How Achievable Is A Band 6 in English Advanced?

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Our first lesson with new students at Delta begins by asking them of their goals in English. By far the most common response is “to get a Band 6”.

Let’s take a step back and consider the process of mark calculation as a whole. Many students struggle to understand mark calculation, so their natural inclination is to go full throttle and aim for full marks in every assessment. Although this is the standard we aim for each student to achieve, it’s certainly not the most efficient strategy, often driving students to the point of burnout or breakdown. It’s very much a smart play to prioritise certain sections over others, as you’ll read further below.

What if I told you that you don’t need to get A-range marks across all your English assessments to get a Band 6? It’s completely possible. So the short answer to the title of this article’s question is: very.

The popular adage ‘study smarter, not harder’ exists to preserve the life and sanity for us all, but what this actually entails escapes the minds of many. And how do you study smart in English, a subject so seemingly subjective and unpredictable?

Firstly, dispel those assumptions and focus on honing your understanding of the complicated process of mark calculation — an awareness that will certainly carry over to your other HSC units.

Let’s get into answering the question that is undoubtedly on many of your minds: how are our HSC marks calculated and how can we go about maximising them? We need to understand the answer to this question first before we go into answering the next: how can we achieve a Band 6 in English?

When you receive your HSC results in December, you will see three columns: Assessment Mark, Examination Mark and HSC Mark. This is because the Board of Studies calculates the average of two elements (both equal to 50%) to find your final HSC Mark, and they are your:

1. HSC Examination Mark: This mark reflects your actual performance in the final HSC exam
2. Moderated Assessment Mark: This mark is based on the internal assessment tasks you have completed at school over the course of the year, of which your teacher submits to the Board of Studies after the trial exams. However, the Board has to moderate these marks to ensure the fair distribution of marks. This is to prevent schools from submitting 100% for every single student’s internal assessment mark.

An excellent simplification to help you understand the process of moderating is as follows: your assessment mark is essentially the exam mark of the person who achieved your internal rank in the external exam. For example, if you achieved an internal rank of 7th in English, your assessment mark will be the 7th best exam mark in your cohort.

However, the above is still a simplification and the BoS uses more complex statistical methods (which involve fitting a parabolic curve through the distribution of marks) that take into account the following:

• The rank of each student
• The gap between each rank (how much better a student is than the student below them)

Ultimately, you want to make sure that you minimise the mark range and maximise the average of your school cohort.

Now what about your own performance?

Your final HSC mark (e.g. a ‘90’ for a Band 6 in English Advanced) isn’t the actual raw mark that you achieved in the exam. Getting a 90 in English essentially means that you performed in the top 11.96% of the state (UAC Scaling Guide, 2013). Then what is the raw mark required to actually get a Band 6?

Generally speaking, a raw exam mark of 80–85/105 will usually align to a Band 6 in English Advanced, though that depends based on the strength of the NSW cohort. This means that 11.96% of the state achieved a mark over 80–85/105, resulting in a final aligned HSC mark of 90. Let’s stick with a raw mark of 85/105 as our target for a Band 6.

The HSC English Advanced Exam is made up of 105 marks that are split into two papers and six sections.

Paper 1 is made up of three sections, each worth 15 marks.

Section I is Comprehension, wherein you confront a set questions designed to test your comprehension of unseen texts. This section tests concrete skills that are easy and fast to acquire. It is not unfair to say that full marks will come with consistent practice. So: 15/15 for Section I.

Section II is Creative Writing. Suppose you prepared a solid creative, but in the exam you come across particular difficulty incorporating the stimulus into your response. Nonetheless, you pull through with a B-range mark of 12/15.

Section III is an Extended Response. Now you’re pretty experienced with essay writing after preparing (at least) three essays for each of the Modules in Paper 2. But still, accounting for a less-than-desirable question, you get 13/15.

Your total for Paper 1 clocks in at 40/45. Let’s keep in mind our goal of 85/105 for a Band 6. With 40 marks collected in Paper 1, that leaves us 45 marks to go. We need to get a total of at least 45 marks in Paper 2 to get a Band 6.

Over three essays, 45 marks works out to be 15/20 per essay. That means you can get a mid-B-range mark for every single one of your Module responses and still achieve a Band 6 so long as you perform strongly in Paper 1. Paper 1 therefore is an excellent place to focus your revision.

While Paper 1 is certainly less demanding than Paper 2 — as it is shared with English Standard students — you must not give in to the temptation to ignore the former as easier. Do well in Paper 1 and you will do well in English.

Of course, work to maximise your marks across both Papers — but know that a Band 6 isn’t always getting three A-range essays!

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