Memorising responses in the HSC. Can you? Should you?

Can I memorise my way through the HSC?

Whilst I understand why this is a prominent concern for many people, I think it is the wrong question to be asking. The question is not ‘can’ I memorise my way through the HSC, the question is ‘should’ I memorise my way through the HSC.

The answer to the first question (generally) is yes. Obviously there are many subjects such as 4 Unit Math and Ext History that simply can not be memorised due to the nature of their content. However, many aspects of many subjects can be rote learnt, for example; math formulas, English essays, history responses and PDHPE notes, to name a few. Looking over the past 10 years of past HSC exams, the questions do not change so dramatically that you would be unable to pass with memorised answers.

We must acknowledge that there are certain benefits to this approach:

1. It’s less work
2. You can get essays/notes/responses from a previous student and just memorise those
3. It is arguably less stressful on the day if you have already committed yourself to writing a pre-prepared response
4. You can get your tutor to write your esssays for you
5. It’s less work.

Although, there are a number of red flags in adopting this approach, that should concern most students:

1. The Board of Studies actually does change the nature of certain questions from time to time. For example the 2009 Studies of Religion (2 Unit) final essay question was designed to throw many people off that had become complacent with the predictability of exams. Further, Module B questions have the potential to make what you have memorised worthless. Often questions ask for specific elements, scenes, characters or themes of a text that cannot be adequately answered by a generic response.
   For example the 2011 Hamlet question for English Advanced read:
   “In the context of your critical study, to what extent does your response to the closing scenes of Hamlet inform your judgement of this play as a whole?”
2. Pressure is a strange thing. Often people cram all their material such that they don’t actually learn the concepts but just the ‘order of the words.’ Once they get into the exam they have a massive mind blank and can not adapt any of what they had prepared.
3. Because markers know that students use this method, they really look for answers that feel ‘pre-prepared’ and mark you harshly for doing it.
4. The bottom line is that pre-prepared responses do not let you adapt. That is what the best students are good at. They can adapt their memorised responses to the needs and requirements of the question. Pre-preparing everything doesn’t allow you to cover yourself if something goes slightly off plan (which will happen during at least one of your exams…trust me).
5. Pre-prepared responses will rarely ever get you the top B+ and A-range responses. It is obvious figuring out which students are just word vomiting what they memorized onto the page and which are actually addressing the question. They rarely answer the question/stimulus in enough detail and rarely have a good flowing thesis throughout the essay/story.

Our advice: Make sure you have pre-prepared responses for as much as possible. Check with your teacher that your arguments are top quality. A few weeks out from your exams you should stop memorising them and practice adapting your generic essay to different questions and stimulus material. If you practice adapting them you will become a lot better at making them feel less memorised and that way you can focus on actually answering the question.

Memorising is a great way to do it, but it is only half the job, if you want good marks you need to be practicing how to adapt.