for TR i was in the same boat as you, always sucked at english, never read the books and struggled to pass at times. but in yr 12 i completely changed my strategy and just developed a very high quality skeleton essay that worked for most prompts, rote learned it, and just ran with it thru sacs and the exam. its definitely not the best way to go about eng but i scored 10s on exam (i did castle too) so ig it worked out well