Poor Results

Hi,

During the recent LA Reading & Reasoning test, I did very poorly, scoring a D7. I was the second lowest in class and I did much worse than my expectations. I failed! This definitely dealt a major blow to my studies because I was aiming for a good MSG this term. I also wanted to get into Humanities Programme next year but it requires me to get an End-Of-Year LA grade of A1. Of course, an appeal can work. However, i definitely do not want to take such chances. Therefore, I want to share my feelings on this test, why I did so badly and how I will respond to this matter.

When I first got the R & R paper back, I was quite alright with the results, because I expected that I did not do well in the test and I also thought that others were doing as badly as me. However, I realised that everyone around me was doing much better than I was and I even came it second lowest in class! This was a major shock to me because I was quite good in Language Arts. Thus, I felt very devastated and I knew that my MSG this term was going to be very poor. What's more, I was aiming to go the Humanities Programme next year, but I may have to put aside my hopes, thanks to this very poor result. I mean, this is one of my only failures in secondary school and it dealt a huge blow to me. I was feeling very emotional, but I managed to confide in a few of my friends who were nice and comforted me. Although I still feel that it was a pity that I did not get four or five marks higher, I think that I have gotten over it now.

I believe that there must be reasons for not doing well. It cannot be just about pure misfortune. I think that it is important to analyse where I have gone wrong so that I can take future steps to improve during my next test. I would love to say that the main reason why I failed was because the passages were so hard, but this is all but an excuse because I know that my other classmates were able to get A1s, doing the same paper as me. Therefore, I think that the fact that I did not study enough was the main reason. I did not annotate the whole book of The Merchant of Venice and faced the consequences when I was unable to accurately answer the questions tested. Had I read every chapter more detailed-ly and ask my teacher when I had problems understanding, I think that I would have scored much better. I also feel that I did not read widely enough. One key to scoring well in Language Arts is by reading widely; reading newspapers, reading all kinds of genres of books and reading informative texts. As a result, I was not able to understand the Rupert Murdoch case very well and missed out on a lot of marks.

Since I know where I have gone wrong, I feel that my marks are just water under the bridge and that there is no point crying over spilt milk. Therefore, what I can do now is to start practicing for the End-of-Year examinations. Anyway, this test is just a mere 6% in my EOY grade and I believe that I can still manage to score at least an A if I do well in the final examination. Thus, I think that I need to start to read The Merchant of Venice and To Kill a Mockingbird all over again and annotate every passage. I also need to start a journal where I can jot down notes on certain articles that catch my attention, so that I can have a ready supply of articles at hand to use as evidence to support my point in the argumentative questions.

In conclusion, I believe that all is not lost despite this failure and I feel quite happy that I managed to get through this setback quite easily. As long as I work hard from now on, I believe that my Language Arts can get back on track and I will be able to score well.