea, object or context.
E.g. “You are too full o’the milk of human kindness…” Macbeth, Act IIAnd so on…
With these tips, you should be able to take your QCAA English notes to the next level and feel well prepared for your IAs and EA. Good luck!
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Vittorio Manessi is an Art of Smart tutor based in Queensland studying environmental science. He was one of the first Year 12 students to study under the new ATAR system in Queensland. He enjoys Maths, Science, English and Ancient History and is keen to share his knowledge of the QCE by making awesome resources.
