Memorising never works. The markers can tell instantly and they deduct marks for prepared responses.
Bullshit. Not to sound conceited, but I completed the HSC last year and I memorised
word-for-word (NO JOKE!) every single essay for both Advanced and Extension 1 English. Generally, this is where people would go all "...but then you cant answer the question properly!!!!"
The questions they give in the exams are always generic. Even for me who completed the 2011 HSC English exam where they SPECIFIED a text for Module B, and even stated a "type" of belonging in Paper 1, I wrote exactly what I memorised along with a simple sentence or two that was basically the question re-worded throughout the essay. Granted, the specified text in Module B just happened to be one of the poems I memorised (I didnt bother memorising all of them..which is a risk). Obviously you'd want to memorise all of them if you really wanted to cover yourself.
I'm serious when I say that for every single English exam I ever did I memorised the essays required. This is generally how most people in my year went about it.
Again, I'm not trying to sound conceited, but just to give you an idea of how people went with this approach, I was a consistent high-performer in both Adv./Ext.1 English.
I had a rank of 4th at a school with 450 people in my grade. (Obviously, the rank was 4/200 or however many students were doing Advanced)
Received a HSC Mark of 96/100 for Adv. English and 44/50 for Ext.1.
Considering most people I know went about it this way and did very well for HSC English at the various levels, memorising essays obviously DOES work...and it does so VERY well, as long as you have a somewhat natural ability to memorise large amounts of text.