WACE English common mistakes
WACE English · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
Retelling the plot or summarising what a text says instead of analysing how meaning is constructed, so responses describe events but never address language techniques, structure or intended effect.
Students practise comprehension as narrative recall in lower years and carry that habit forward; under time pressure, summarising feels safe because it is easy to verify against the text, whereas analysis requires committing to an interpretation.
What to do instead
Before writing, convert the question into a 'how' or 'why' prompt and draft one sentence per point in the form 'technique + quoted evidence + effect on reader'. Ban plot verbs such as 'then', 'happens' and 'the author says' from drafts and check every paragraph contains at least one device named and one effect stated.
Quoting long blocks of text or dropping in quotations without integrating them, so the evidence is not explained or linked to the claim it supposedly supports.
Students believe more quotation equals more evidence and worry that shortening a quote will misrepresent the source; they also lack practice in embedding short phrases grammatically into their own sentences.
What to do instead
Limit quotations to three to eight words and require a follow-up sentence beginning 'This suggests...' or 'The choice of [word] implies...' for each. Practise rewriting one long quote three different ways as an embedded phrase, and self-check that every quote is surrounded by commentary rather than standing alone.
Ignoring the specific wording of the question, particularly command words such as 'compare', 'evaluate' or 'to what extent', and producing a general response about the topic instead.
Anxiety about running out of time leads students to start writing from their first association with the topic; command words are skimmed rather than decoded, and students often do not know how the expected structure differs between 'describe' and 'discuss'.
What to do instead
Underline the command word and the content words in the prompt, then write a one-line plan naming the required thinking (e.g. 'compare = similarities and differences with judgement'). Build a personal glossary of command words with a model sentence for each and rehearse matching five prompts to structures in under two minutes.
Misreading tone, attitude or point of view, treating irony, satire or an unreliable narrator as literal statement and then building an argument on that misreading.
Students read for surface content and overlook cues such as exaggeration, juxtaposition, punctuation and shifts in register; unfamiliar text types in the exam increase the chance of taking a voice at face value.
What to do instead
Annotate for tone markers before answering: highlight intensifiers, contradictions, unusual diction and shifts in sentence length, then ask 'who is speaking and what do they want the reader to feel?' Practise with short opinion pieces, labelling the attitude and the three textual cues that reveal it.
Writing an essay with no clear contention, so the introduction announces the topic and the body paragraphs list points without a line of argument running through them.
Students confuse a thesis with a statement of subject, and planning time is often skipped because it feels like lost writing time; without a plan, each paragraph is generated independently.
What to do instead
Draft a single-sentence contention that takes a position and answers the question, then write topic sentences for each paragraph that each advance that position. Test the essay by reading only the introduction and topic sentences aloud; if they do not form a coherent argument, revise before writing the body.
Producing paragraphs that begin with evidence or narrative rather than a topic sentence, so the reader cannot tell what the paragraph is proving.
Students draft by following the order of their ideas or the text rather than the order of their argument, and they have not been taught that a topic sentence is a claim, not a label.
What to do instead
Use a paragraph template: claim, context, evidence, analysis, link. Write the topic sentence first for every paragraph in the plan, check each is a debatable claim rather than a fact, and revise any paragraph whose first sentence could be deleted without weakening the argument.
Overusing sophisticated vocabulary incorrectly or padding writing with inflated phrasing, producing imprecise or ungrammatical sentences that obscure meaning.
Marking criteria reward controlled language use, and students interpret this as a demand for rare words; they substitute synonyms from a thesaurus without checking collocation or connotation.
What to do instead
Prioritise precision over rarity: for each ambitious word, check it in a dictionary for register and typical partners, and prefer a plain word when the meaning is uncertain. Edit by reading sentences aloud and replacing any word that could be swapped for a simpler one without loss of meaning.
Neglecting sentence variety and punctuation control, resulting in strings of short simple sentences or run-on sentences joined by commas.
Students write in the way they speak and have not internalised how commas, semicolons and subordinate clauses signal relationships between ideas; editing time is sacrificed to finishing the draft.
What to do instead
Reserve the final five minutes for a punctuation pass, checking every comma splice and joining related ideas with subordinating conjunctions or semicolons. Deliberately include at least one complex and one short emphatic sentence per paragraph, and practise rewriting a passage to vary sentence openings.
Failing to adapt register, form and structure to the specified audience and purpose, writing an informal personal voice for a formal persuasive piece or omitting the conventions of the required text type.
Students rehearse one familiar essay form and reproduce it regardless of the task; the audience and purpose in the prompt are treated as decoration rather than as constraints on diction and structure.
What to do instead
Before writing, note audience, purpose and form in one line, then list three conventions the form demands (e.g. headline and subheadings for an article, direct address for a speech). Check the finished piece against that list and adjust pronouns, contractions and sentence length to suit the stated reader.
Running out of time because the response is planned and drafted without allocation, leaving no opportunity to proofread for spelling, agreement and tense consistency.
Students spend disproportionate time on the opening and on polishing early sentences, and they underestimate how long analysis takes; proofreading is treated as optional rather than as part of the task.
What to do instead
Set fixed checkpoints (e.g. plan in five minutes, body complete with ten minutes left, proofread for five) and practise full timed responses to calibrate. Proofread in passes, one for verb tense and agreement, one for spelling of commonly confused words, one for omitted words, rather than reading once for everything.