English is the subject students are most likely to describe as subjective, and they are mostly wrong. Marks in BC English are awarded against criteria, and the two criteria that move the needle are comprehension and structure. Both can be taught. Neither is a personality trait.
Comprehension is not reading speed
A student who reads a passage and can summarise it has understood the events. That is not what senior English asks for. It asks what the writer is doing and how – the choices behind the text.
The practical difference: after reading a paragraph, a student who is comprehending at the right level can say something like “the narrator keeps describing the weather in the same terms as the argument, which makes the argument feel inevitable.” A student who is not can tell you it was raining.
Getting there is a habit, built by annotating. Not highlighting – annotating. Marking a phrase and writing why it is there. Three or four notes per page is plenty. The value is in the writing, because it forces a thought rather than a feeling.
Structure is where most marks are lost
Most English essays that get a mediocre mark are not badly written sentence by sentence. They are a set of observations in the order the student happened to think of them.
The fix is mechanical, which is good news. Every paragraph should do four things: make one claim, evidence it with a short quotation, explain how the evidence supports the claim, and connect back to the overall argument. If a paragraph is missing the third of those – and most weak paragraphs are – it reads as description rather than analysis.
The single most common gap is a quotation that is dropped in and left to speak for itself. It never does. The explanation after the quotation is where the marks live.
The thesis has to be arguable
“This essay will explore the theme of identity in the novel” is not a thesis – it is an announcement. A thesis is a claim someone could disagree with: “the novel treats identity as something imposed rather than chosen, and the ending withholds any resolution of that.”
A quick test: could a reasonable person argue the opposite? If not, it is a topic, not an argument, and the essay will drift into retelling the plot.
Vocabulary matters less than people think
Students often assume the route to a better mark is more impressive words. It is not, and reaching for them usually produces sentences that say less. Precision beats vocabulary. “The narrator is unreliable” is worth more than three ornate sentences circling the same idea.
How to practise without writing a full essay every time
Full essays are slow, and the feedback arrives too late to change anything. More useful:
- Write only the thesis and the topic sentences for four different questions. Twenty minutes, and it trains the part that actually determines the mark.
- Take one paragraph and rewrite it three times with different evidence.
- Take a paragraph you wrote and underline the sentence that does the explaining. If there is not one, that is the lesson.
Why this matters beyond English class
English Studies 12 or English First Peoples 12 is required for admission to essentially every BC university programme, and it is counted in the admission average regardless of what the student intends to study. A science-bound student who neglects English is limiting their own options.
The same skills also carry the UBC personal profile and most scholarship applications – see applying to UBC and SFU.
Our English tutoring in Surrey covers Grades 1 to 12, with senior work focused on comprehension, essay structure and exam technique. Call 604-725-6845 or book a $50 trial class.
