For question 1 of the english language exam, we were asked to write a journal entry in the perspective of James, a poet. I really tried to get into the mind of the character to see how he would feel in his particular situation from the evidence given in the passage. There were only little bits of information about him so I had to infer a lot about his character. I structured my journal entry into 3 paragraphs with each of the three guidelines as the point for the paragraph. I think that I’m quite a good judge of character and so I was able to do well in this section of the exam.

In class today we got the chance to redo the question with the mark scheme to see how we could improve. Then we had a partner check what we wrote based on the mark scheme. I thought that I did a bit better by making my journal entry more specific. However, my partner only gave me a 9/15 when on the mock I got a 13/15. I think this is because we aren’t used to such specific guidelines for marking and so the only things that can be marked are if they are part of the answer scheme.

From this I learned that I need to be original by having specific and unique ideas that set my work apart from others. If I want to do the best I can, I need to use the passage to infer interesting details about the character and scenario to make my essay more creative. This will catch the attention of the reader more and make it more entertaining (and also probably satisfy the mark scheme)

Here is a picture of a line I wrote in the mock that I thought was particularly compelling. I find it clever.