THE TEACHER GARY JOHNSON

If I am suspicious an answer has been memorised from another source I am required to report it to the Rosetta Stone Supervisor of Marking. If the answer is found to be plagiarised, the consequences for that student may be a zero mark or a reduced mark for that question. It is important for students to understand that memorising essays and reproducing them in an exam is not the way to achieve high marks. I am sure their teachers have been telling them that throughout the year. Some of the ways I advise my students to best prepare for the HSC English examinations is to be thoroughly familiar with all the set texts, complete all class work during the year, write responses to a variety of questions under timed conditions and understand the standard that is required to achieve high marks. My experience as a marker and all the comments from the examiners in the marking reports (published by the Board of Studies) over the years show memorising essays is not the way to achieve high marks and may prevent a student from realising his or her full potential. Louise Ward has taught English in government and non-government schools for more than years. She has extensive experience as a marker and senior marker of HSC and School Certificate exams. THE TEACHER GARY JOHNSON THE answer is simply one word - no. But let me explain the advice I've given to many reluctant young writers - often boys - over the years. Learning an essay off by heart and regurgitating it in an examination fails to demonstrate the many important skills we as educators are trying to instil in our students. Students, as part of their learning and skills development, certainly need to analyse questions, practise writing essays and refining their responses to material they have learnt; this is an integral part of their education. In this process students learn to deconstruct questions, synthesise and analyse complex ideas and demonstrate their capacity to think, something educators and employers agree is vital. The NSW curriculum is designed so students learn important skills that will be useful in Rosetta Stone Software their lives. For example, the English syllabus aims to enable students tounderstand, use and value the English language and to become thoughtful and effective communicators. An admirable aim which, when examined, requires students to present something more than a collection of memorised essays. Gary Johnson is principal of Cherrybrook High School. THE STUDENT ELISE WOOD I SAT the HSC last year and submitted 22 extended pieces of writing, across seven subjects, in the space of three weeks. Of those, were memorised. In my eyes, and in many of my teachers' eyes, this was not a form of ''cheating''. It was preparation. The process of memorising an essay is not a case of copying ideas and regurgitating them. It involves decoding a subject's rubric, researching, writing, editing, writing, second-guessing, a little more writing, until finally you produce a piece of work that you are sure about using in the exam. There's a difference between memorising an essay and rote learning. I learnt in my final year of school that you cannot just write what you have memorised. Critically engaging with the question at hand is vital. Unless you have cheated the system and obtained the exact wording of a question, there is still a need to construct a thesis and a line of argument. Of course, memorising an essay cannot be done in all subjects. Only questions that will be broad, because they are based on interpretation and judgment, can have answers memorised. Those based on a content-heavy syllabus cannot. For example, in the HSC history extension exam there are two questions. The first is a historiography essay that draws on content from Herodotus and Karl Marx, through to the postmodern dichotomy of histories as narratives. This essay cannot be memorised. The second question is a case study of a personality that uses open terms, such as ''to what extent'', to indicate the need for individual insight, judgment and interpretation. After crafting this essay for a year, I memorised words in six hours. Memorising essays should not be frowned upon. It was through this process that I learnt the academic skills needed for tertiary education. While it is futile to memorise Rosetta Stone English essays for university exams, the scholarship I adopted during the HSC has enabled me to identify the requirements of different questions, and that I always ''answer the question.